Am loving Eric Dries's book on starting businesses called Lean Startup.
No really new ideas but put in a way I finally understand.
For too long I have been all sigma 6 in my life, all about perfection, all about making and planning when I could (and perhaps should) have been about being in beta, always out testing, testing - learning - building etc.
As it turns out that when the future is unknowable (Is quitting your job and starting something new a good idea? Will the prototype we are developing at work find a market?), how we traditionally reason is extremely limited in predicting what will happen.
So you need a different approach.
The guys who wrote this blog think they have one. And it is very very similar to three ideas I love. Apparently, there is a proven method for navigating in an uncertain world, an approach that will complement the kind of reasoning we have all been taught. It will help you deal with high levels of uncertainty no matter what kind of situation you face. We know it works because entrepreneurs — the people who have to deal with uncertainty every day — use it successfully all the time.
It is also the approach that is used by Babson College — the world's number-one school for entrepreneurship.
Babson calls the approach "entrepreneurial thought and action," but we use a simple shorthand and call it "Act, Learn, Build, Repeat."
Based on the research of Saras D. Sarasvathy, of the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, and similar work by others at Babson College, this approach is a time-tested process for dealing with the unknown.
Put simply, in the face of an unknown future, entrepreneurs act. They deal with uncertainty not by trying to analyze it, or planning for every contingency, or predicting what the outcomes will be. Instead, they act, learn from what they find, and act again. More specifically the process looks like this.
1. Start with desire.
You find/think of something you want. You don't need a lot of passion, you only need sufficient desire to get started. ("I really want to start a restaurant, but I haven't a clue if I will ever be able to open one.")
2. Take a smart step as quickly as you can toward your goal.
What's a smart step? It's one where you act quickly with the means at hand. What you know, who you know, and anything else that's available. ("I know a great chef, and if I beg all my family and friends to back me, I might have enough money to open a place.") You make sure that step is never going to cost more than it would be acceptable to you to lose should things not work out. And you bring others along to acquire more resources, spread the risk and confirm the quality of your idea.
3. Reflect and build on what you have learned from taking that step.
You need to do that because every time you act, reality changes. Sometimes the step you take gets you nearer to what you want ("I should be able to afford something just outside of downtown"); sometimes what you want changes ("It looks likes there are an awful lot of Italian restaurants nearby. We are going to have to rethink our menu.") If you pay attention, you always learn something. So after you act, ask: Did those actions get you closer to your goal? ("Yes. It looks like I will be able to open a restaurant.") Do you need additional resources to draw even closer? ("Yes. I'll need to find another chef. The one I know can only do Italian.") Do you still want to obtain your objective? ("Yes.")
4. Repeat.
Act. Learn. Build. Repeat. This is how successful serial entrepreneurs conquer uncertainty. What works for them will work for all of us.
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