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Preface
I never set out to write a book. This might seem like an odd way to start a preface, but let me explain. What I did set out to do was to become an entrepreneur. However, somewhere between starting down that path and starting a business venture, I got hung up. In fact, I got caught up right out of the gates, in the idea stage. I couldn’t figure out what business I should start. It wasn’t that I couldn’t have chosen a random business to start and ran with it, I could have. But I wanted to create a business that I was passionate about. I wanted to create something new, something innovative that people hadn’t seen before. So, I began looking for information on the topic of business idea generation. However, when I went searching for that information, it was nowhere to be found. Information on business ideas and how to generate them barely exists. I continued to search. I wanted to know everything about ideas and how to create them. Throughout my entire college career I searched. It is from the frustration and let down of that search that I became motivated to write this book. Nothing that I could find in my research resembled anything close to what I had been hoping for, so I decided to create it. I decided to piece together the fragments of what does exist and turn it into a logical whole. Not because I wanted to be an author, but for more self serving reasons. I wanted a complete picture of how innovation happens and how to generate great business ideas. I wanted this information so that I could exploit it for the future.
The information that follows began as an exploration of my personal interest in entrepreneurship and business idea generation. It began as a set of notes. That is why in this book you will not find extensive research. You will find few charts, graphs or data. I did not spend years documenting and collecting data. The following information is simply a collection of observations, conversations, readings and general research I have done over the past seven odd years. If you find the information as useful as I have to wrap your mind around innovation, then this book will have accomplished its goal. The important thing to remember is that I do not purport any of this as absolute fact. The goal is for this information to be a foundation for myself and others on a topic that is so widely misunderstood.
The problem, and possibly the source of the confusion, is that most lessons in entrepreneurship start with a statement to the effect of… “OK you have an idea, now this is how to start your business.” I have always thought that the idea stage has been brushed over. Maybe I find it most unfortunate because I think the idea phase is the most interesting phase of business. Few people get excited about standard operating procedures or manufacturing process control. To me the exciting part of business is strategizing and thinking of market changing ideas. Unfortunately, the idea phase of entrepreneurship has been passed off as a “fuzzy art.” Attempts to harness creativity have had lackluster results. People don’t know how it happens, why it happens or under what circumstances. It has been left to a flash-in-the-pan, lighting strike or AHA! moment in the shower. Soon after realizing that this was the prevailing mindset, I decided to start out on my own.
The real tipping point to figuring out where I was headed came while I was reading Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker. In the book, Drucker set out to identify the sources of innovation and he believed they could be identified. He also believed that you could uncover the sources of innovation using a systematic approach. He was one of the first to propose this and many businessmen were critical of his efforts. I realized that what he was doing was setting the stage for what I wanted to understand. I wanted to better understand the source of ideas and the sources of innovation. Where do they come from? Why? How? I wanted to understand the framework of innovation and start finding ways to make it systematic. I believe the information in this book is a solid start to understanding these things. While there will never be a “how-to” for innovation, I think you can get closer to a “how-to” approach than Drucker offered. The resulting body of knowledge is something I wish I had available to refer to over the past few years.
As you begin to read this book, please feel free to skip around, mix and match ideas and make the best sense of the information in your own way. I have found that most of the information in this book came together for myself in such a way. Each topic or source that I discuss draws from many influences that I subsequently mixed and matched. Some of the things mentioned are common and referred to over and over again in many business disciplines. Other things in the book are more subtle observations. The setup grabs one nugget of an idea from an individual combined with another fragment of an idea from a random conversation. The point is that you could aggregate this same knowledge just like I have, but it wouldn’t all be found in one spot. I could pinpoint most of the original sources and how I came across them. However, to get to this point where I could build a substantial body of knowledge about ideas, articulate it and differentiate between the sources has taken seven years. I don’t think it should be that way. I would like to see the idea side of entrepreneurship get much more attention. I wrote the book for people to have a convenient whole as a starting point. Then I hope the next six or seven years of their lives can be spent diving deeper and building on that foundation.
Anyway, that is the driving purpose behind this book. Take the information for what it is worth, and I hope that it may serve as a foundation for your future entrepreneurial undertakings.
- Dan Roberts
The information that follows began as an exploration of my personal interest in entrepreneurship and business idea generation. It began as a set of notes. That is why in this book you will not find extensive research. You will find few charts, graphs or data. I did not spend years documenting and collecting data. The following information is simply a collection of observations, conversations, readings and general research I have done over the past seven odd years. If you find the information as useful as I have to wrap your mind around innovation, then this book will have accomplished its goal. The important thing to remember is that I do not purport any of this as absolute fact. The goal is for this information to be a foundation for myself and others on a topic that is so widely misunderstood.
The problem, and possibly the source of the confusion, is that most lessons in entrepreneurship start with a statement to the effect of… “OK you have an idea, now this is how to start your business.” I have always thought that the idea stage has been brushed over. Maybe I find it most unfortunate because I think the idea phase is the most interesting phase of business. Few people get excited about standard operating procedures or manufacturing process control. To me the exciting part of business is strategizing and thinking of market changing ideas. Unfortunately, the idea phase of entrepreneurship has been passed off as a “fuzzy art.” Attempts to harness creativity have had lackluster results. People don’t know how it happens, why it happens or under what circumstances. It has been left to a flash-in-the-pan, lighting strike or AHA! moment in the shower. Soon after realizing that this was the prevailing mindset, I decided to start out on my own.
The real tipping point to figuring out where I was headed came while I was reading Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker. In the book, Drucker set out to identify the sources of innovation and he believed they could be identified. He also believed that you could uncover the sources of innovation using a systematic approach. He was one of the first to propose this and many businessmen were critical of his efforts. I realized that what he was doing was setting the stage for what I wanted to understand. I wanted to better understand the source of ideas and the sources of innovation. Where do they come from? Why? How? I wanted to understand the framework of innovation and start finding ways to make it systematic. I believe the information in this book is a solid start to understanding these things. While there will never be a “how-to” for innovation, I think you can get closer to a “how-to” approach than Drucker offered. The resulting body of knowledge is something I wish I had available to refer to over the past few years.
As you begin to read this book, please feel free to skip around, mix and match ideas and make the best sense of the information in your own way. I have found that most of the information in this book came together for myself in such a way. Each topic or source that I discuss draws from many influences that I subsequently mixed and matched. Some of the things mentioned are common and referred to over and over again in many business disciplines. Other things in the book are more subtle observations. The setup grabs one nugget of an idea from an individual combined with another fragment of an idea from a random conversation. The point is that you could aggregate this same knowledge just like I have, but it wouldn’t all be found in one spot. I could pinpoint most of the original sources and how I came across them. However, to get to this point where I could build a substantial body of knowledge about ideas, articulate it and differentiate between the sources has taken seven years. I don’t think it should be that way. I would like to see the idea side of entrepreneurship get much more attention. I wrote the book for people to have a convenient whole as a starting point. Then I hope the next six or seven years of their lives can be spent diving deeper and building on that foundation.
Anyway, that is the driving purpose behind this book. Take the information for what it is worth, and I hope that it may serve as a foundation for your future entrepreneurial undertakings.
- Dan Roberts
