It’s hard to see things as they are and as they will become. Distinguishing between vision or mirage is a perpetual challenge for the entrepreneur.
Harbinger or Outlier,
Vision or Mirage,
Threat or Opportunity
“The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”
Peter Drucker in “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” (1985)
An event occurs and an entrepreneur has to make three judgements about what kind of change if may portend:
- Is this a harbinger of things to come or an outlier that represents a random event?
- Does it offer a vision of a future you could create or are you using your imagination to see a mirage? Are you connecting this change with others in a way that gives you a coherent vision of a future you could create, or are you seeing patterns and relationships that don’t really exist?
- If this event is part of an emerging new order, does it represent an opportunity for growth or is it more of a threat to your current model?
“We usually see only the things we are looking for—so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.”
Eric Hoffer in “The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms“
Conventional wisdom or commonly accepted beliefs about the future can block you from seeing possible threats and opportunities. I think early stage entrepreneurs are more at risk that the vision they are pursuing is a mirage–or an hallucination. Sometimes a subculture can develop a local consensus on future events or the interpretation of the implications of current events, that is strongly at variance with the conventional wisdom of society at large.
“In a theater, it happened that a fire started offstage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed-amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.”
Soren Kierkegaard in “Either/Or: A Fragment of Life”
I think some businesses die this way as well. The founders don’t take certain risks seriously and fail to react to warnings in time to make a difference. Detecting the harbingers of real problems and separating them from outliers is a challenge.
“Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.”
Aesop, “The Dog and the Shadow”
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Image Credit: Irochka (Licensed from 123RF / ID: 3122938)