How to Come up with Great Ideas

Broadly useful thoughts.  Still think there is use for a 'startup' inside a company.

How to Come Up with Great Ideas
Think like an entrepreneur.   By Kate Matsudaira in Queue
"I would love to do a startup, but I don't have any ideas."

I started my career working in big companies but always dreamed of starting my own. I would read online forums and articles about successful entrepreneurs. I was enamored with the idea of doing a startup. The problem was I didn't have any ideas.

Fast forward 10 years and I have so many ideas that choosing the right one is the challenge. I am constantly coming up with ideas and opportunities that could turn into a product, or a whole company. There is no shortage of things that I could do.

The key is you have to learn to think like an entrepreneur.

Why You Should Want to Be More Entrepreneurial

At this point, you might be thinking, "But I am a software engineer and happy in my role; why do I need to think like an entrepreneur?" Even if you don't see yourself doing a startup with one idea, being able to come up with new ideas (especially good ones!) will make you even better at your current job.

As a programmer, most of your time is probably spent understanding the technical nuances of what you are creating. As you grow in your career and experience, however, you are expected to contribute more than just code.

For example, if you work on a product, you may have the chance to collaborate with its designers to create a new customer experience. When there are bugs or issues, your time is spent diagnosing the symptoms to find root problems and exploring options that may serve as possible solutions. As you build your expertise, you may even create your own modules, systems, or libraries to help solve problems.  ...."

No Such Thing as Corporate Entrepreneurs

Disagree, but it is clear they do not evolve the same way.

Why There’s No Such Thing as a Corporate Entrepreneur
By Scott Kirsner in the HBR

Can we please agree that there is no such thing as a corporate entrepreneur?

The term corporate entrepreneur devalues what real entrepreneurs do, and it creates a haze of hokum around people trying to innovate in large companies that sets them up to fail.

There is an ocean of difference between people innovating or designing new offerings inside a large company, and actual entrepreneurs. On one shore of the ocean is certainty — the steady paycheck, the options vesting, status, the cushiness of a corporate campus — and on the other is the possibility of incredible wealth. Fly-your-own-plane-to-your-own-private-island-level wealth. And in between the two shores are a million ways to fail, to sink without a trace. .... "

Personality Type for Entrepreneur

We used the Myers-Briggs  personality classification frequently in the enterprise to adjust writing and interaction.  But were carefully warned that it was NOT suitable for narrow classifications, or adapted classifications, or use for segmentation of consumers.   But now someone has decided that it is OK:

Myers-Briggs Just Discovered There Is a Personality Type for Entrepreneurs  By John Brandon 

" .... A new study completed this year shows that certain personality types are drawn to an entrepreneurial mindset. For the Myers-Briggs fans out there, you may already know the Intuition and Perceiving (N and P) personality types. The study found those folks have more of an entrepreneurial nature than the Sensing and Judging types.

From the study: "The entrepreneurs in the group showed a significantly higher orientation for creativity, risk-taking, impulsivity, and especially autonomy than did non-entrepreneurs. Competitive ambition did not distinguish between those who were or were not entrepreneurs, but did relate to those who saw themselves as more entrepreneurial. People with a preference for extraversion, intuition, thinking, and perceiving tended to show greater levels of entrepreneurial orientation." .... " 

Mapping Entrepreneurs

Lone entrpreneurs?  Bain maps them.  Surprising truths.  From the WSJ.  

" ... Far from being disconnected outliers, entrepreneurs thrive best when they operate in tight-knit networks, nurture fellow risk takers, and trade know-how and capital.

The Endeavor organization together with my colleagues at Bain & Co. mapped this social network of entrepreneurs across multiple generations and multiple continents—even in some of the harshest terrain for innovation, such as Buenos Aires, Istanbul and Mexico City. For example, they surveyed more than 200 Argentine entrepreneurs, asking such questions as:

Who inspired you?

Who invested in your company?

Who mentored you?   .. "