Entrepreneurship is about a) having a dream and then
b) doing something about it.
As a species we have this need to create, to improve, to try things,
to experiment, and entrepreneurship is one of the purest forms of that expression.
It's about seeking out a
problem and creating your own idea on how you can solve that problem.
The entrepreneur doesn't even need the solution.
They really need the problem and they need to have
this drive this sort of inner motivation and determination and just relentless focus on
getting to the solution.
There's no set way to solve every problem, there's no template to fall
in many instances. You need to have a broad view, a broader perspective on how to deal
with things that are going to come up.
It's knowing that you will get to the end and not letting go of your
goal, but letting go of how you get there on the road you take. That's going with
the flow and yet still saying, I won't quit until I get there.
Entrepreneurship requires
a good amount of diligence to learn about the environment, whatever that is, to find
what people have done, tried, failed at and done well at.
Every day you're learning what your faults are,
you're learning that you're just not good at certain things,
you're running into challenges, but the best entrepreneurs are always asking, well,
who is the best at this, how can I get them on my team, how can I get their support, how
can I ask them how to do this better.
Entrepreneurs tend to be gutsy, and they are gutsy with pursuing
new ideas, but they should also be gutsy in
pulling together teams with people that are better than them in certain areas.
The notion that the entrepreneur,
you know, is a guy working late at night with the bare light bulb in his garage coming up
with something cool is a very small minority of cases. It's sort of cool to talk about
it that way. It's glamorous, it's sexy, but really not what happens most of the time.
Well often times with a new venture
the concept is around a single persons idea
but it takes different minds coming together to find the right pathway.
I think entrepreneurs tackle a problem that they see others afflicted by,
that also means something to them
The idea of making a dent in the universe, of trying to figure
out what your contribution is going to be, that's what I learned at Tufts.
Some people call that community service, some people call that figuring out what you're going to give
back to society. I call that entrepreneurship.
The part about Tufts that makes entrepreneurship such
an easy and accessible thing is the fact that, when a
student has an idea, there is no faculty member or no other student who says, No, you cant
do that, or No, that's crazy. They say, Cool. Tell me more, or How can I help?
You don't have to start your own business to be an entrepreneur.
An entrepreneur is just somebody that solves problems and makes things better and
existing companies need entrepreneurs, non-profits need entrepreneurs.
You can really see that entrepreneurial spirit
when you give someone a problem and they look at it and
don' t only do what you asked them to do and push it further and figure out what else there is.
At the end of the day, this mindset is something that we all need.
We need to look at problems with fresh eyes and that' s how we come up with new and better solutions.