Innovation and entrepreneurship are essential skills for higher education students and graduates who want to create value and solve problems in the world. But how do you keep your ventures going when you face challenges, uncertainties, and failures? Here are some tips to help you stay motivated, resilient, and adaptable in your innovation and entrepreneurship journey.
Your purpose is the reason why you are pursuing your venture, the impact you want to make, and the passion that drives you. Having a clear and meaningful purpose can help you overcome obstacles, stay focused, and inspire others. To find your purpose, ask yourself: What problem are you solving? Who are you serving? How are you contributing to the greater good? Write down your purpose statement and revisit it regularly to remind yourself of your vision.
Listen to your customers; learn what they want and why. Be able to deliver to their requirements. Innovation doesn't always have to be monumental; improving in small, significant ways still moves the needle. Always be looking at what is happening in the market - and respond in a meaningful way. Be collaborative with a great team of people - you won't figure it out all on your own - embrace diverse perspectives and opinions.
Purpose is a great personal motivator—it gets aspiring entrepreneurs through the rollercoaster of ups-and-downs. However, having clarity of your startups’ mission is something your customers, employees and investors can rally behind. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
This is a very timely post for me. We are launching WealthyU 2.0 so that we can integrate new insights from my most recent book and realized that it is time to move our private community from Facebook to our own platform. In order to meet the changing needs of our community, we must innovate.
Working for someone else limited me; I wanted to realize my ideas. I recently had a session with a values coach, and it turns out that my core values are freedom and leadership. Working for hire limits me in my value. Alternatively, identifying your values will help you decide how important it is to follow the entrepreneurial path.
Inner Purpose always comes first – whatever the project is, came from within. Serve the most people possible – give them a 10X cost savings and 10X simplicity increase, and 10X increase in speed. Every group we served numbered several million and more. Always the problem arrived quickly, became massive, and had to be solved in some breakthrough fashion. The solution was never about tech, though we used tech. It was about including features clients had to have, and none others. There was no period of time available to interview clients facing job loss or displacement. My job as an INNOVATOR, rewriting an industry has always been to do that part. I interpreted for 10 companies
Feedback is a valuable source of learning and improvement for your venture. It can help you validate your assumptions, identify your strengths and weaknesses, and discover new opportunities. To learn from feedback, you need to seek it from different sources, such as customers, mentors, peers, and experts. You also need to listen to it with an open mind, analyze it critically, and act on it accordingly. Don't take feedback personally or defensively, but as a way to grow and iterate.
"Start with an MVP, launch it, collect customer feedback, and repeat." The main advantage of an MVP is that it helps you learn if customers are interested in your product without making the full product. This saves time and money by finding out quickly if your product will succeed in the market. Learn about MVP and understand. Book recommendation : Lean Startup by Eric
"This product is useless, a waste of time" Sometimes that is what feedback looks like. Feedback is not applause, they are sincere reviews. Keep an open mind for positive and negative reviews. Positive reviews will give you encouragement, negative reviews can help you improve. Have a plan for negative reviews. Find out the why behind the review.
Being able to receive feedback graciously--even when it hurts--and make real change, is a marker for success. Being able to discern what feedback to implement based on your goals is the marker of a judicious leader. Sometimes we can't see what changes we need. Seeking external perspective is a powerful learning and growth too, one that everyone should embrace, no matter their experience level. That's why I love the writing and editing industry. It's all about leveraging feedback for growth.
Although negative feedback hurts and often feels personal, especially when you are deeply invested in your company / product / idea, it's the path to improvement. Negative feedback often simply means you didn't describe your solution properly. Use it to iterate, either on the solution or on the description. Only with negative feedback can you improve. I've had dozens of grant proposals rejected. It's so easy to say "Pfff, the reviewers are dumb, they just didn't get it". I've learned to ask "What are they teaching me?" Although it might make you feel warm and fuzzy, positive feedback teaches little. Worse, *false* positive feedback is easy to give and looks exactly like true positive feedback ... and it teaches you less than nothing.
Feedback is a valuable tool for entrepreneurship, offering insights into strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. To benefit from feedback, seek it from diverse sources, maintain an open-minded and critical attitude, and use it to iteratively improve your venture. Constructive feedback is essential for long-term growth, customer satisfaction, and adaptability in the entrepreneurial journey.
Failure is inevitable in innovation and entrepreneurship, but it is not the end of the road. It is an opportunity to learn from your mistakes, pivot your strategy, and try again. To embrace failure, you need to adopt a growth mindset, which means that you believe that your abilities and outcomes can improve with effort and practice. You also need to reframe failure as a positive and constructive experience, rather than a negative and destructive one. Celebrate your failures as milestones, not setbacks, and share them with others to learn and support each other.
I would complement this “fail fast, fail often” feedback with the reality that it’s still better to not fail in the first place. If I was guiding a group of entrepreneurs, I would first emphasize the importance of quality expertise from directly relevant mentors that have already “been there, done that”. By standing on the shoulders of these giants, you can often avoid their failures—saving the “embracing failure” concept for their most unique and differentiating hurdles they’ll encounter.
You just need to be successful with your PMF a limited time and thus you are bound to fail at multiple other attempts in achieving a good to great product and like wise a satisfactory to stellar experience. Failure needs to be documented thoroughly and later your blue book helps you to avoid the same and helps others too. It's also important to zoom out when you believe things aren't working in your ways. Thus Helps you to think from a macro perspective and different angles. Thus small celebration and Time out are normal things when failed in achieving something. Its okay and thus letting yours & your team's morale not go down is critical.
I couldn't agree more that failing is part of the process, and most successful entrepreneurs are the ones who keep their path going till failures turn into small victories and big successes. Just analyze and record any failures. This will immunize you from future ones in the same field. I find it much worse to start with multiple successes, and when a failure occurs at a critical point in your plans, you won't know how to handle it and sustain more significant losses.
Every failure is different and unique. What you learn from it is highly personal and should be put in the context of your life. What even is a failure? These types of conversations based on vague generalizations may have limited value and could even have a negative effect. I encourage people to discuss what they are perceiving to be a failure with individuals who they feel they can be vulnerable with without those individuals taking advantage of that vulnerability. Failures are a part of life. We all have to figure out how to deal with them.
At the end of the day, your very first product will be wrong! So, from day 1, you need to just keep working and iterating to make sure you are adding real value to someone. What is important to know, is that you aren't alone and every business goes through this at the beginning and forever. There is no end point in business, it is a constant pursuit of learning and improvement to add enough value to your customer.
Your network is your support system, your resource pool, and your potential market. It can help you access information, advice, funding, partnerships, and customers for your venture. To build your network, you need to connect with people who share your interests, values, and goals, as well as people who have different perspectives, skills, and backgrounds. You also need to nurture your relationships by providing value, gratitude, and reciprocity. Attend events, join communities, reach out to mentors, and collaborate with peers to expand and strengthen your network.
If there is anything that can fast-track your journey to the top, it is knowing the right people in the right places. Never miss an opportunity to network. Build healthy business relationships.
Launching my second business during COVID, I have seriously underestimated the importance of networking. But you know what they say... "Your network is your net worth.", and the amount of time I've spent in these events has always had a huge ROI.
Psychiatrist Irving Yalom emphasized the power of relationships in his work. I believe this power extends far beyond the context of therapy (Yalom’s point of reference) and certainly applies to our professional network. We grow professionally through experience AND through interaction with others. Our connections support us, challenge us, and inspire us. That is, if we provide them opportunity to do so. Time spent developing a professional network is an investment in your success. Look for opportunities to meet and connect with others: at work, through professional organizations, in your community. In addition, consider ways you can support those in your network, just as you will ultimately benefit from their support.
Building a network is like planting seeds for your entrepreneurial success. It's about connecting with people who can offer support, advice, and opportunities. In the world of entrepreneurship, your network is your lifeline. It opens doors, provides valuable insights, and can even lead to collaborations that fuel your business growth. Remember, it's not just what you know, but also who you know that can make a big difference in your journey to success.
Your community and network are the most valuable assets in your business and your life. Whether it's your next hire, an investor, a friend, or something you couldn't even imagine - networks create opportunities. In 99% of situations, the success of your business could be directly linked to the quality of your network.
Innovation and entrepreneurship require constant experimentation and adaptation to test your ideas, validate your assumptions, and respond to changing conditions. To experiment and adapt, you need to adopt a lean and agile approach, which means that you create and test small and fast prototypes, measure and evaluate the results, and iterate and improve based on the feedback. You also need to be flexible and willing to change your plans, assumptions, and strategies when necessary. Don't get attached to your ideas, but to your purpose and your customers.
I have a story for this where my startup was almost shutdown we engineering lectures in easy way and was uploading them on youtube also was doing really great then covid came colleges got shut down and no one was watching lectures because were not happening only my all the saving was gone in 6 months so i decided to change my content previous we use to create videos on pen and paper This time i came in front of camera and talk about topic which student need apart of Exams Like : Linkedin , Internship , Placements ,Freelancing and initially many failed but then things started working out don't wait till the shutdown do experiments and double down what's workings for you
Continual innovation and entrepreneurship thrive on a bedrock principle: experiment and adapt. Take each venture as an evolving canvas, iterating with feedback as your guiding star. Like a sculptor shaping a masterpiece, sculpt your ideas with resilience, turning obstacles into stepping stones on the path to success. In the dance of innovation, it's not just about the first step; it's about the rhythm of experimentation that keeps your ventures gracefully moving forward
Evolution is part of innovation. The original product you have in mind will likely undergo different changes to become a real-world product. Be ready to experiment, adapt to changes and grow.
Embracing experimentation and adaptation is fundamental in entrepreneurship and innovation. It involves a lean and agile approach, testing assumptions, mitigating risks, staying customer-centric, and remaining flexible. Experimentation fosters continuous improvement, innovation, and a purpose-driven entrepreneurial journey. It's a dynamic process that empowers entrepreneurs to refine their strategies, respond to change, and achieve their goals.
Key to this is getting to market. Sell and learn. Follow customer signal. Embrace imperfect in market as opposed to building in isolation in order to prioritize the ability to gather and respond to customer and market feedback.
Your venture is important, but so is your well-being. Innovation and entrepreneurship can be stressful, demanding, and exhausting, especially if you are juggling multiple roles and responsibilities. To take care of yourself, you need to balance your work and life, prioritize your health and happiness, and manage your stress and emotions. You also need to practice self-compassion and kindness, and recognize your achievements and progress. Schedule some time for yourself, do things that you enjoy, and seek help when you need it.
One of the most powerful practices that has sustained me across starting 5 companies has been weekly founder therapy with other entrepreneurs. Build a community of entrepreneurs around you (at various stages and in various industries, even) that you regularly spend time with. There is so much power in being around folks who understand the journey you are on and can empathize, understand, and even offer valuable anecdotes and solutions. Be vulnerable about the struggles, celebrate wins, talk personal lives, and just spend time together. It will be hard to justify a weekly time investment (given how hectic your schedule is), but if you get this right it'll end up being the highlight of many weeks (and a lifeline)!
I had already been through burnout when I started my entrepreneurial and innovation journey, so this aspect was on the top of my mind and my practice along the way, and is also focal to the work I do now. It is vital to build our personal resilience and include this mindset as we work, build, and grow. Our ventures are only as good as we are, so the best thing we can do for our work, colleagues, families, and missions, is to take good care of ourselves and our own resilience. And our work comes out better and our ventures stronger for it as well. It's a win all the way around and it requires us, at times, to fly in the face of convention.
Entrepreneurship has always been a lonely journey for entrepreneurs. Prioritising health and mental well being is very critical for Entrepreneurs to function properly at their venture. An unhappy mood & stressed health condition even creates a bad impact on the venture. Entrepreneurship is a marathon and not a sprint and thus having a strong health and mental well being helps you focus for the long term. Thus ensure a better endurance for supporting yourself.
I know you hear that everywhere, but the reason is, this is very true: having a ROUTINE is SO important. ???? ?? When you are so focused on your work, it is nice to have good habits on autopilot. That way you don't have to remember to take care of yourself, you do it automatically.
The article briefly mentions taking care of yourself, but it could explore more on the mental health aspects. Entrepreneurship can be a stressful journey, and discussing strategies for mental well-being could be beneficial for readers. I heard from a successful Entrepreneur that Marathons are easier than Startups. Entrepreneurship is not easy at all. It has to be vocal that Entrepreneurs take care of themselves and the family. Having earning spouse, and supporting family is key.
Never hire Yes People. If you want your Venture to prosper you have to build a Culture that lasts for a long time. The way to do that is to have people will Challange, People who will Oppose you and Prove their point. Yes this is a very difficult way to operate but then imagine if we were still making fire by rubbing two stones together! It would not work right, we need the idea of a gas stove and then an electric stove and then a Microwave! Encourage your Team Members to walk up to you and discuss new ideas and ways to make the Venture grow and earn more, this is a sure way to Success in the future
Professional empathy is a much needed trait or a part of entreprenuerial mindset. Discussed quite often, but least understood and practised. The reason of it being in its current state is not realising how powerful it can be. Networks,collaborations and many such business concerns can get resolved by being mindfully empathetic.
This advise about persons that speak "truth" to power is valid up to a point. A person that speaks truth to power is not necessarily sincere in their motivations; at times they just want to slow things down or posture ! A leader needs to maintain an open mind that listens to everyone in a way that prevents the company from sinking into the swamp of endless debates!
One of the pieces of advice I always give up-and-coming entrepreneurs: make sure you have at least one co-founder (but not too many more. There is such a thing as too many cooks in the kitchen in running your own company.) It is a difficult rollercoaster to be an entrepreneur: many highs, many lows. You need to have someone running the venture by your side. Rely on each other to get thru the hard times, and celebrate together when things are good. Ideally, you overlap some strengths, but also really balance out each other's weaknesses (we all have weaknesses!) And have a weekly coffee meeting, outside of the office. Stay in touch and updated with each other in a face-to-face convo (or digital coffee if remote!)
Entrepreneurship isn't just about being your own boss and making easy money—it's a nuanced journey. To thrive, align your venture with passion and purpose. Use the IKIGAI method: identify what you love, what you're good at, what you can be paid for, and what the world needs. The intersections—passion, profession, vocation, and mission—reveal the true essence of your entrepreneurial path. It's a deeper understanding beyond the surface glamour, providing a roadmap for sustained success.