Abstract
Wandering, the third core skill of venture craft, helps uncover an authentic opportunity, which is the single biggest challenge facing startups. Founders struggling through incubation follow a winding, non-linear path of discovery in search of early adopters.
Uncovering an opportunity—that is, just reaching the “chasm” that precedes mainstream adoption—can be confounding for two reasons. Firstly, customers can neither exhaustively describe the products they desire nor reliably predict whether they would actually pay for them if built. And secondly, due to cognitive limitations we all experience, innovators rarely can objectively investigate and analyze market opportunities and potential business models alone. Only by progressively replacing assumptions with data and by inviting mentors and others to challenge interpretations of the data can innovators overcome biases and blind spots.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
- 1.
Later bought by Autonomy, prior to its acquisition by HP in 2011.
- 2.
Rogers , E M (1962). Diffusion of Innovations, 1st edition, Glencoe, Free Press. ISBN 0-612-62843-4.
- 3.
Moore, G A (1991), Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers, HarperBusiness.
- 4.
Blank , S (2010), “What’s a Startup? First Principles,” January 25, 2010, at http://steveblank.com
- 5.
Levitt, T (1960), “Marketing Myopia,” Harvard Business Review.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
Gladwell, M (2002), The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Little, Brown & Co., New York.
- 9.
The discovery of gold in California in 1848, and later the laying of the First Transcontinental Railroad (1863–69) and a manufacturing boom, drew hundreds of thousands of fortune-seekers west.
- 10.
“Forever in blue jeans … and in court,” The National Archives, Pieces of History, 5/20/10 https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2010/05/20/forever-in-blue-jeansand-in-court
- 11.
Contrary to stories circulated over the years, neither Strauss nor Davis invented blue jeans . Davis’ invention boosted sales of the San Francisco merchant’s overalls simply by addressing a real and widespread need, namely men’s trousers that could withstand rugged working conditions.
- 12.
Harris, M A (2015), “Experience: I Mine for 100-Year-Old Jeans,” The Guardian, September 25, 2015, at https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/sep/25/experience-i-mine-for-denim
- 13.
- 14.
Maslow , A (1943), “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychological Review #50, 370–396. Reissued in 2004 as an Appendix to The Third Force: The Psychology of Abraham Maslow, in PDF.
- 15.
“Blue jeans ” reportedly replaced “overalls” as the product name only in 1960.
- 16.
“History of Denim Through the Ages: Western Wear Goes Hollywood,” The Selvedge Yard, October 17, 2009. https://selvedgeyard.com/2009/10/17/history-of-denim-through-the-ages-western-wear-goes-hollywood/
- 17.
Marsh, G, and Trynka, P (2002), Denim: From Cowboys to Catwalks, Arnum Press Limited, UK.
- 18.
Harvard Business Press, 2009.
- 19.
Harvard Business Press, 2016.
- 20.
Slocum, D (2016), “5 Questions with Robert Kegan, Lisa Lahey, and Andy Fleming on ‘An Everyone Culture,’” Forbes, April 23, 2016.
- 21.
Kahneman , Daniel, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Penguin Books, p. 259.
- 22.
- 23.
Science 27 September 1974: Vol. 185 no. 4157 pp. 1124–1131, “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases,” Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman.
- 24.
Thinking, Fast and Slow, p. 114.
- 25.
Thinking, Fast and Slow, p. 159.
- 26.
Thinking, Fast and Slow, p. 194.
- 27.
Thinking, Fast and Slow, p. 199.
- 28.
Global Association of Risk Professionals, March/April 2007 (http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/brown-q.pdf).
- 29.
Thinking, Fast and Slow, 192–193.
- 30.
Thinking, Fast and Slow, p. 193.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kornel, A. (2018). Mastering the Art of Wandering. In: Spinning into Control. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51356-4_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51356-4_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-51355-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-51356-4
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)