A 1000 Days Adventure - Entrepreneur Journeys

Book excerpt: Social representation of entrepreneurship is naive. Successful entrepreneurs are visionaries, adept at identifying opportunity, planning, implementing and realizing the opportunity. The reality of business creation is very different. An entrepreneur starts with his skills, vision and commitment. He has self-confidence in a business that doesn’t exist. He believes that he can do it without having done it before. He has to sustain his belief over time, whatever the challenges. And evoke the same belief in customers, suppliers and stakeholders. His focus is implementation. He has setbacks when ideas don’t work. He has to remain upbeat. Perseverance needs courage and conviction amidst uncertainty and often desperation. Entrepreneurs are always grappling with dichotomous ideas; should they trust the path they are on or change direction? Creation of business is a capability that entrepreneurs learn on-the-job. The way entrepreneurs work and think is a significant variable in the creation of a new business. The hypothesis of the book is that entrepreneurship is not only about ‘what’ successful entrepreneurs’ do, ‘who’ they are or ‘whom’ they know, but more importantly about ‘how’ they do it. The entrepreneurial process revealed in the interviews has universal application as a way of entrepreneurship. It expands the potential of entrepreneurship. Methods of working and thinking are free resources accessible to everyone. Therefore, everyone has the potential to be an entrepreneur. Ideas and opportunities emerge from a way of thinking and doing. Implementation is graduation in entrepreneurship. The book is based on a collection of startup journeys of entrepreneurs. The book captures the thoughts and behaviors of a pre-success entrepreneur. There is a difference in how these moments are experienced by entrepreneurs as they occur and read by others ex post facto.