Entrepreneurial Competency #2: Taking Action
The next natural step, after identifying an opportunity/understanding one’s calling is taking action. Simple enough, yet probably the hardest step in the process.
The most frequent questions I get from people enticed by the startup scene, are: How do I start? What is my first step? Do I create a business plan? Do I go look for investors? Do I sign up for an entrepreneurship program?
I make Day#2 in Shanghai about exploring and working on that sense of agency and taking action. And quite representative of what this step in the process really feels like, halfway through the day I get extreme jet lag, and need to postpone a couple of my planned activities for the day.
Most of my day is spent with the expat startup community in Shanghai. The city is a popular destination for expats: about 200,000 live and work here. And not being immune to the startup fever, many of them test their entrepreneurial potential.
The theme of my day is creating change, which does seem to come more naturally to those that have already made a decision to relocate their families and completely change their lives. I am gathering information on the process and tactics that work over a Design Thinking workshop with the Startup Leadership Program (which funny enough was first started in Boston).
“Just going about your daily life and spending time with people who stick to comfort and stability is very unlikely to turn you into an entrepreneur one day,” shares an Indian entrepreneur whose corporate job has taken him to Shanghai.
You do need some kind of shock treatment. Just putting yourself in a very different situation, very different environment, where the rules of your regular life do not apply. For some of these people moving to a different country decreases their resistance to change, so the startup process seems less daunting.
Taking action also seems to be contagious, which does explain the startups concentration in a few urban centers around the globe. Joining groups where one is more likely to be surrounded by people who assume responsibility and take action can be quite effective in developing such habits.
Sharing the idea is another piece of the puzzle. Most aspiring entrepreneurs are hesitant to do so, either because they are afraid someone might copy it or because they just don’t feel confident enough.
What I do confirm today is that ideas never come fully formed.
The process is not: I have an idea -> I work hard on developing it and preparing it to become alive -> I execute it.
It is more like I have an idea -> I share it with people who ask questions and help me think of aspects I had overlooked. I share it with people that hold me accountable to it -> I work on it -> I share it with potential customers and pretend I actually have an idea of what I am speaking about. I continue speaking about it and get others on board -> I start executing.
Successful entrepreneurs are able to assume responsibility and believe in their ability to create change and fix problems. The process is not so straightforward though. Many now successful entrepreneurs have struggled with this very first step. Even people that have already succeeded in building a company in the past experience moments of hesitation.
One of the people that I meet today tells me that this “sense of agency/taking action” works a bit differently in China. Innovation and entrepreneurship incentives come from the top, it is a focus for the Chinese government and there is a lot of capital directed to the startup space. It does seem to address the take action component, simply by making startups appealing enough. Or maybe even by making it seem as the natural next step or the right way to go.
Is it enough to start? Seems so. Is it enough to make innovation and entrepreneurship the driver of the Chinese economy? Yet to be seen.
I’ll be exploring skills relevant to what happens once you are on the entrepreneurial journey for the rest of my stay. Day 3 will be focused on problem-solving and I will be spending it exploring the University environment and working with students at Fudan and Tongji University.
This is a journal entry of my second day of the IMPROVE program by the WEF Global Shapers Community where I am practicing core entrepreneurial skills in unconventional ways while engaging local Shanghai entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs to-be. Special thanks to Darren O’Connel for the workout interview this morning and being my guide through the Shanghai startup scene and Yuchen Zhang from the Startup Leadership Program for helping me find answers to my many questions.