7 things entrepreneurs can learn from art of loving

Eleanor of Aquitane is the origin of courtly love. Courts of Love, troubadours and de Troyes bore her influence.

Philosopher Fromm presents love as a skill that can be learnt/nurtured, not unlike entrepreneurship.

Ideally, I (entrepreneur) feel towards you (idea):

  1. intense desire/attraction;
  2. full dedication without (material) expectations in return;
  3. no sense of rigid ownership;
  4. love for what you’re now – support in your desire to grow;
  5. need to constantly communicate/interact;
  6. your right to go your way with my love/support still with you, despite me/my feelings;
  7. joy for moments shared together.

Love is the highest feeling humans can attain.

what breeds ideas and innovations

Where good ideas come from claims innovation originates in seven realms:

  1. Adjacent possibilities.Use existing components. Gutenberg used wine press for his printing press.
  2. Liquid networks. 21st-century cities and the Internet make it possible for informal networks to form, enabling idea cross-pollination/inventions.
  3. Slow hunch. It takes years for a hunch to evolve into an invention.
  4. Serendipity. LSDTeflonViagra.
  5. (Unplanned/unexpected) errors. de Forest‘s development of audion diode/triode resulted from erroneous thinking.
  6. ExaptionVacuum tubes were developed for long-distance telephone/radio transmission and later used in computers.
  7. Platforms. Development of TRANSIT, a precursor of GPS by Applied Physics Laboratory.

Example: have your idea take off while saving money and getting results

You have an idea – everyone has an idea – but so what? Just because you have what you consider a bright, innovative idea, doesn’t make it automatically into a ready-made product, service or any other added value to what already exists. To make sure your idea is worthy, firstly, bounce it off of as many different people – anyone who might give you a valuable input or opinion whether from within or without a relevant domain or field for you – and open your mind to critique (adding new value to your idea) as much as possible.

Once you start considering (a hitherto unconsidered) factors stemming from breaking initial presuppositions, stereotypes, narcissistic flavors and just plain and simple information about market, competition, trends that somehow slipped through your fingers, you will start clearly seeing, visualizing what you are after.

Next, execution.

But, wait a minute. Even in execution there are ways and ways. The latter is what you must consider if you financial situation is still  (or will shortly become) somewhat shaky.

In this era of mushrooming Internet technologies – especially web 2.0-related/devised – doing business online or putting an online business presence is becoming easier by day. Traditional means of creating, building and sustaining a business are either becoming obsolete or reinventing themselves. There luminaries like Umair Haque who has awesomely created Awesomeness Manifesto and much more.

And of course, with the current economic situation, we are all looking how to do it a 21st-century-style-innovative and to save money while doing it.

Let’s take an illustrative example. In 2004, Heather Allard “started 2 Virtues Inc. to bring my inventions, Swaddleaze and Blankeaze to market.”

She spent in excess of $54K (even without product manufacturing).

If I started 2 Virtues now in 2009, I’d do things so differently.  I could start a business for under $1000 by doing these 5 things:

  1. Skip the Website
  2. Hire a Freelancer
  3. DIY
  4. Become a Social Butterfly
  5. Free Stuff

If you read carefully the entire article (containing many nice tips, free tools and additional links) you will see how Heather – if she started in 2009 with all her current knowledge and experience – would have been able to economize on practically every aspect of her business initiative, thanks mostly to the Internet and free online tools, methodologies and techniques.

Instead of $54K, you can spend <$1K. What do you think about that?