This post concludes the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center’s BizWiz student venture group‘s discussion about:
- “If you could hang out with any entrepreneur or leader, who would that be?”
- “Why did you choose that person – what quality do they have that you admire and would want to learn from him or her?”
I think this is probably the most importantly quality of all:
Entrepreneur Quality Number 5 – The Ability to Make the Impossible Possible
After we had talked about “outside the box” thinking, and being innovative, someone (sorry I don’t recall who), said they admired Thomas Edison for his ability to “make the impossible possible”.
The minute that I heard that phrase, I knew I liked it a lot better than “outside the box thinking”. First of all, it has the magic word “make” in the phrase. Entrepreneurs make things. They don’t just think things (i.e. “think outside the box”). Making stuff is a key attribute of every successful startup that I’ve seen. They all start making their product from day one – they don’t “think” for a long time, go get some funding based solely on some idea, and then eventually maybe someday make something. They make first – or concurrently.
I also love the idea of turning the impossible into the possible. Isn’t that what we do when we find some unmet market need – or some unique differentiator – or some product or service that is completely novel? Sure, once you’ve done it and people see that it is possible, all of the armchair quarterbacks will talk about how obvious it is – but before they saw what you did, it was impossible for all intents and purposes. Even the armchair quarterbacks will have to agree that before you made your innovation, it was absolutely impossible for customers to achieve the value that your innovation now makes possible.
Entrepreneurs show the world that it is possible to provide value that was previously thought impossible, often in ways that were also thought impossible. Is that cool or what!
Well, here ends this short series. It’s probably time for you to quit reading anyway – and go make something!
