Bring your compelling idea to life

In the last few months, I have taken some time to reflect and focus on spending time with young CEOs who have dreams to grow their businesses and do what they love.  I am fortunate to be have provided over one hundred mentoring hours to CEOs, particularly women entrepreneurs.  I have also invested in a number of new businesses with my great friend and an inspiration leader, Dr Steve Garnett with 3Radical and Avora.

With Steve and other outstanding role models, we have created ‘playbooks’ for building great customer obsessed companies with compelling cultures.  These are built from experience of the ‘university of life and hard knocks’ - I guess what they don’t teach you at Harvard. Being a CEO, outsiders see the glamour and rarely the reality of a roller-coaster ride of daily ups and downs.  I plan to post Monday Mentoring blogs to tell stories of sustainable successful businesses that could form part of a coaching manual for CEOs and leaders to avoid some of the mistakes and pitfalls I have seen and made. I will tell the stories of success and learnings from the high growth private & public companies and the British civil service where I have witnessed exemplar innovation, business creation and growth. If you want to dive deeper or have interesting anecdotes and perspectives, then please comment or DM me.

I have written extensively why the world needs entrepreneurs. The economic value is compelling - 70% of new jobs are created by the heroes; social cohesion especially in rural communities; innovation is often built in small companies and then acquired by the gorillas; benefits of entrepreneurial ‘can do’ spirit creates role models and positive impact on society.  I would argue, with the technology and convergence, entrepreneurs are ready for primetime.  In fact, there has never been such a time for you to build a business around your big idea.

Let’s start establishing the case that this is the best time to start a business. With the 30th anniversary of world wide web recently and the dawn of 4th industrial revolution, the power of convergence is paramount. The fusion of technologies including the Artificial Intelligence (AI); cloud, infinite bandwidth, infinite data & storage, quantum computing, mobility; IoT, voice, virtual reality, biotechnology, 3D printing and robotics creates a new order.  It may sound like lots of buzzwords, but I can promise you the intersection of these technologies to create convergence and compelling business solutions will open up opportunities for entrepreneurs and humanity if used wisely.  As always, it is not a case of clever technology looking for a solution.  It is always the other way around of creating solutions through the convergence of technologies propelling the 4th industrial revolution.

I think we are still in the early, experimental stages especially IoT, voice and AI.  As a personal reflection, I see technology advances today accelerating faster than ever and I am more excited by the potential of technology than throughout my career. There is even a hint of envy seeing a 25-year-olds consider exploiting AI and massive data to disrupt business problems.  Velocity has quickened and now convergence will offer humanity amazing solutions for many first and third world problems.

For you as the entrepreneur - what does this all practically mean:

1.    Entrepreneurs can build businesses in months in what used to take years.  Velocity is now a ‘table-stake’.  It is remarkable that the top 5 most valuable companies have been in existence an average of less than 30 years. Businesses and technologies solutions can be assembled in rapid order.

2.    We have seen how apps in the palm of your hand exploded and create a sea of start-ups over the past 10 years. Your big idea can exploit 4th industrial revolution technologies and there are many successful reference points.

3.    The worlds a global village.  Exporting can be your reality with minimum effort.  I have spoken with many small retail start-ups where exporting happened by almost by accident.  With their shop-window of the website, they found quickly that businesses were seeing demand from USA, rest of Europe and around the world. When I started businesses in overseas countries 20 years ago, selling outside your country was unimaginably hard.

So where do we start?  The same place as we always started even though the guiderails are set for rapid acceleration.  We ask ourselves the reflective fundamental questions that would populate a (end-result based) business plan? What is the big idea for the business?  What is your compelling vision?  What will motivate the future customers that you will attract and employees that you will hire to your big idea - they will become your volunteer army and advocates? When I meet entrepreneurs, we need to understand some fundamentals – what is the market size?  Who and where is the audience?  What is the compelling user need – always starting with the user? What are the benefits – does your idea save time and money; does it make them money; ease their life; make them feel good?  How is your offering different?  How do you make your offering easy to consume/use?

The start is your compelling vision and big idea. The idea may come from your business or personal life where you see a frustrating gap in the market. A popular example is Richard Branson and why he started the Virgin adventure.

I know many entrepreneurs who search for gaps in the market.  As an example, when I talk with many millennials and gen z who passionately care about our planet with a commitment to change their lives.  The result will be an explosion in quality vegan food – a great business opportunity coupled with your passion and a mission.  Focus on the user need and ask yourself the questions that address whether your business idea is worth pursuing: 

Once you have your idea, remember there is romance of running your own business and being your own boss.  However, it will be the combination of effort, perseverance and practice will ultimately outplay pure talent to determine your success.  Once you have your idea, how do you get started?  Next time, we will look at getting momentum in ‘Make money before you raise money’.