Entrepreneur vs Inventor

Okay, now let's talk about entrepreneurs in context of the inventor or the service provider

The concept of entrepreneurship is the aggregation or assembly of resources around the opportunity

the idea of the value proposition and this assembly of resources is what allows the carrying

out of the value proposition itself. Now stated in plain terms, somebody needs their grass cut

Well I can be the inventor or the service provider myself. I can go out and cut the individuals grass

Now if I want to build a venture around that and grow, there's a limited amount of time

and ability that I have to actually do that service or build a product or whatever

So in that way, me as the entrepreneur, I need to step back and work on rather than

in my business. I need to assemble the resources necessary to bring about that value proposition

Now assembling those resources could mean purchasing additional equipment, hiring individuals to man that equipment and to carry out the service or to build the product that we are distributing or using or selling or making available to our end users Now in that way I am responsible for assembling those resources

One of the primary functions of the entrepreneur is to assemble the financial resources to allow

for the aggregation of the physical resources to actually carry out the value proposition

So in that way, the entrepreneur is not always and quite frankly in startup ventures or growth

based ventures is almost never the actual service provider or the actual inventor themselves

They're completely separate from that because they have the task of building or growing

the business. Now I'm not saying that the entrepreneur does not start out as the service provider

or the inventor. This provides the background information or the knowledge to help understand the concept

the value proposition, the opportunity that exists and then to step back and assemble

the resources necessary to carry that out. In many ventures, you have one of the founders that remains in that role as service provider

or inventor and they somehow manage or oversee the other individuals or other resources involved

in that while the entrepreneur steps aside and works on the assembly of resources or making

available those resources to carry out the value proposition This is extremely important because as any business grows this necessarily has to happen

It's rare cases that the individual can continue doing within the business instead of stepping

aside and working on the business. So this is a definite turning point or point in the evolution or life cycle of the business

that is important to understand upfront. And as is the case in most startup ventures, the entrepreneurs begin with that proposition

very early in the life cycle that they realize that they have to step back, employ outside

resources, outside funds to massively scale or grow the operations that do create the

value proposition. So I often times ask my students, do you love your product or service or idea

the hands go up in the room, yes. Well that is not a necessity

Lots of times the entrepreneur will love the process, the assembly of resources, the idea

that they are doing what is necessary to bring that value proposition about

So often times if they too infatuated by their idea they cannot look at it objectively They cannot say that these are the features we need versus these are the features we don need We shouldn pursue this because the cost benefit doesn line up with what we need at this point with the resources that we have to bring about those additional features in

the product or those additional services. So the entrepreneur generally has to be extremely objective

Well the service provider or especially the inventor often times cannot or they have extreme

difficulty being objective when reviewing their product or service. They just want to make it better, better, better, better without an eye towards is it

cost feasible, is it the minimum viable product that we have to move out to the customer client

or end user at this point. So that's an important role of the entrepreneur to in many ways be the voice of reason or

the objective observer of the process to say, hey, no, this is not what we should be doing

at this point. This is what we should be doing at this point, we need to cut here, we need to assemble there, etc

So, if you love your idea, wonderful but it's absolutely not necessary

What you should love is the idea or what you're trying to do, the creation of new value that

previously did not exist