Good Ideas are NOT enough

excerpted from the forthcoming Social Entrepreneurship -A Practice-Based Approach to Social Innovation published by Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.

Quick — think of three words that you associate with the word “Entrepreneur” (go ahead, I’ll wait). Done? OK, I’ll bet some of the words you came up with are: Daring, Visionary, Risk-Taker.

And I’ll bet that cautious, disciplined, analytical and conservative were probably not on the list.

Thanks in part to the Great American Success Story, we carry around with us a vision of The Entrepreneur that owes more to old pirate movies than it does to reality. I call this the Field of Dreams myth (and if you haven’t seen that movie, you should). If you have, you’ll remember that the famous line from that movie is “If we build it, they will come”.

While the movie is about the power of dreams, it also makes the case that if we just dream hard enough, then we can make a successful reality. Or, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, all we need to do is believe (and click our heels together three times) and we’ll get our heart’s desire.

Now, before you go writing me off as a complete downer, I want to make sure that you know that I fully support the power of dreams and am a big dreamer myself. But to come alive, dreams need plans, they need goals, and they need to be examined in the light of day to make sure that they are feasible and not just a manifestation of the pepperoni pizza you ate before going to bed last night.

How do I know this? Well, I’ve got the scars of my own personal failures to show as exhibit A. I’ve also got the experience of coaching hundreds of aspiring entrepreneurs as exhibits B thru ZZZ. And here’s what I know — Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Good ideas that can be developed into viable enterprises are far rarer. And the difference between the two is just plain hard work. It takes a lot of planning and practice.

To get a better handle on this, consider the act of skydiving. On its face, it’s kind of crazy. To intentionally throw yourself out of a perfectly good airplane, trusting on some rope and nylon to keep you from crashing into the ground certainly sounds like something that takes immense courage (and perhaps a bit of lunacy). But if you understand the amount of training that goes into your first jump, it suddenly becomes much more rational.

First, you perform a tandem jump. In other words, you strap yourself to an experienced skydiver, they do all the work, and you’re just along for the ride. Next, you take several ground-based classes that orient you to your equipment, teach you how to land, as well as the numerous emergency procedures that can keep you from dying (or getting stuck in a tree!). When you do go back into the air, your next few jumps are also assisted. Finally, if your pass all those hurdles, you get to skydive on your own. So, you do eventually throw yourself out of a perfectly good airplane, but you do it after a lot of practice and testing.

But even when you’re certified, you only jump when the conditions are right. Rain, clouds, and high winds are all reasons why a jump might be canceled. And the more experienced the skydiver is, the more attuned they will be to favorable (and unfavorable) conditions. And, last but not least, when you do jump, you never ever ever ever let someone else pack your parachute. As you make final preparations, you go back over every line, every shackle, every inch of the harness, and every square foot of the chute (and the emergency backup chute). You double-check the weather, you talk to the pilot, and you even inspect the plane that’s going to take you up.

So, the successful entrepreneur is not someone who has a brilliant idea that the world immediately recognizes. It’s someone who learns all the ins and outs of recognizing an opportunity and evaluates it to make sure it’s real (and not just a fad). It’s someone who knows how to build an organization that can develop a viable response to the opportunity in a manner that is financially and operationally sustainable. It’s a person who can analyze the current climate to make sure that the conditions for building the venture are favorable (and likely to stay that way for a good bit). And it’s a person with the stamina (and patience) to keep moving the venture forward. Finally, it is someone with the courage to start (so yes, you do eventually take that leap). But it’s courage drawn from experience, practice and planning.

Now, picture in your mind someone who wants to make the world a better place. Someone who wants to improve the human condition, to help the weak, to care for the suffering. What sort of person comes to mind? Probably someone with a deep well of compassion, a strong sense of empathy, kind beyond measure and eternally optimistic. But do you see someone who can manage an organizational budget? Someone who can manage staff (including those dreaded performance reviews, and even terminating a poorly performing employee)? Who can manage payroll, and rent, and insurance, and the numerous interested parties that almost always poke their noses into your business (particularly if you’re trying to produce social benefits alongside economic ones)?

The cold hard truth is that passion is not the most important thing in running any successful venture, no matter what the purpose. Now, don’t get me wrong — passion is absolutely necessary — it’s just that it’s far from sufficient. And when it comes to building an organization that is trying to create value in economic, civic, and social terms all at the same time, it’s just one of the many traits that must be combined if you want to actually make a difference.