I am, of course, generalizing, but we live in a world of comparables and proof. In the slightly-modified words of Seth Godin, we have been trained to show up with proven and verifiable answers because that's what will get us an A on the test or what will allow us to keep our jobs. And there's nothing wrong with that. Risk mitigation is an important part of any organization. But if everything you're doing is already proven, then by definition, and regardless of any claims, you are not innovating. Because if something is truly new, then it may not actually work.
My friend David Wex -- who is on a mission to develop modern condominiums all across Canada -- once told me that if he were to hire consultants to prepare market studies for his projects (he doesn't), they would almost always tell him never to build. And that's because there are often no comparables to point to and say, "look at this thing over here, it shows that somebody has already done this before and has been successful." Instead, he has been forced to ask himself, "is there no comparable product offering because the market doesn't exist or because nobody has done it yet?"
This is a risky proposition. Because if you're wrong -- and the market doesn't exist -- then you will likely fail. But if you're right, and you get to introduce something new to people that want it, then you get the benefit of a commanding market position. You were right about something that most people thought was wrong and/or didn't bother to explore. That's why Seth Godin has argued that innovation really requires two things. It requires guts, because the thing you're trying may not work. And it requires generosity, because innovation is, after all, about trying to make things better.
Click here if you can't see the embedded tweet above.
This is your daily reminder that many/most of the things that are ubiquitous today were once difficult to explain and understand (in the above example it's email and the internet). Once a new idea or technology becomes widely adopted, its inner workings and technical aspects tend to recede into the background.
Most people, for instance, probably aren't familiar with all of the various internet protocols and how they work. Could you explain the difference between TCP and IP and SMTP? If you can't, it doesn't matter. The various protocol layers of the internet now work behind the scenes to power our daily lives. And the innovation that continues to be built on top of them is getting increasingly more user friendly as time goes on.
The same thing will happen with crypto, which is talked about today in much the same way as the above folks are talking about email and the internet. New ideas will continue to emerge and we will all start deriving more and more utility from it (
I am, of course, generalizing, but we live in a world of comparables and proof. In the slightly-modified words of Seth Godin, we have been trained to show up with proven and verifiable answers because that's what will get us an A on the test or what will allow us to keep our jobs. And there's nothing wrong with that. Risk mitigation is an important part of any organization. But if everything you're doing is already proven, then by definition, and regardless of any claims, you are not innovating. Because if something is truly new, then it may not actually work.
My friend David Wex -- who is on a mission to develop modern condominiums all across Canada -- once told me that if he were to hire consultants to prepare market studies for his projects (he doesn't), they would almost always tell him never to build. And that's because there are often no comparables to point to and say, "look at this thing over here, it shows that somebody has already done this before and has been successful." Instead, he has been forced to ask himself, "is there no comparable product offering because the market doesn't exist or because nobody has done it yet?"
This is a risky proposition. Because if you're wrong -- and the market doesn't exist -- then you will likely fail. But if you're right, and you get to introduce something new to people that want it, then you get the benefit of a commanding market position. You were right about something that most people thought was wrong and/or didn't bother to explore. That's why Seth Godin has argued that innovation really requires two things. It requires guts, because the thing you're trying may not work. And it requires generosity, because innovation is, after all, about trying to make things better.
Click here if you can't see the embedded tweet above.
This is your daily reminder that many/most of the things that are ubiquitous today were once difficult to explain and understand (in the above example it's email and the internet). Once a new idea or technology becomes widely adopted, its inner workings and technical aspects tend to recede into the background.
Most people, for instance, probably aren't familiar with all of the various internet protocols and how they work. Could you explain the difference between TCP and IP and SMTP? If you can't, it doesn't matter. The various protocol layers of the internet now work behind the scenes to power our daily lives. And the innovation that continues to be built on top of them is getting increasingly more user friendly as time goes on.
The same thing will happen with crypto, which is talked about today in much the same way as the above folks are talking about email and the internet. New ideas will continue to emerge and we will all start deriving more and more utility from it (
). And at that point, most people will stop caring about how all the sausages are made. They'll just like eating them.
P.S. One of the nice things about blogging every day is that I'll be able to look back on this post in ten years and see how right or wrong I was.
A super-entrepreneur, according to the common definition, is a rich person who has amassed a net worth of at least US$1 billion dollars by either starting a company or taking a small company and growing it into a big one. A super-entrepreneur is, by definition, not someone who inherited their wealth. Though I'm not sure what the cut off is. If you inherited $1 million and then started a massive company, does that still make you a super-entrepreneur? What about if you inherited $100 million?
In any event, here is a chart from New Geography showing super-entrepreneurs by region:
The USA is in the lead in this chart at about 3.1 super-entrepreneurs per one million inhabitants. But the highest rate in the world, at least according to this data set, actually belongs to Singapore at 4.7 per million. Europe, as a whole, doesn't look all that great here. But again, if you get more specific, some European countries are actually doing quite well. Sweden, for instance, is sitting at around 2 per million, which is higher than Canada's figure.
Why this data is potentially interesting is that it tells you a bit about these countries. It tells you whether they have strong property rights, whether it's easy to conduct business, and whether it's supportive of new ideas, among, of course, many other things. There also appears to be a clear link between the presence of super-entrepreneurs and unemployment. Turns out that the more people you have starting wildly successful businesses, the lower unemployment tends to be.
For the full New Geography article, click here. In addition to what I just wrote about, it talks about Europe's "entrepreneurial paradox" and issues of gender equality.
). And at that point, most people will stop caring about how all the sausages are made. They'll just like eating them.
P.S. One of the nice things about blogging every day is that I'll be able to look back on this post in ten years and see how right or wrong I was.
A super-entrepreneur, according to the common definition, is a rich person who has amassed a net worth of at least US$1 billion dollars by either starting a company or taking a small company and growing it into a big one. A super-entrepreneur is, by definition, not someone who inherited their wealth. Though I'm not sure what the cut off is. If you inherited $1 million and then started a massive company, does that still make you a super-entrepreneur? What about if you inherited $100 million?
In any event, here is a chart from New Geography showing super-entrepreneurs by region:
The USA is in the lead in this chart at about 3.1 super-entrepreneurs per one million inhabitants. But the highest rate in the world, at least according to this data set, actually belongs to Singapore at 4.7 per million. Europe, as a whole, doesn't look all that great here. But again, if you get more specific, some European countries are actually doing quite well. Sweden, for instance, is sitting at around 2 per million, which is higher than Canada's figure.
Why this data is potentially interesting is that it tells you a bit about these countries. It tells you whether they have strong property rights, whether it's easy to conduct business, and whether it's supportive of new ideas, among, of course, many other things. There also appears to be a clear link between the presence of super-entrepreneurs and unemployment. Turns out that the more people you have starting wildly successful businesses, the lower unemployment tends to be.
For the full New Geography article, click here. In addition to what I just wrote about, it talks about Europe's "entrepreneurial paradox" and issues of gender equality.
