why

11 Paradoxes of Entrepreneurial Thinking: why entrepreneurship can hardly be taught

11 Paradoxes of Entrepreneurial Thinking: why entrepreneurship can hardly be taught

Jan Spruijt

Introduction

Entrepreneurial thinking is described as one of the most relevant skills for the 21st-century workforce (Bacigalupo, Kampylis, Punie, & Brande, 2016). And for that reason it has become an integral criteria in many prescriptive regulations for (higher) education and in increasing numbers also explicitly and implicitly part of curricula (Saavedra & Opfer, 2012). As opposed to entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial thinking is not necessarily bound to entrepreneurs (to be); it is an essential skill for ‘strengthening human capital, employability and competitiveness’ (Bacigalupo et al., 2016).

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10 reasons why you should think twice before starting a start-up.

Jan Spruijt
This week, two different articles were posted indepently from each other, but both strongly related. The first article posted 5 reasons not to start a business and the other one gave us 5 reasons for startups to go bankrupt.What you should think about before starting a startup:

  • If you don’t understand business basics, don’t start a startup.
  • If you don’t have industry experience or knowledge, don’t start a startup.
  • If you haven’t got a strong backbone, don’t start a startup.
  • If you haven’t thought of the consequences – for instance for your family life – don’t start a startup.
  • If you got a hole in your pocket, don’t a start a startup.

And what could doom your startup during the initiating phase:

  • Don’t try to do everything yourself.
  • Make sure your plan is scalable.
  • Don’t forget to continuously increase customer value.
  • Don’t be unwilling to kill your darlings.
  • Never forget to measure progress.

These tips came from Tabitha Jean Naylor and Brent Beshore.

Read full article: 10 reasons why you should think twice before starting a start-up.

Disruptive Innovation: why the theory absolutely makes sense.

Jan Spruijt

Recently, there has been some debate about whether or not the theory about Disruptive Innovation should be followed upon by business leaders or not. In her article The Disrupting Machine Jill Lepore suggests that the theory is based upon flawed assumptions. Many articles have tried to support Lepore – such as John Parkinson – and many others, including Christensen and Irvin Wladawsky-Berger have tried to proof why it’s a trustable theory.

But the discussion is about the wrong topic: it shouldn’t be about whether or not the theory is suitable, it should be about whether or not theories could ever be undiscussible. They can’t. Theories are build upon models; aggregated from results, averages of true situations and therefore there will always be examples of situations in which they don’t seem to fit. That is the nature of theories. Reality is far more complex than theories could ever describe and business owners and leaders should always keep that in mind before rigurously implementing one single strategy based upon a certain theory.

We should embrace scholars who use true data to gather results, analyse them and draw significant conclusions. But we should even more embrace scholars who have the courage to use their intuition and vision to fill in the gaps – and of course make those steps clear to the reader – and create possible new ways of thinking about ongoing matters. It is them who have changed management and business in general.

Please read the article below for another way of looking at disruptive innovation – and sustainable innovation.

Read full article: Disruptive Innovation: why the theory absolutely makes sense.