4 Types of Entrepreneurship
Steve Blank has a good breakdown of the 4 types of entrepreneurship in one of his posts. It’s important to remember that there are several types of entrepreneurship. Many may think that “entrepreneurs” are only people that start venture funded, fast growing companies.
Below is the list:
1. Small Business Entrepreneurship
Today, the overwhelming number of entrepreneurs and startups in the United States are still small businesses. There are 5.7 million small businesses in the U.S. They make up 99.7% of all companies and employ 50% of all non-governmental workers.
2. Scalable Startup Entrepreneurship
Unlike small businesses, scalable startups are what Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and their venture investors do. These entrepreneurs start a company knowing from day one that their vision could change the world. They attract investment from equally crazy financial investors – venture capitalists.
3. Large Company Entrepreneurship
Large companies have finite life cycles. Most grow through sustaining innovation, offering new products that are variants around their core products. Changes in customer tastes, new technologies, legislation, new competitors, etc. can create pressure for moredisruptive innovation – requiring large companies to create entirely new products sold into new customers in new markets. Existing companies do this by either acquiring innovative companies or attempting to build a disruptive product inside. Ironically, large company size and culture make disruptive innovation extremely difficult to execute.
4. Social Entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurs are innovators who focus on creating products and services that solve social needs and problems.
The progress bar illusion
A progress bar can made to seem to be progressing more quickly with some slight visual adjustments. I have to admit I like the illusion. Even through the progress is not moving any faster, I like the fact that it feels like it is going to complete faster. Check out the video so see the illusion for yourself.
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1
New Scientist TV: Best videos of 2010: The progress bar illusion.
Real time visual translations
This a pretty cool looking app. You point it at a sign and it translates visually in real-time. You must see it in the video.
Hubris, Passion, and Vision
Interesting interview with Steve Blank…
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1
Hubris, Passion and Customer Development « Steve Blank.
Get to work
The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.
-Chuck Close
How Does Google Work?
Infographic by PPC Blog
Innovation with Geoffrey Moore
Geoffrey Moore’s thoughts and research are at the core our work for those of us in the arena of launching new technology products. “Crossing the Chasm” was and still is one of those books that are required reading for innovation and new product development people in the tech space. Here is an almost hour long interview with him.
Also, Mixergy, the site that created this video has lots of great interviews with technology startup founders. They also have provide video podcasts. I recommend the site and I have not caught up on all the videos yet. Good actual applied information about what founders went through, mistakes, and other good information.
I'm Will, a Principal within the Innovation group of a Fortune 100 company. I am a corporate entrepreneur and Innovation expert.
