Introducing the "Ideapreneur"

Somewhere in the 18th Century the French word "entreprendre" and the English word "enterprise" came together to give birth to the concept of an entrepreneur. This idea of taking on a new enterprise and creating value in the world became a central one as Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" helped usher in the beginnings of a global market economy on the back of the Industrial Revolution.

Capitalism cascaded around the globe; helped by empire-building, world wars, advances in technology and the rules-based world order. As it did, entrepreneurship was always a key tool that made the global machine run. As we stand in the midst of mass deconstruction of the world order and the prospect of new approaches to value creation, the role of entrepreneurs has not waned. If anything entrepreneurs are taking on a larger than life persona as industries, nations and special interests court their favor and seek to benefit from their success. Bringing new things to life seems to have a life of its own!

It is fascinating that while entrepreneurship has a very Western and individualistic set of values and behaviors, we see a growing cadre of people excelling as entrepreneurs from every culture. Sure many of them have been trained at the same major global universities and have worked for the multinational corporations that have benefited from the last century of global expansion. But they are valued for their very Western approach even as they seek to build businesses that are localized to the parts of the world where they are engaging. I guess they are products of a global system but living it out very locally to the celebration of those around them.

No matter where you live, the job of the entrepreneur is not one narrow set of tasks that require a similarly focused set of skills. It is a posture and a way of doing business and requires many types of people coming around them to create thriving and growing businesses. One of the roles that many entrepreneurs play and all of them desperately need is what I call "ideapreneurship." This is simply undertaking the exploration and development of a new idea.

In many ways this role comes before the traditional entrepreneur does their thing. In some innovation models it is called ideation. Others call it the scouting phase. Essentially an ideapreneur is really good at identifying a new idea, building it out conceptually and helping it find the right home for its future development. In a perfect world, every entrepreneur has multiple ideapreneurs feeding them a steady stream of ideas to work on.

Ideapreneurs work well with abstractions. They play with ideas in their minds and allow them to grow and develop in a variety of ways with a lot of mental dexterity. They tend to be verbal processors who integrate concepts from very different disciplines together in new ways to create novel ideas that are worth exploring.

These innovators have to consume huge numbers of ideas on a regular basis to deepen their understanding and develop out there dexterity in moulding ideas to the circumstances they are confronted with. This means that they are likely lifelong learners who are constantly reading, listening to experts, downloading podcasts and attending events.

Another insight into the ideapreneur is that they are very likely to be a generalist. They traffic in many ideas that have tentacles into many other domains and industries. It is their ability to feel comfortable in all these places and master of none that allows them to identify, combine and reimagine in the search for the next great idea.

If the ROI of an entrepreneur's work is profitable business, the ROI for an ideapreneur is a validated idea that is a qualified answer to a specific group of people's problem. The idea is ready for an entrepreneur to prove product-market and offer-market fit. This is their superpower. If left to this task, they are able to produce a significant number of validated ideas.

So what is their kryptonite? It is the very next step. Ideapreneurs don't run things well. They are are not operationally oriented. They might be able to run an excellent experiment and design a really good prototype, but to take the next step takes them out of their sweet spot and endangers the potential of the idea. Finding product-market fit and offer-market fit requires a level of administrative ability and logical thinking that the ideapreneur is unlikely to naturally have.

Do you have an ideapreneur in your work? What are you doing to position them to make their best contribution to your innovation agenda?

You may have guessed that I'm describing myself in this article. For those of you who know me, you probably see many of these strengths and weaknesses on display in my work. So how many ideas am I working on right now? I count at least 10 and there are probably more. If you ever want to hear about them just ask. Ideapreneur's are very generous because they are part of a larger innovation ecosystem that requires other innovators to play their part as well!

Photo Credit: Photo by Patrick Schneider on Unsplash