problem solving for entrepreneurs

How Entrepreneurs Can Find the Right Problem to Solve

As an entrepreneur, how confident are you that you fully understand your customer’s pain points or their job to be done? Entrepreneurs I first meet tend to start selling me on their solution before explaining the problem they are trying to solve. There is little evidence that they’ve done true discovery work to validate the problem or their target customers.

While gut feel or personal experience with a problem can be a strong signal there is a problem to solve, without proper product discovery work you won’t truly know if you have a winning solution.

For those who profess having done proper discovery to validate a problem but don’t yet have a product, my follow-up question is: “How do you know people or companies will use your product?” Answers are equally discouraging. More often than not, I hear examples of interest tests, such as hits on social media posts or answers to surveys that are so biased it’s hard to trust the results. Further, entrepreneurs may have a good hunch there’s a job to be done that needs improving or replacing, but they can’t describe where in the customer journey they can truly make an impact.

I’m a big fan of confident founders who are passionate about their idea, but a little humility and a lot of discovery work can determine whether there’s a winning solution and save a lot of wasted time and money building the wrong thing. If fundraising is also a consideration, being able to have real data vs. gut feelings and biased test results can be the difference between a modest angel round and a strongly led seed- or A-round.

I’ve recently written an in-depth look at this topic, Product Discovery 101 , which I encourage you to read. Here are some highlights.

Interest vs. problem testing

“We had 1,000 clicks on our Facebook ad in the first 48 hours.”

“Our conversion rate from click to sign-up was 50 percent.”

“We interviewed a bunch of people and they said they’d use our product if we built it.”

These quotes suggest the entrepreneurs may have found an audience interested enough to click on an ad and provide an email addresses, but they still haven’t proven anything about the usefulness of their product, that it solves a real pain point, or that their target customer is willing to pay for the fix. If you plan to do interest tests, here are several approaches (among many) to consider:

• Social media . Great for finding your audience, social outreach should be done on multiple platforms and carefully crafted to answer only one or two hypotheses. These hypotheses are commonly, “Is this where we can reach this audience if we want to market to them?” and “Are they interested enough to click and learn more?”
• Website landing pages . These are the best locations to capture interest, email addresses, and demographic data. If your potential customers found you through social media tests or googling, you’ve proven they were interested enough to learn more, that your search engine optimization works, and that they trust you or care enough about the problem you wish to solve that they’ll provide insight into who they are.
• Surveys . Surveys are difficult to design and often capture random and subjective information instead of getting real data to inform your product. Great surveys are 10 questions or less, reflective in nature (“How many times did you buy “X” in the last month?”) and data-centric (“How often do you order takeout for dinner?).

Problem validation

Early in the process, more important than interest tests are tests that validate there is a problem worth solving and where exactly a product can be most successful in solving that problem. Validating hypotheses about the problem through a variety of methods is going to lead to a far better outcome than clicks on a Facebook ad.

Consider trying these different types of problem-validation tests in your discovery process:

• Interviews . Similar to surveys, interviews are as much art as science. It is incredibly easy to lead a witness, bias answers, and hear what we want to hear in an interview. The best guide for conducting a proper discovery interview is Rob Fitzpatrick’s book The Mom Test , which I encourage every entrepreneur and product manager I work with to read.
• Ethnography . Observing prospects performing the job you hope to improve or replace can be extremely insightful. You may find hacks they would never tell you about in an interview or discover a whole new set of problems in their process.
• Emotional journaling or mapping . Having a prospect journal or map out their process and highlight how they feel along the way can pinpoint exactly where they are most frustrated in their process. This is also a great technique if you can’t observe the prospect in the setting where the problem exists.
• Journey mapping . Bring together all your discovery work to identify where you found patterns of highs and lows. These may surprise you; often, where you hypothesized there was the most pain in a process may be somewhere completely different.
• (Don’t do) focus groups . I am generally not a fan of this form of discovery. It lends itself to groupthink and can produce false results. Focus groups can be useful later in the product cycle when you want to get reactions to branding or observe groups of people using your product if it’s a tangible item.

Prototype testing

The best way to validate that a problem exists is to actually insert yourself into the process and learn by doing. These tests lean toward solution building, but the idea is that you’re doing tests without building anything, or building very little, to get clarity on the problem and the customer. Common forms of these tests include:

• Lo-fidelity concierge testing . Jump right in and assume part of the role that your product might fill in the future. If you were coming up with a new restaurant reservation system, this may involve a phone conversation with the party needing a reservation and having you do the actual booking for them, perhaps even texting them to confirm their reservation. The key to success of these early tests is to resist the temptation to correct your customer—just go with them on their user experience. You can tweak things along the way as you learn more about what works and what doesn’t.
• Wizard of Oz (WoZ) testing . WoZ allows you to test a product without the need for a fully built-out prototype. The customer won’t know that you are working behind the scenes to simulate the experience. A former student of mine with a software engineering background resisted the temptation to code a solution and instead created a WoZ test by cobbling together Soundcloud, Dropbox, texting, and a high-fidelity mock front-end. After dozens of people used this method and she understood what they needed, she officially built and launched the product .
• Prototypes . Build small runs of your future product using 3D printing, sewing, or even a pop-up restaurant as ways to test your concept and receive feedback before spending too much money.
• Competitive analogs . Having target customers use existing similar products can be as telling as using the product you hope to create. Try tools like UserTesting , which allows prospects to walk through how they use a current competitive product. Having target customers use a competitive product for a week or two can also be insightful.
• Expert testing . You may be working in an area where you are no expert, but you have a hunch it’s a white space ripe for disruption. If you don’t have access to the experts or their customers, find or create a space for them to connect and observe through their experiences. This could be as simple as finding them on Quora or Reddit and looking at threads of questions that are related to what you’re exploring.

Test early, test often!

With all the options available, there is no excuse for weak validation of problems and target customers early in your product development process. One test, or even a few tests, does not qualify a product as marketable or fundable. The more objective tests you do up front, and iterate on those tests often, the higher the likelihood you’ll land on a great solution that people want to use and buy. To see my full set of recommendations, visit Product Discovery 101 .

This blog post is largely inspired by my course, PM101 at Harvard Business School. I have open-sourced the syllabus for this course here .

About the author

Julia Austin is a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at the Harvard Business School.

[Image by: iStock Photo ]

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Identifying Problems Worth Solving: A Guide for Entrepreneurs

• October 9, 2023

In the world of entrepreneurship, success often hinges on the ability to identify and solve the right problems worth solving. However, tackling an issue without fully understanding its worth can lead to wasted time and resources. This blog post will guide you through the process of determining which problems are worth solving and how to address them effectively, ensuring a greater likelihood of success in your entrepreneurial journey of building better software or SaaS solutions.

Key Takeaways

• Identify and reframe problems worth solving through research, observation, customer conversations and collaborative problem-solving techniques.
• Evaluate market demand to ensure successful solutions by leveraging technology and resources.
• Build trust with customers by providing consistent problem-solving strategies that create value.

Understanding the Essence of a Problem Worth Solving

As an entrepreneur, it’s vital to focus on problems that meet certain criteria, such as establishing an emotional connection with customers, demonstrating market potential, and being realistically solvable. A profound understanding of these aspects can help you create solutions that address the genuine problems your target customers face, ultimately leading to a more successful and impactful business.

Determining if a problem is worth solving involves considering diverse approaches and perspectives, analyzing potential impacts, and understanding the reasons the market has failed to address the problem. This process, known as idea extraction, involves interviewing individuals in a market about the difficulties they face to identify a problem they are willing to pay to have solved, thus improving the customer’s circumstances.

Emotional Connection

Emotionally connecting to a problem involves understanding and empathizing with the feelings and experiences associated with the issue. By recognizing the emotional motivations behind customer issues, more effective solutions can be developed, resulting in greater customer value. For instance, Slack identified the need for a sense of community, meaning, and shared purpose in workplace communication and developed a tool that encourages inclusive communication and discussion around common objectives.

Forming an emotional bond with the problem can spark motivation and ignite creative solutions. This approach ensures that entrepreneurs not only address the superficial aspects of a problem but also tackle its underlying emotional drivers, leading to a more profound and lasting impact on customers.

Pro Tip: People primarily take action for emotional reasons NOT logical ones. Logic prevails in the end, but emotional reactions are the primary driver for action. As such, it’s important that you know what emotional drivers are motivating users and customers to take action.

Market Potential

Assessing the market size and its potential to expand becomes important when determining if a problem requires a solution. One way to gauge market potential is by examining the amount of money customers are currently spending to address the issue. This helps us better understand important context around how motivated customers are to solve the problem and the impact that it’s causing to their business operations.

Focus your research in these areas:

• Thoroughly research their target market
• Identify gaps in the existing solutions offered by competitors
• Ensure that their proposed solution addresses a genuine customer need
• Ensure that their proposed solution has the potential to capture a significant market share.

Solvability

A problem worth solving must be feasible to resolve, have an emotional connection, and demonstrate commercial viability. Solvability comprises a critical component of this equation. I followed this exact strategy to bring my B2B SaaS product Podcast Show Notes to market. This software leverages AI to automate the creation of show notes for podcast episodes using AI. Before building this product, I validated it as both a problem worth solving and a commercially viable solution by selling it and developing an MVP before investing more significantly and building out the entire application.

Breaking down complex issues into individual elements by drilling down to root causes can render them more accessible and solvable. By considering the feasibility of a solution and the resources needed to implement it, entrepreneurs can ensure that their efforts are directed towards problems that can be realistically solved and have a meaningful impact on customers’ circumstances. This approach allows problem solvers to focus on the big idea that can truly make a difference.

Research and Observation: Key Steps in Identifying Problems Worth Solving

Uncovering potential problems worth solving requires a combination of research and observation, which can be achieved through customer conversations, industry analysis, and competitor study. The most promising approach to identify a customer’s problem worth solving is to engage in dialogue with a particular group of customers at the outset of the innovation process, allowing you to better understand their problems and challenges.

Thorough research and observation can help software and SaaS entrepreneurs confirm the existence and importance of a problem, directing their efforts towards resolving significant issues that can impact their target market positively.

Customer Conversations

Engaging with customers is vital for understanding their challenges and verifying insights with further research. While there is no definitive answer to how many customer interviews are needed to identify a deep problem with a sizable market, beginning with three to five customers and modifying questions every new set of three to five customer interviews is the ideal approach.

However, it’s crucial to be aware of a challenge in uncovering issues through customer conversations: individuals don’t always reflect problems and challenges of the same severity. This means customer A may report a problem with a minor impact as a BIG problem, but customer B may report a problem with a big impact as a small problem. As such, it’s critically important to develop a systematic approach to being able to compare problems and impact in a relatively consistent manner across a set of interviews.

Industry Analysis

Scrutinizing industry trends and advancements aids in identifying potential problems and opportunities. For example, the European Union’s implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) created a reason for businesses to need new software and SaaS solutions. By analyzing:

• Customer needs
• Market size
• The competitive landscape
• Technological advancements

Entrepreneurs can uncover potential problems worth solving and opportunities for growth by leveraging various strategies such as:

• Customer surveys
• Focus groups
• Market research

Each of these strategies has respective pros and cons when helping you identify problems worth solving. A balanced approach is recommended to ensure you capture adequate context in the problem space.

Note: Be aware of a problem related to running focus groups I call ‘group think’. This is where you don’t get adequate representation from the group and the ‘loudest voice’ seems to carry because everyone doesn’t feel comfortable expressing their feelings in a group setting. This is where one on one conversations shine.

Competitor Study

Studying competitor offerings is vital to identify problems that warrant resolution, enabling entrepreneurs to understand the current market solutions and their potential limitations. By examining competitors, entrepreneurs can recognize areas where they can offer a superior or more innovative solution to meet customer demands and resolve pain points, ultimately ensuring that their solution has a competitive edge.

Competitor study not only helps in identifying potential problems worth solving, but also assists entrepreneurs in understanding the market conditions, customer inclinations, and potential barriers to entry for given markets, which are essential components in determining the practicality and success of a business.

Pro Tip: There’s always competition. Even if it isn’t the same format as what you plan to build. If you want to build a software solution then you may be competing against another product or a service. Either way, that’s your competition. Study it because you stand to learn a whole lot from that investment.

Collaborative Problem-Solving Techniques

Entrepreneurs can encourage innovative problem-solving by employing collaborative techniques, including brainstorming sessions, design thinking, and stakeholder mapping. These approaches encourage creativity, cooperation, and reiteration, ultimately leading to innovation projects that are tailored to the needs and desires of the users.

By engaging with a diverse group of stakeholders, entrepreneurs can gain valuable insights and perspectives, helping them to identify, validate, and address problems in a more comprehensive and effective manner.

Brainstorming Sessions

Inviting various stakeholders to participate in brainstorming sessions can create a broad assortment of ideas and perspectives, ultimately leading to improved solutions. Brainstorming sessions can be conducted in-person or using online platforms to facilitate wider participation, and they can involve both individual and group brainstorming to prevent groupthink and encourage faster innovation in a psychologically safe setting.

Through brainstorming sessions, entrepreneurs can:

• Evaluate all aspects of an issue
• Encourage creative thinking
• Provide further pathways to success
• Ensure that the focus remains on the broader perspective and the problems to be solved, rather than jumping to solutions prematurely.

Design Thinking

Design thinking is a systematic and human-centric approach to problem-solving that can greatly assist entrepreneurs in recognizing issues worth addressing. The design thinking process consists of five steps:

• Empathize: Comprehend the needs and perspectives of the target users or customers.
• Define: Clearly define the problem or challenge that needs to be addressed.
• Ideate: Generate a wide range of possible solutions or ideas.
• Prototype: Create a physical or digital representation of the solution.
• Test: Gather feedback and evaluate the effectiveness of the solution.

By following these steps, entrepreneurs can uncover issues and develop innovative solutions.

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The advantages of design thinking include:

• Promoting creativity
• Cooperation and collaboration
• Iteration and continuous improvement
• Tailoring solutions to user requirements
• Minimizing risk
• Increasing the likelihood of success

Stakeholder Mapping

Stakeholder mapping is an essential component of the problem-solving process, as it assists entrepreneurs in comprehending the people, groups, and organizations that can influence or be influenced by their project or business. By mapping out stakeholders, entrepreneurs can ascertain their requirements, expectations, and issues, which are essential in understanding the problems that are worth solving.

In order to prioritize stakeholders and ensure that their perspectives and interests are taken into account when identifying and addressing problems, entrepreneurs can engage in the following activities:

• Customer conversations
• Competitor analysis
• Brainstorming sessions
• Design thinking
• Stakeholder mapping

Reframing and Validating Identified Problems

After identifying a problem, it becomes important to reconsider its framing and confirm its significance. Reframing a problem facilitates the consideration of it from varied perspectives and ultimately leads to improved solutions. For instance, my Podcast Show Notes tool can help podcast production agencies with more than just producing great show notes in less time and budget. My software helps them scale their agencies so it goes way beyond solving each of those problems.

Validation is another crucial step in the decision making process. By challenging assumptions, evaluating market demand, and conducting product discovery, entrepreneurs can refine and validate identified problems, ensuring that their efforts are directed towards addressing pressing issues with the potential to make a real difference in their target market.

Challenging Assumptions

It’s important to identify and question risky assumptions to prevent the development of bad software. Challenging the status quo, considering unconventional approaches, and visualizing alternative solutions can help entrepreneurs challenge assumptions and discover real problems, examine novel perspectives, and devise inventive solutions to address the underlying issues.

Disregarding assumptions could result in the production of an inappropriate product or solution, expending time and resources ineffectively, and neglecting potential opportunities. By actively challenging assumptions, entrepreneurs can ensure that their efforts are focused on addressing genuine customer needs, ultimately leading to more successful and impactful solutions.

Evaluating Market Demand

Measuring potential demand for a solution is critical to guarantee it meets a legitimate target customer need.

Entrepreneurs should consider factors such as:

• The size of the target market
• The number of potential customers
• The customer’s willingness to pay

These factors are important in order to properly evaluate market demand.

Product Discovery

Product discovery involves a series of activities, such as user testing, customer interviews, and feedback collection, in order to gain insights into the needs and pain points of the target users. This process enables entrepreneurs to validate the existence and significance of a problem and prioritize and concentrate on resolving issues that have a true effect on their target market, augmenting the possibilities of creating a successful and valuable product.

For instance, in the case of Podcast Show Notes, user feedback led to modifications in the initial version of the solution, such as:

• Creating multiple title options for a podcast
• Turning episodes into social posts and marketing emails
• Creating new tiers for power users of the software
• Enabling multi-language support to broaden the target market

This example demonstrates the importance of product discovery in refining and validating identified problems to ensure the development of successful solutions, ultimately leading to a problem solved for those facing the issue.

Turning Identified Problems into Successful Solutions

After identifying, reframing, and validating a problem, the subsequent step is to convert it into a viable solution. To achieve this, entrepreneurs should focus on creating a roadmap, leveraging technology and resources, and building trust and value.

By developing a clear plan, utilizing available technology, and delivering value to customers from day one, entrepreneurs can ensure that their efforts are directed towards addressing the right problems and achieving the desired outcome, ultimately leading to a more successful and impactful business.

Creating a Roadmap

Crafting a detailed plan that outlines the steps to address the identified problem and achieve the intended outcomes is key to transforming identified problems into successful solutions. A roadmap helps to set objectives, collect inputs, and prioritize the problems that need to be solved, ensuring that the emphasis remains on the broader perspective and the predicaments to solve, instead of immediately jumping to solutions.

Formulating a plan of action, constructing a timeline, and establishing goals and objectives are essential components of a successful roadmap. By creating a roadmap, entrepreneurs can effectively communicate their strategic plan and coordinate resources proficiently, resulting in a greater chance of success in resolving the identified problems.

Leveraging Technology and Resources

Leveraging technology and resources plays a crucial role in boosting efficiency and productivity. Entrepreneurs have access to a plethora of online tools, software, databases, and other resources that can aid in identifying and resolving issues.

By employing technology and resources to create prototypes, evaluate solutions, and refine solutions, entrepreneurs can ensure that their efforts are directed towards addressing the right problems in the most efficient and effective manner possible. Moreover, entrepreneurs can assess their success when utilizing technology and resources by monitoring metrics such as cost savings, time savings, and customer satisfaction.

Building Trust and Value

Delivering value to customers from the outset and progressively building trust through consistent problem-solving and customer-centric strategies is vital for sustained success. Entrepreneurs may deliver value to customers from the outset by comprehending their requirements, furnishing solutions that fulfill those requirements, and delivering an excellent customer experience.

By attentively listening to customer feedback, promptly responding to customer inquiries, and providing solutions that adequately meet customer needs, entrepreneurs can establish trust through consistent problem-solving and customer-centric approaches.

Ultimately, cultivating trust and value contributes to fulfilling customer requirements, developing a competitive advantage, stimulating innovation, and producing business opportunities that can improve a customer’s circumstances.

Identifying and addressing problems worth solving is a critical aspect of successful innovation in the software space. By understanding the essence of a problem worth solving, conducting research and observation, employing collaborative problem-solving techniques, reframing and validating identified problems, and turning them into successful solutions, entrepreneurs can ensure that their efforts are directed towards the right problems and ultimately achieve success in their endeavors. By focusing on delivering value to customers and fostering trust, entrepreneurs can create lasting impact and build prosperous businesses that address genuine customer needs. If you could use help with strategy related to uncovering problems worth solving, schedule a free product strategy session with me so I can learn more about how to help.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are some problems that need to be solved.

The world faces numerous pressing issues, such as climate change, wars and military conflicts, water contamination, human rights violations, global health issues, poverty, and children’s lack of access to healthcare, education, safety, and food. Each of these need to be addressed urgently and ideally with innovative solutions.

What makes a problem worth solving?

A problem is worth solving if it has a significant negative impact on the customer’s circumstances and a better solution can provide meaningful benefits compared to existing solutions, whether for many customers or a smaller niche group.

How do I find a problem worth solving?

To find a problem worth solving, interview customers to gain insight into their pain points and day-to-day activities. Ask them questions about how often they experience the problem and how they’re trying to solve it. Then, use further customer and market research to validate your assumptions. Finally, capture early demand when you have 70% confidence in the solution.

What does it mean to identify a problem?

Problem Identification is the process of clearly identifying the root cause of a problem and developing a detailed problem statement that includes the impact. It requires analyzing the context, background, and symptoms of the issue to form a hypothesis about what is causing or maintaining the conditions around the problem. This process involves gathering data, conducting interviews, and analyzing the data to identify the root cause of the problem. Once the root cause is identified, a problem statement can be developed that outlines the scope of the problem.

What are the criteria for a problem worth solving?

For a problem to be worth solving, it must be relevant to the target customer, have potential for commercial success and be realistically solvable.

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Must-Have Entrepreneurial Skills for Aspiring Business Owners

• 25 Aug 2020

What comes to mind when you hear the word “entrepreneur”?

Maybe you picture a talented college dropout, or a seasoned business professional with a knack for predicting the next big thing. Whatever the persona, replace it with yourself.

There’s no specific demographic or personality profile of a successful entrepreneur . No matter your age, race, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or upbringing, you can be an entrepreneur if you have the dedication, drive, and business skills.

Access your free e-book today.

Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?

Whether entrepreneurship is a mix of innate traits or learned abilities is a constant debate. While risk tolerance, resilience , innovation , and creative problem-solving can provide a head start, they aren’t the only qualities to becoming an effective business owner.

Unlike personality traits and demographic details, you can learn and practice entrepreneurship through education, training, and experience. By taking advantage of growth opportunities, you can build valuable skills and generate innovative ideas to achieve business success.

If entrepreneurship is a path you’d like to pursue, use this list to take stock of your strengths and weaknesses and determine which skills to develop before launching your venture .

Check out the video below to learn more about what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more explainer content!

6 Skills All Entrepreneurs Need

1. finance skills.

Finance skills, such as budgeting and financial statement analysis , are necessary for running a business.

Creating a reasonable budget and sticking to it can be the difference between your venture’s success and failure. By learning this essential finance skill, you can avoid overspending and appropriately allocate company resources.

It’s also imperative to know how to read and prepare financial statements , including a balance sheet , income statement , and cash flow statement . Aside from being required for reporting and tax purposes, these documents help you track performance, make future projections, and manage expenses. They can also be useful to investors and banks that are considering funding your startup because they show your business’s financial progress.

2. Networking

Your network is one of your greatest assets. Networking can enable you to not only meet like-minded professionals but build your future team and keep a finger on your industry’s pulse.

Your professional network can comprise:

• Former and current co-workers
• Alumni from educational institutions
• Professors and teachers
• Industry leaders and speakers
• Past and present clients
• Friends and family members
• Business professionals in your geographic area
• Fellow entrepreneurs with similar interests, responsibilities, and goals

Identify and reach out to people in your network who can guide you in your entrepreneurial journey and inform your decision-making . Ask them about their businesses, how long they’ve been in their industries, and lessons they’ve learned from successes and failures. Perhaps they’ve started several companies and can offer valuable advice about raising funds, developing products, and building a client base. They may even be able to connect you to contacts whose work aligns with yours.

In addition to leveraging your network, expand it. One way to do so is by signing up for networking events in your area or industry, such as HBS Online’s annual Connext conference, where learners from around the world come together to network, engage, and learn from HBS leadership and faculty.

LinkedIn is another valuable way to connect with others. Using the platform’s feed and recommendation algorithm, you can find professionals with whom you have shared connections and similar interests and job titles. Don’t be afraid to send a note introducing yourself to a new contact.

Related: How Leaders Develop and Use Their Network

3. Speaking Confidently

The importance of speaking confidently as an aspiring entrepreneur can’t be overstated. Whether pitching to investors , communicating with clients, or making conversation at an event, the way you talk about your business and its potential can influence how others see it, too. Showing a lack of confidence can deter investors from funding your venture and lead customers to question their decisions to buy from you.

Remember: You are your business’s biggest advocate. If you’ve achieved a milestone like product-market fit , share that with others.

People may doubt you along the way, but you should never be one of them. Confidence can make all the difference when it comes to attracting and retaining customers and investors.

4. Accepting and Acting on Feedback

To succeed as an entrepreneur, you must be eager to receive feedback and act on it. This requires staying humble and accepting that your idea of your product’s perfect version may not resonate with your target customers.

“Pinpointing your target customer is a critical early step in the startup business model development process,” Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer Jeffery Bussgang says in the online course Launching Tech Ventures .

One way to gather feedback is by conducting customer validation interviews to solicit constructive criticism regarding your product, proposed business model , and assumptions you’ve made about users.

You may also garner feedback from investors, more experienced entrepreneurs, and friends and family—and some of it may be unsolicited. You’re not required to implement all their advice, but it’s beneficial to consider it. Would their suggestions increase your product’s quality, value, or user experience? If the answer is “yes,” make those improvements.

Related: 5 Key Pieces of Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

5. Recognizing Patterns

Pattern recognition—in data, market trends, and user behavior—is an often-overlooked entrepreneurial skill.

For instance, identifying patterns in cash flow statements can enable you to make predictions about future cash flows. When observing market sales data, you can identify seasonality or other time-related trends that inform long-term goals.

Recognizing patterns can also help you to excel in your industry. If entering the tech space, you must understand the common challenges and patterns of what Bussgang calls “tough tech ventures” in Launching Tech Ventures . For example, health care settings involve many ethical issues around patient-facing products due to data privacy and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations.

When observing how users interact with your product, pay attention to how they react to specific elements and what questions arise. If your product is an app, perhaps you identify a pattern among teenage users who download it and immediately open the chat function. You can use trends to learn more about customers’ motivations and improve your product to better fit their needs.

Related: 7 Questions to Ask for an Insightful User Interview

6. Maintaining a Growth Mindset

As an aspiring entrepreneur, it’s critical to have a growth mindset . A growth mindset involves perceiving intelligence, abilities, and talents as learnable and capable of improvement, as opposed to a fixed mindset, which entails believing those same traits to be inherently stable and unchangeable.

One professional who demonstrates the growth mindset is Maggie Robb , vice president of operations at Spire Health. Robb knew she had a lot to learn when making the transition from a large corporation to a Silicon Valley startup and decided to take the online course Entrepreneurship Essentials to strengthen her entrepreneurial skills.

“While I have a deep business background, I wasn’t well versed in several important aspects of entrepreneurship, like investment structure, fundraising, and valuation,” Robb says.

In addition to bolstering her knowledge of those topics, Robb says the course helped her recognize the value of testing and iteration in the entrepreneurial process.

“While not something I was completely unfamiliar with, I realized the importance of it within a startup,” Robb says. “It made me look at our resource allocation in a different way, compared to traditional companies with established products.”

Robb’s story imparts a vital lesson: Your skills aren’t fixed but rather result from effort, practice, and persistence. By maintaining a growth mindset, you can avoid taking your skills for granted and capitalize on opportunities to grow and improve throughout your career.

Developing Your Entrepreneurial Skills

Entrepreneurship is a journey that requires dedication, drive, and hard work. One thing it doesn’t require is fitting a specific demographic.

With financial literacy , networking skills, confidence, the ability to accept feedback and recognize patterns, and a growth mindset, anyone can pursue entrepreneurship.

As long as you’re willing to strengthen your entrepreneurial skills, you can successfully position yourself to start your own company.

Are you interested in bolstering your entrepreneurship skills? Explore Entrepreneurship Essentials and Launching Tech Ventures , two of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses. If you aren't sure which is the right fit, download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.

This post was updated on July 28, 2023. It was originally published on August 25, 2020.

About the Author

How Entrepreneurs Are Problem Solvers: Unveiling 7 Key Principles

Wouldn't you love to wake up thinking like some of the world's richest entrepreneurs? How entrepreneurs think differently from the rest of us is something we’d all like to have insight on. Entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Jeff Bezos have amassed astronomical fortunes, so what is their secret to their success?  

How Entrepreneurs Think

Bill Gates, currently worth around $88.8 billion, believes that procrastination is the key to failure. Making a decision, sticking to it and seeing it through is important because it instils faith in oneself and avoids second guessing.  Warren Buffet is one of the world’s largest investors and also launched many companies in his youth. He’s currently worth over $80 billion and his best advice to new start-ups is to have fun. If you feel a passion for what you do, you’ll be “tap dancing” to work like Warren at 85! One of the youngest top earners is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. His insights on how entrepreneurs think include the sound advice to love your clients, understand them intimately and build a product base from there. So how does the entrepreneurial mindset deal with the problem-solving process?  

7 Entrepreneurial Problem-Solving Skills

Problem-solving techniques are the cornerstone of entrepreneurial business. Identifying a problem that exists and filling that gap successfully results in long-term rewards. One of the best examples of this type of approach is Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. He amassed nearly $72 billion in just over a decade, launching and developing his popular social media platform. He advises to start any new business by trying to passionately solve a problem, rather than building a new company as the consequence of solving a problem.   How entrepreneurs solve problems isn't magically different from the rest of us, they simply have a positive mindset and follow a set of problem-solving principles:  

1. Say no to defeat

There are plenty of failures along the way, but defeat isn’t in an entrepreneur’s mindset. Hence, it is even more crucial to learn from a mistake. When it comes to learning from business mistakes, there are several strategies that can be employed. First and foremost, it is important to acknowledge the incident and accept responsibility. This will help in avoiding the same mistake to be made again in the future. It is equally important to analyze the mistake and to understand it. This will help identify the root cause so that strategies could be developed to counteract the effects. Finally, use it as a learning opportunity. Identify what you could have done differently and seek feedback from your peers in order to gain additional perspective to the issue at hand. This can help you identify areas for improvement and develop new strategies for success.

• Nokia -  One real-world example of learning from business mistakes is the case of Nokia, the Finnish mobile phone giant. In the early 2000s, Nokia was the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, but the company failed to adapt to the rise of smartphones and lost its market share to rivals such as Apple and Samsung. However, instead of accepting defeat, Nokia learned from its mistakes and reinvented itself as a telecommunications equipment provider. Today, Nokia remains a major player in the telecommunications industry, providing networking solutions and other services to companies around the world.

Being bold in a business environment can be challenging, but it is an essential trait for success. At times, being bold translates to taking calculated risks, making tough decisions, and charting new courses for the company. This can be achieved by inspire confidence and trust in employees, customers, and other categories stakeholders. This will instill courage to take risks and experiment, which can lead to greater innovation and creativity. The ability to take risks and learn from mistakes is crucial for business success. In addition, it is essential to be adaptable and pivot quickly in presence of new opportunities that ma lead to further grow and improvements.

• Netflix:  This could be seen in the story of Netflix. When the company started as a DVD-by-mail service, they saw an opportunity to disrupt the traditional rental industry by offering a streaming service. Despite initial skepticism from investors and industry experts, Netflix took a bold step and invested heavily in streaming technology. This decision paid off, and today Netflix is a leader in the entertainment industry, with millions of subscribers worldwide. By being bold, Netflix was able to pivot quickly, adapt to changing market conditions, and stay ahead of the competition.  
• Female Entrepreneurs in Hong Kong Share Business Advice
• The Role of Enterprise Solutions in the Digital Transformation of Businesses

3. Be flexible

Knowing how to evaluate a situation and look at it from all angles is important and being able to pivot when necessary is critical to any fast-moving business. If you’re not seeing success with one idea, being bold and trying something new might just pay off. When trying to solve a problem, understand that there might not always be a solution. Identifying a gap in the market and quickly changing direction to fill it makes good business sense.

• Zara:   Amancio Ortega , owner of Zara and currently worth $78.5 billion advises that “that speed is everything”. The ability to recognise new ideas and execute them faster than any competitor has been crucial to Ortega’s success.  
• Kodak:  Kodak, a company that had been a leader in the photography industry for decades. However, with the advent of digital photography, Kodak's business model became outdated and the company struggled to keep up. Despite some efforts to transition to digital cameras and other digital products, Kodak ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 2012.  
• Canon and Nikon:  On the other hand, companies like Canon and Nikon recognized the shift to digital early on and were able to adapt their business models quickly. They invested heavily in R&D and created new products that were more in line with the changing market. As a result, they were able to maintain their positions as industry leaders and continue to thrive to this day. 

These examples show how being flexible and willing to pivot when necessary can be the difference between success and failure in a fast-moving industry. It's important to recognize when your current approach isn't working and be willing to try something new in order to stay competitive.

4. Delegate

Employing a great team is essential to any successful business and entrepreneurs understand that, when it comes to problem-solving, relying on staff expertise wins. Delegation is a crucial management skill and can result in various benefits when done effectively. First and foremost, the identification of what to delegate is an essential first step. Next, it is equally important to clarify priorities and provide guidance to employees by communicating the importance of each task in order to pave the road to success.

As a manager at a busy restaurant, you may delegate tasks to team members to increase efficiency. Identify tasks that can be delegated, prioritize them based on importance, communicate guidelines to team members, provide guidance and support, and offer feedback. This results in successful task completion, increased efficiency, and job satisfaction among team members, leading to improved customer service and increased revenue.

5. Foster creative thinking

In the 1970s, a scientist at 3M named Spencer Silver was trying to create a strong adhesive, but instead, he ended up creating a weak adhesive that could be removed easily without damaging surfaces. Despite being a failure in achieving the original goal, Spencer didn't give up. Later on, another 3M employee, Art Fry, realized that the weak adhesive could be used to create bookmarks that would stick to paper without falling off. This idea eventually evolved into the creation of Post-it notes, which have become a ubiquitous office supply worldwide.

• 3M:  Entrepreneurs know that it's not just about solving problems but also about considering the bigger picture and looking at the impact of decisions on the bottom-line. 3M's Post-it notes are a great example of fostering creative thinking in a business environment, which is an essential trait for long-term and sustainable success. It's all about being willing to challenge our assumptions, think outside the box, and embrace change as a path to growth and success. In essence, creative thinking is the ability to explore different possibilities in resolving a business problem. By encouraging creative thinking, businesses can foster a culture of innovation, which can lead to breakthrough ideas and a competitive advantage in the market.

6. Map out a vision

Entrepreneurs map the vision of their lives and how they can achieve those dreams. They aren't winging it or flying by the seat of their pants! They have a vision and execute that to make dreams a reality. The mapping out of a vision for your business is an essential step in defining your company’s purpose for different categories of stakeholders. The mapping out of a vision also helps project into the future in a manner that aligns with a business’ core values and business objectives.

• remote work:  The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a rise in remote work, resulting in an increased demand for flexible office spaces. These spaces offer amenities like high-speed internet and meeting rooms, making them a productive and convenient option for employees. For companies, offering flexible office space can attract and retain talent while providing cost savings and flexibility. The emergence of coworking spaces and other flexible office solutions means there are now a wide variety of options available. The rise of flexible office space benefits both employees and employers, offering a convenient, affordable, and flexible solution. The arise of remote work and flexible office space illustrates how modifying perspectives and finding new opportunities can lead to mutually beneficial outcomes for businesses and employees alike.  
• How the Third Place Can Expand Your Business Network
• 3 Overlooked Benefits of a Third Place in a Flexible Workspace

7. Dig deeper

Entrepreneurs are known for their ability to think structurally. This means that they are able to get to the heart of the matter and understand how things work. They ask structural questions and methodically break down problems into smaller, more manageable parts. This allows them to identify and address the root cause of a problem, rather than just treating the symptoms.

• Amazon:  Jeff Bezos is a great example of an entrepreneur who thinks structurally. When he first saw the internet explode in popularity, he didn't just jump into the fray and start a random business. Instead, he asked himself a structural question:

"What kind of business plan might make sense in the context of that growth?" (Source: Fundable )

He knew that books were a low-cost item that could be shipped easily and were universal. This insight led him to start Amazon, which initially sold only books but eventually grew to become one of the largest retailers in the world. By focusing on this one product and building a business model around it, Bezos was able to create a solid foundation for future growth and success.

Entrepreneurial Mindset

While the decision-making process of entrepreneurs may be unconventional, they possess a unique ability to take calculated risks and turn challenges into opportunities. With dedication, perseverance, and a well-defined mission, entrepreneurs can pave the way for success in their ventures.

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Aspiring Entrepreneurs, Identify a Meaningful Problem to Solve

Starting a business isn’t easy — and scaling it is even harder — so you need to be committed. Before sending that “I quit!” email you’ve been fantasizing about, identify a problem that you have a personal connection to and that you’re driven to solve. It could be that you’ve identified shortcomings particular to your […]

Starting a business isn’t easy — and scaling it is even harder — so you need to be committed. Before sending that “I quit!” email you’ve been fantasizing about, identify a problem that you have a personal connection to and that you’re driven to solve. It could be that you’ve identified shortcomings particular to your industry. Maybe you’re part of a consumer segment that’s underserved by the current offerings. Or perhaps you regularly encounter a very specific frustration that others are sure to share. Next, make sure you’re clear on the value you’ll bring to customers. How will you make their lives easier, more pleasant, or more meaningful? How will you go out of your way for them at every turn? However you come to your idea, you should feel like you have no choice but to start this particular business at this moment in time. It will make the mornings when you wake up and wish that it was someone else’s problem much easier to bear.

Source: This tip adapted from “So You Want to Be an Entrepreneur?” by Emily Heyward

• Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review, cohost of the Women at Work podcast , and the author of two books: Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People) and the HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict . She writes and speaks about workplace dynamics. Watch her TEDx talk on conflict and follow her on LinkedIn .

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1.3   The Entrepreneurial Mindset 

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain what it means to have an entrepreneurial mindset
• Describe what is meant by entrepreneurial spirit or passion

Entrepreneurship takes many forms (see Table 1.1), but entrepreneurs share a major trait in common: An entrepreneur is someone who identifies an opportunity and chooses to act on that opportunity. Most business ventures are innovative variations of an existing idea that has spread across communities, regions, and countries, such as starting a restaurant or opening a retail store. These business ventures are, in some ways, a lower-risk approach but nonetheless are entrepreneurial in some way. For example, Warby Parker, a profitable startup founded by four graduate students at Wharton, disrupted a major incumbent (Luxottica) by providing a more convenient (online initially), affordable, and stylish product line for a large segment of consumers. In this sense, their innovation is about creating something new, unique, or different from the mainstream. Yet they attracted an existing, and in some ways mature, sector of an established industry. In a different way, McDonalds, which is 90 percent owned by franchisees, introduced an “all day breakfast” menu in 2017 that was hugely successful; it also targeted a larger segment (in part younger consumers) and brought back consumers who had chosen other options. In summary, many entrepreneurs start a new venture by solving a problem that is significant, offering some value that other people would appreciate if the product or service were available to them. Other entrepreneurs, in contrast, start a venture by offering a “better mousetrap” in terms of a product, service, or both. In any case, it is vital that the entrepreneur understand the market and target segment well, articulate a key unmet need (“pain point”), and develop and deliver a solution that is both viable and feasible. In that aspect, many entrepreneurs mitigate risks before they launch the venture.

Being aware of your surroundings and the encounters in your life can reveal multiple opportunities for entrepreneurship. In our daily lives, we constantly find areas where improvements could be made. For example, you might ask, “What if we didn’t have to commute to work?” “What if we didn’t have to own a vehicle but still had access to one?” “What if we could relax while driving to work instead of being stressed out by traffic?” These types of questions inspired entrepreneurial ventures such as ride-sharing services like Uber, the self-driving vehicle industry, [1] and short-term bicycle access in the free bike-sharing program in Pella, Iowa (Figure 1.10). [2]

These ideas resulted from having an entrepreneurial mindset, an awareness and focus on identifying an opportunity through solving a problem, and a willingness to move forward to advance that idea. The entrepreneurial mindset is the lens through which the entrepreneur views the world, where everything is considered in light of the entrepreneurial business. The business is always a consideration when the entrepreneur makes a decision. In most cases, the action that the entrepreneur takes is for the benefit of the business, but sometimes, it helps the entrepreneur get ready to adopt the appropriate mindset. The mindset becomes a way of life for the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs often are predisposed to action to achieve their goals and objectives. They are forward thinking, always planning ahead, and they are engaged in “what if” analyses. They frequently ask themselves, “What if we did this?” “What if a competitor did that?”—and consider what the business implications would be.

Most people follow habits and traditions without being aware of their surroundings or noticing the opportunities to become entrepreneurs. Because anyone can change their perspective from following established patterns to noticing the opportunities around them, anyone can become an entrepreneur. There is no restriction on age, gender, race, country of origin, or personal income. To become an entrepreneur, you need to recognize that an opportunity exists and be willing to act on it. Note, however, that the execution of the entrepreneurial mindset varies in different parts of the world. For example, in many Asian cultures, group decision-making is more common and valued as a character trait. In these regions, an entrepreneur would likely ask the advice of family members or other business associates before taking action. In contrast, individualism is highly valued in the United States and so many US entrepreneurs will decide to implement a plan for the business without consulting others.

Entrepreneurial Spirit and Passion

An entrepreneurial spirit allows entrepreneurs to carry a manner of thinking with them each day that allows them to overcome obstacles and to meet challenges with a can-do attitude. What does it mean to have an entrepreneurial spirit? For the purposes of this discussion, it could mean being passionate, purposeful, positive, bold, curious, or persistent.

The founders of Airbnb have a passion for supporting individual rights to rent out unused space. Why should the established model of hotels prevail? Why shouldn’t an individual homeowner have the freedom to rent out unused space and leverage that space into an income? Airbnb has succeeded in creating more flexible and affordable options in the space of the rapidly growing “sharing” economy. At the same time, some states and municipalities have raised issues about the regulations monitoring ventures like this. While entrepreneurial spirit is partly about fighting for individual rights and freedoms, there should be a balance between economic freedom and consumer protection. The entrepreneurial spirit involves a passion for presenting an idea that is worthwhile and valuable, and a willingness to think beyond established patterns and processes, while still keeping in mind local laws and regulations, in the quest to change those established patterns, or at least to offer alternatives to those established patterns.

Passion is a critical component of the entrepreneurial process. Without it, an entrepreneur can lose the drive to run the business. Passion can keep an entrepreneur going when the outside world sends negative messages or less-than-positive feedback. For example, if you are truly passionate about starting an animal shelter because of your love of animals, you will find a way to make it happen. Your internal drive to help animals in need will spur you on to do whatever it takes to make the shelter become a reality. The same is true of other types of startups and owners with similar passions. However, passion needs to be informed by the entrepreneur’s vision and mission—passion of the sake of passion is not enough. A clear mission statement—which details why the business exists and the entrepreneur’s objectives for achieving that mission—will guide an entrepreneur’s passion and keep the business on track. Passion, vision, and mission can reinforce each other and keep the entrepreneur on the right track with next steps for the business.

Some ideas might seem small or insignificant, but in the field of entrepreneurship, it’s important to recognize that for every new startup, someone else may recognize a spin-off idea that expands upon the original idea. The opportunities for identifying new possibilities are endless. Review your work in creating spinoff ideas for Angad Darvani’s projects, or Kevin F. Adler’s Miracle Messages venture. Or consider possible spin-off ideas around the technology used in agriculture. Creating spin-off ideas fits well with our discussion of divergent thinking and brainstorming. Through these processes, we can discover new uses for existing technology, just as Ring did by using video technology to add security by allowing customers to see who is at the door without opening it.

An Entrepreneurial Mindset in Your Discipline or Field

Within your industry of interest or area of study, what are the challenges that create frustration? How can these be turned into opportunities? Earlier in this chapter, we discussed Evernote, a company that focuses on expanding our memories by storing and organizing information. Let’s look at some other examples of entrepreneurial endeavors in specific industries to help you plan your own venture in your own industry.

In the agriculture industry, insects, weeds, weather conditions, and the challenges of harvesting crops are all ripe for entrepreneurial activities. The move toward organic produce has also affected this industry. From an entrepreneurial perspective, what products could you invent to support both organic farming and the problems of insects that damage or destroy crops? The old method was to use chemical sprays to kill the insects, but today, the growing demand for organic foods and increased awareness of the impact of chemical sprays on our environment are changing this scenario. One new idea to solve this problem combines a vacuum cleaner with an agriculture product.

Watch this video on the creation of a crop vacuum that sucks up insects and bugs to learn more.

A bug vacuum is an example of how using divergent thinking contributed to the solution of removing bugs from crops without using chemicals. In the group activity of creating divergent ideas, this idea may not have been received well. However, in the incubation stage, the idea must have come forward as a viable solution. Entrepreneurs frequently face the challenge of pressure to conform to established habits and patterns within industries.

Often, the entrepreneurial mindset includes futuristic ideas that shake up the normal, conventional processes that are grounded in experience over time. Tried-and-tested processes and products that have a proven history of success can be a formidable obstacle to new ideas. A new idea may even appear as impossible or outlandish, perhaps even an embarrassment to the steady and predictable practices established within an industry. This can create a dilemma: Do we try something new and unproven that lacks documented research? Sometimes, we must disregard our past successes and research to be open to new possibilities for success and failure. An entrepreneurial mindset includes creativity, problem-solving skills, and a propensity to innovation. [3] Open-mindedness is one characteristic that supports creativity, problem solving, and innovation. Taking the time to explore new ideas, dream, reflect, and view situations from a new perspective contribute to the entrepreneurial mindset. Some innovations can lead to disruptions within the industry, or even create a new industry.

The innovator’s dilemma was presented by Clayton Christensen to explain disruptive technology, which are technologies that, once introduced, displace established patterns, processes, and systems previously accepted as normal or accepted. One example of a disruptive technology is Airbnb, a company that threatens the established hotel industry by connecting personal resources to people who desire those resources. If you have a spare bedroom that you aren’t using, why not sell that space to someone who wants and needs the space?

Airbnb has become a significant threat to the established hotel industry’s business model of building large hotels and renting rooms within those hotels to their customers. Airbnb has reconfigured that model, and since its 2008 launch, 150 million travelers have taken advantage of 3 million Airbnb listings in more than 191 countries. Airbnb has raised more than $3 billion (plus a $1 billion credit line) and is considering selling stocks to support significant expansion. The value of Airbnb is approximately $30 billion. Compare this market value to Hilton’s market capitalization of $19 billion and Marriott’s of $35 billion. If you were the CEO of Hilton or Marriott, would you be worried? The hotel industry recognized Airbnb as a threat, and in 2016, began a campaign to create legislation to rein in Airbnb’s growth and popularity. From the hotel industry’s perspective, Airbnb is not playing by the same rules. This is the definition of disruptive technology, the focus on creating a new idea or process that negates or challenges established process or products. [4]

Sometimes disruptive technologies result from not listening to customers. Customers don’t always know what they want. Customer groups might need to be redefined by the entrepreneurial team on the basis of better models, knowing when to invest in developing lower-performance products that promise lower margins while still satisfying the need, and knowing when to pursue small markets at the expense of larger or established markets. Basically, disruptive technologies occur through identifying new and valuable processes and products.

The founders of Airbnb recognized that some people have unused resources, bedrooms, that other people need. We can apply this idea to other unused resources such as vehicles and motor homes. We see this model reproduced in short-term car rental and bike-sharing programs.

• Matthew DeBord. “Waymo Could Be Worth as Much as $75 Billion—Here’s a Brief History of the Google Car Project.” Business Insider. September 9, 2018. https://www.businessinsider.com/google-car-project-history-2018-8 ↵
• Ethan Goetz. “Bike Share Program Launched Monday.” The Chronicle. July 2, 2018. https://www.pellachronicle.com/gallery/bike-share-program-launched-monday/article_950cebac-7e49-11e8-97a0-8fd615410188.html ↵
• Emma Fleck. “Needed: Entrepreneurial Mindset.” Central Penn Business Journal, 34(12), 10. http://pageturnpro2.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/Publications/201803/15/83956/PDF/131668002208352000_CPBJ033018WEB.pdf ↵
• Katie Benner. “Inside the Hotel Industry’s Plan to Combat Airbnb.” New York Times. April 16, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/technology/inside-the-hotel-industrys-plan-to-combat-airbnb.html ↵

Real world problem solving: An entrepreneurial perspective Copyright © 2022 by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Introduction

Chapter outline.

Portions of the material in this section are based on original work by Geoffrey Graybeal and produced with support from the Rebus Community. The original is freely available under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license at https://press.rebus.community/media-innovation-and-entrepreneurship/.

Marah Lidey and Naomi Hirabayashi met when they worked together at DoSomething.org , a youth-oriented global nonprofit organization. They considered each other aspirational peers—accessible friends they looked up to and leaned on. While working together, they got the idea to turn the support they gave each other into a product idea: an inspirational platform that would send users a motivational text message each day. In 2015, Hirabayashi and Lidey began to focus on turning their idea into a reality. They conducted a test with seventy individuals before publicly releasing Shine in beta in October 2015. They formally left DoSomething.Org in April 2016 and their startup venture, Shine , was born.

The problem Shine tackles is that “self-help is broken” and its value proposition addresses in part what is known as “the confidence gap,” often cited as a barrier that holds women back when it comes to advancing in their careers, raising money, investing, and planning retirement. Shine has four pillars it is built to address: mental health, confidence, daily happiness, and productivity. As of 2018, the Shine community had two million users from 189 countries. What began as a motivational text message service has since evolved to include an app and additional services such as Shine Talks and audio challenges.

Hirabayashi and Lidey recognized a need—or an entrepreneurial opportunity . You learned about identifying opportunities in the chapter on Identifying Entrepreneurial Opportunity . This chapter will explore what happens next—the problem solving and need recognition techniques that entrepreneurs employ to carry the idea forward, and to solve issues that arise as the enterprise advances. Problem solving is essential to the genesis of entrepreneurship. At the same time, problem-solving techniques can be used in management and in an individual’s everyday personal life.

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Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/entrepreneurship/pages/1-introduction

• Authors: Michael Laverty, Chris Littel
• Publisher/website: OpenStax
• Book title: Entrepreneurship
• Publication date: Jan 16, 2020
• Location: Houston, Texas
• Book URL: https://openstax.org/books/entrepreneurship/pages/1-introduction
• Section URL: https://openstax.org/books/entrepreneurship/pages/6-introduction

© Jan 4, 2024 OpenStax. Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License . The OpenStax name, OpenStax logo, OpenStax book covers, OpenStax CNX name, and OpenStax CNX logo are not subject to the Creative Commons license and may not be reproduced without the prior and express written consent of Rice University.

Where Entrepreneurs Find Inspiration

Ideas and Research from Stanford University

Entrepreneurship as Problem-Solving

Spotify Co-Founder Daniel Ek shares his very early experiences with entrepreneurship, which came about due to a need to solve problems. Ek also provides his definition of an entrepreneur, as “someone that has an itch for a problem, and is annoyed enough by that problem to seek a solution for it.”

Video clips from: A Playlist for Entrepreneurs [Entire Talk]

Execution is 95 percent, the big, hairy, audacious goal of spotify, solving a world of product problems, leading distributed teams, don't say yes to everything, opportunities in sensors and smart devices, product innovations can reduce piracy.

The Ethics of Innovation [Entire Talk]

Video clips.

Leadership in a Digital World

The duty of digital leaders, ethics in emerging technologies, disproportionate job displacement.

A Brainy Approach to Innovation [Entire Talk]

Embodying Innovation

Mind control of machines, pivoting toward impact, automating legal consulting, confessions of a ‘cyber-optimist'.

Taking a Lead From Tech [Entire Talk]

‘What Would Different Look Like?'

Realities of startup life, essential but unsung skills, a blank invitation, choose your peers wisely.

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3.3: Creative Problem-Solving Process

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Describe the five steps in the creative problem-solving process
• Identify and describe common creative problem-solving tools

Creativity can be an important trait of an entrepreneur. In that discussion, we learned about creativity’s role in innovation . Here, we will look in more depth at creativity’s role in problem-solving . Let’s first formally define creativity as the development of original ideas to solve an issue. The intent of being an entrepreneur is to break away from practical norms and use imagination to embrace quick and effective solutions to an existing problem, usually outside the corporate environment.

The Steps of the Creative Problem-Solving Process

Training oneself to think like an entrepreneur means learning the steps to evaluating a challenge: clarify, ideate, develop, implement, and evaluate (Figure 3.3.1).

Step 1: Clarify

To clarify is the critical step of recognizing the existence of a gap between the current state and a desired state. This can also be thought of as having need awareness , which occurs when the entrepreneur notes a gap between societal or customer needs and actual circumstances. Clarifying the problem by speaking with clients and developing a detailed description of the problem brings the specifics of a problem to light. Failure to identify the specifics of a problem leaves the entrepreneur with the impossible task of solving a ghost problem, a problem that is fully unknown or unseen. To establish and maintain credibility, an entrepreneur must clarify the problem by focusing on solving the problem itself, rather than solving a symptom of the problem.

For example, a farm could have polluted water, but it would not be enough to solve the problem only on that farm. Clarifying would involve identifying the source of the pollution to adequately tackle the problem. After gaining an understanding of a problem, the entrepreneur should begin to formulate plans for eliminating the gap. A fishbone diagram, as shown in Figure 3.3.2, is a tool that can be used to identify the causes of such a problem.

In the case of our water pollution example, a fishbone diagram exploring the issue might reveal the items shown in Figure 3.3.3.

Step 2: Ideate

To ideate is the step of the creative problem-solving process that involves generating and detailing ideas by the entrepreneur. After collecting all information relevant to the problem, the entrepreneur lists as many causes of the problem as possible. This is the step in which the largest variety of ideas are put forth. Each idea must be evaluated for feasibility and cost as a solution to the problem. If a farm does not have clean water, for example, the entrepreneur must list causes of toxic water and eliminate as many of those causes as possible. The entrepreneur must then move forward investigating solutions to bring the water back to a safe state. If, say, nearby livestock are polluting the water, the livestock should be isolated from the water source.

Step 3: Develop

To develop is the step in which the entrepreneur takes the list of ideas generated and tests each solution for feasibility. The entrepreneur must consider the cost of each idea and the obstacles to implementation. In the preceding example, adding a chemical to the water may not be a feasible solution to the farmer. Not every farmer wants additional chloride or fluoride added to the water due to the effect on both humans and livestock. These tradeoffs should be addressed in the feasibility assessment. The farmer might prefer a filtration system, but the cost of that solution might not be practicable. The entrepreneur should identify and assess alternative solutions to find one that is most cost-effective and feasible to the customer.

Step 4: Implement

To implement is the step in which the solution to the problem is tested and evaluated. The entrepreneur walks through the planned implementation with the client and tests each part of the solution, if a service, or thoroughly tests a developed good. The entrepreneur implements the solution and goes through a structured system of follow-up to ensure the solution remains effective and viable. In the water example, the solution would be reducing runoff from toxic insecticides by adding prairie strips, buffers of grass, and vegetation along banks of streams.

Step 5: Evaluate

To evaluate is the step in which the final solution is assessed. This is a very important step that entrepreneurs often overlook. Any fallacy in the implementation of the product or service is reassessed, and new solutions are implemented. A continual testing process may be needed to find the final solution. The prairie strips, buffers of grass, and vegetation along banks of streams chosen in the farming water example should then be analyzed and tested to ensure the chosen solution changed the content of the water.

ARE YOU READY?

Implementing Creative Problem Solving

Removing waste is a problem, and it can also present an entrepreneurial opportunity. Try to examine ways in which waste products that you usually pay to have hauled away can now generate revenue. Whether it’s recycling aluminum cans or cardboard, or garbage that could be used to feed animals, your task is to come up with solutions to this entrepreneurial-oriented problem.

• Try following the first step of the creative problem-solving process and clearly identify the problem.
• Next, gather data and formulate the challenge.
• Then, explore ideas and come up with solutions.
• Develop a plan of action.
• Finally, note how you would evaluate the effectiveness of your solution.

Using Creativity to Solve Problems

Entrepreneurs are faced with solving many problems as they develop their ideas for filling gaps, whether those opportunities involve establishing a new company or starting a new enterprise within an existing company. Some of these problems include staffing, hiring and managing employees, handling legal compliance, funding, marketing, and paying taxes. Beyond the mundane activities listed, the entrepreneur, or the team that the entrepreneur puts in place, is indispensable in maintaining the ongoing creativity behind the product line or service offered. Innovation and creativity in the business are necessary to expand the product line or develop a groundbreaking service.

It is not necessary for the entrepreneur to feel isolated when it comes to finding creative solutions to a problem. There are societies, tools, and new methods available to spur the creativity of the entrepreneur that will further support the success and expansion of a new enterprise. 14 Learning and using entrepreneurial methods to solve problems alleviates the stress many startup owners feel. The entrepreneur’s creativity will increase using collaborative methodologies. Some entrepreneurial collaborative methodologies include crowdsourcing, brainstorming, storyboarding, conducting quick online surveys to test ideas and concepts, and team creativity activities.

Crowdsourcing

Professor Daren Brabham at the University of Southern California has written books on crowdsourcing and touts its potential in for-profit and not-for-profit business sectors. He defines it simply as “an online, distributed problem-solving and production model.” 15 Crowdsourcing involves teams of amateurs and nonexperts working together to form a solution to a problem. 16 The idea, as cbsnews.com’s Jennifer Alsever has put it, is to “tap into the collective intelligence of the public at large to complete business-related tasks that a company would normally either perform itself or outsource to a third-party provider. Yet free labor is only a narrow part of crowdsourcing's appeal. More importantly, it enables managers to expand the size of their talent pool while also gaining deeper insight into what customers really want. The challenge is to take a cautionary approach to the ‘wisdom of the crowd,’ which can lead to a ‘herd’ mentality.” 17

LINK TO LEARNING

Read this article that discusses what crowdsourcing is, how to use it, and its benefits for more information.

This new business prototype, similar to outsourcing, features an enterprise posting a problem online and asking for volunteers to consider the problem and propose solutions. Volunteers earn a reward, such as prize money, promotional materials like a T-shirt, royalties on creative outlets like photos or designs, and in some cases, compensation for their labor. Before proposing the solution, volunteers learn that the solutions become the intellectual property of the startup posting the problem. The solution is then mass-produced for profit by the startup that posted the problem. 18 The process evolves into the crowdsourcing process after the enterprise mass produces and profits from the labor of the volunteers and the team. Entrepreneurs should consider that untapped masses have solutions for many issues for which agendas do not yet exist. Crowdsourcing can exploit those agendas and add to the tools used to stimulate personal creativity. This type of innovation is planned and strategically implemented for profit.

For example, Bombardier held a crowdsourced innovation contest to solicit input on the future of train interiors, including seat design and coach class interior. A corporate jury judged the submissions, with the top ten receiving computers or cash prizes. Companies are often constrained, however, by internal rules limiting open source or external idea sourcing, as they could be accused of “stealing” an idea. While crowdsourcing outside of software can be problematic, some products such as MakerBot’s 3D printers, 3DR’s drones, and Jibo’s Social Robot have used developer kits and “makers” to help build a community and stimulate innovation from the outside.

WORK IT OUT

A Crowdsourced Potato Chip

In an effort to increase sales among millennials, PepsiCo turned to crowdsourcing to get new flavor ideas for their Lay’s potato chips (called Walker’s in the UK). Their 2012 campaign, “Do Us a Flavor,” was so successful that they received over 14 million submissions. The winner was Cheesy Garlic Bread, which increased their potato chip sales by 8 percent during the first three months after the launch.

• What are some other products that would work well for a crowdsourced campaign contest?
• What items wouldn’t work well?

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is an online crowdsourcing platform that allows individuals to post tasks for workers to complete. In many instances, these tasks are compensated, but the payment can be less than one dollar per item completed. Mechanical Turk is one of the largest and most well-known crowdsourcing platforms, but there are a number of other more niche ones as well that would apply to smaller markets. In the case of innovation contests and outsourced tasks from corporations, those tasks may be hosted internally by the corporation.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is the generation of ideas in an environment free of judgment or dissension with the goal of creating solutions. Brainstorming is meant to stimulate participants into thinking about problem-solving in a new way. Using a multifunctional group, meaning participants come from different departments and with different skill sets, gives entrepreneurs and support teams a genuine chance to suggest and actualize ideas. The group works together to refine and prototype potential solutions to a problem.

Brainstorming is a highly researched and often practiced technique for the development of innovative solutions. One of the more successful proponents of brainstorming is the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). UNICEF faces unique problems of solving resource problems for mothers and children in underdeveloped nations. See how UNICEF practices brainstorming to solve problems including child survival, gender inclusion, refugee crises, education, and others.

The setting for a brainstorming session should remain as informal and relaxed as possible. The group needs to avoid standard solutions. All ideas are welcome and listed and considered with no censorship and with no regard to administrative restrictions. All team members have an equal voice. The focus of brainstorming is on quantity of ideas rather than on the ideal solution provided in every suggestion. A classic entrepreneurial brainstorming activity, as popularized by business software developer Strategyzer, is known as the “silly cow” exercise. Teams come up with ideas for new business models pertaining to a cow, with the results often outrageous, ranging from sponsored cows to stroking cows for therapeutic release. Participants are asked to identify some aspect of a cow and develop three business models around that concept in a short time period, typically two minutes or fewer. The activity is designed to get creative juices flowing.

Watch this video from ABC’s Nightline that shows how IDEO designed a new shopping cart for an example of a design process that involves brainstorming.

Storyboarding

Storyboarding is the process of presenting an idea in a step-by-step graphic format, as Figure 3.3.4 shows. This tool is useful when the entrepreneur is attempting to visualize a solution to a problem. The steps to the solution of a problem are sketched and hung in graphic format. Once the original graphic is placed, images of steps working toward a solution are added, subtracted, and rearranged on a continual basis, until the ultimate solution emerges in the ultimate graphic format. For many years, entrepreneurs have used this process to create a pre-visual for various media sequences.

Team Creativity

Team creativity is the process whereby an entrepreneur works with a team to create an unexpected solution for an issue or challenge. Teams progress through the same creative problem-solving process described already: clarify, ideate, develop, implement, and evaluate. The main advantage of team creativity is the collaboration and support members receive from one another. Great teams trust in other team members, have diverse members with diverse points of view, are cohesive, and have chemistry.

Team members should work in a stress-free and relaxing environment. Reinforcement and expansion of ideas in the team environment motivates the team to continually expand horizons toward problem solution. A small idea in a team may spark the imagination of a team member to an original idea. Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, once said, “The most important thing for you as an entrepreneur trying to build something is, you need to build a really good team. And that’s what I spend all my time on.” 19

ENTREPRENEUR IN ACTION

Taaluma Totes 20

Young entrepreneurs Jack DuFour and Alley Heffern began to notice the beautiful fabrics that came from the different countries they visited. The entrepreneurs thought about what could be done with the fabrics to create employment opportunities both in the country from which the fabric originated and in their home base of Virginia. They decided to test producing totes from the fabrics they found and formed Taaluma Totes (Figure 3.3.5). DuFour and Heffern also wanted to promote the production of these fabrics and help underserved populations in countries where the fabric originated maintain a living or follow a dream.

The team continued to test the process and gathered original fabrics, which they sent to Virginia to create totes. They trained individuals with disabilities in Virginia to manufacture the totes, thus serving populations in the United States. The entrepreneurs then decided to take 20 percent of their profits and make microloans to farmers and small business owners in the countries where the fabric originated to create jobs there. Microloans are small loans, below $50,000, which certain lenders offer to enterprising startups. These startups, for various reasons (they are in poor nations, at the poverty level), can’t afford a traditional loan from a major bank. The lenders offer business support to the borrower, which in turn helps the borrower repay the microloan. The microloans from Taaluma are repaid when the borrower is able. Repayments are used to buy more fabric, completing Taaluma’s desire to serve dual populations. If the process proved unsuccessful, the co-owners would revise the process to meet the plan’s requirements.

DuFour and Heffern now have fabrics from dozens of countries from Thailand to Ecuador. The totes are specialized with features to meet individual needs. The product line is innovated regularly and Taaluma Totes serves a dual purpose of employing persons with disabilities in Virginia and creating employment for underserved populations in other countries.

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Why More Creative People Should Be In Leadership Roles

Advertising legend David Droga, founder of Droga5 and now head of Accenture Song, explains why there should be more creatives in the C-suite — and...

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Prepare for the Worst With "The Flexible Method"

James Burstall is a high-powered entertainment producer, but he's also a guy who saved his business from disaster many times. His new book, The Flexible...

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How to Make Customers 28% Happier!

Multiple studies prove it: Sustainable products make people happier, and inspire them to spend more money. We go through the research with Thomas McKinlay of...

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How to Speak and Be Truly Understood

What you say is important, but how you say it matters even more. Tone coach Marshall Davis Jones, author of the new book "Tonal Influence",...

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Why LinkedIn Doesn't Want You Going "Viral"

LinkedIn has made some big changes to its algorithm. So what kind of posts does the system now reward? LinkedIn editor in chief Dan Roth...

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Find Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World

How do you find meaningful work? Start by recognizing what is meaningful. Bruce Feiler, author of "The Search", breaks down the lies we tell ourselves...

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Everything You Know About Dieting Is Wrong

Entrepreneurs need to take better care of themselves, but the health advice we hear is often so strange and conflicting. What's real? Adam Bornstein, author...

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Write Emails That People Actually Open

Expert copywriter Laura Belgray explains what you're doing wrong in your emails (and especially your newsletters), and how a few simple changes can boost open...

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Running Ads Inside Fortune Cookies?

How do you take a crazy idea, and turn it into an actual business? Matt Williams, the cofounder and Chief Cookie Officer of OpenFortune, explains...

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When Someone Has More Power Than You

How do you navigate tricky power dynamics at work? Leadership consultant (and author of the new book "Quick Confidence") Selena Rezvani has the answer. And...

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How to Talk About Hard Things

Our culture is full of difficult, important, hot-button issues — and even if you want to avoid them, you can't always. Sometimes you need to...

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How to Catch and Hold Someone's Attention

In this special 300th episode, Jason reveals some of the biggest lessons he's learned in communications — including a fascinating shift in podcasting, how to...

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"I Feel Behind in My Career. Help!"

This episode turns into a Sliding Doors special. Jason talks to a former colleague from 20 years ago, whose career didn't turn out the way...

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Why, Like, It's Good to Use Words Like "Like"

Our speech is full of likes, ums, and you knows, and that's not a bad thing. Sociolinguist Valerie Fridland, author of the new book "Like,...

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Are You Too Curious For A Traditional Career?

You don't want to be locked down. You'd rather have multiple sources of income. But how? Eloise Skinner, author of the new book "But Are...

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Very Real Talk About Launching A Startup

This is how founders should always talk! Chris Mears has been in startups for 20 years, and talks honestly about the challenges of getting his...

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How to Win Big in a Recession

Pat Flynn and Matt Garland of Smart Passive Income share what entrepreneurs need to do today to improve their business. This is a special bonus...

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His Product Wouldn't Sell... Until He Changed This

When the company Wilde Chips released its "chicken chips", nobody bought it. Then they changed the name, and the product started selling. Here's what happened,...

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Why This Brand Shares Its Customers' Worst Insults

The alcohol brand Soso Sake has blown up on TikTok (@sososakesoda). Its strategy? They film supermarket tastings, and post videos of people's worst reactions. This...

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Finding Your Company's Deep Purpose

What is your company's purpose? And how can you protect it, even as you grow? Harvard Business School professor Ranjay Gulati, who also hosts the...

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The 6-Step Plan to Growing A Small Business

Donald Miller made 537 mistakes in growing his business, and he did six things right. In this episode, the author of the new book "How...

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The 3 Most Important Questions, with Naveen Jain

Naveen Jain, serial entrepreneur and founder of Viome, believes that outsiders make the greatest disruptors. So how do you know when you're onto something? In...

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Hey, Leaders: Would You Follow You?

Leadership expert Logan Stout asks his clients that all the time. In this episode, he explains how leaders lose their way, and takes us into...

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How This Newsletter Writer Got 325,000 Subscribers

Lenny Rachitsky built a thriving newsletter about product development. Here's how he did it, step by step, and how he's now making more money from...

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It's Time to Think Differently About Productivity

To avoid burnout, we can't just think about task management. We need to also think about energy management... and how productivity doesn't just mean "getting...

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Perfectionism Can Be Your Advantage

Have you been told you're a perfectionist — and not in a good way? Psychotherapist Katherine Morgan Schafler says we have it all wrong, and...

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What People of 1923 Thought About Work In 2023

In 1923, a famous scientist predicted how work would change in 2023. Now, 100 years later, we can confirm: He was shockingly right… and yet...

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How to Set Boundaries: A Live Intervention!

Are you setting the right boundaries at work? In this episode, we pick apart a very real relationship between an employee and employer, and see...

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What Your Time Is Worth (and What to Pay to Outsource It)

Dan Martell says we don't hire people to grow our business. We hire people to buy back time out of our calendar. His new book...

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Looking to Buy A Business? These Are the Top 500!

Special announcement! Our annual Franchise 500 list is out, providing you with the best opportunities to buy a business. Which is right for you? Entrepreneur...

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How This Podcaster Gets 10 Million Downloads A Month

Jordan Harbinger (of the Jordan Harbinger Show) hosts a top podcast that makes big bucks. But how did he build it, and how can you...

Jordan Harbinger (of the Jordan Harbinger Show) hosts a top podcast that makes big bucks. But how did he build it, and how can you build your own profitable show? On this episode, he explains. This episode is sponsored by Target Accelerators. Learn more here: https://entm.ag/targetaccelerators

How I Won This Angry Customer’s Business Back

Here's a strategy for talking people down. And I have the emails to prove it!

Make A Big Impact As An Outsider

Kelly Erhart read about an interesting way to address climate change, but it was stuck in academia and didn't have the funding for real-world application....

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How This Guy Saved Barbie From Cultural Extinction

When Barbie sales were falling, the company asked Richard Dickson to help save the famous toy. He became its president and COO — and here,...

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Hack Your Bureaucracy!

Bureaucracy doesn't have to grind you down, says Marina Nitze, who has fixed government bureaucracies and now has lessons for us all. She's the co-author...

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From a Side Hustle to Employing 400 Women In Peru

Christina Fagan Pardy started Shit That I Knit as a side hustle. It's now a thriving knitwear business. She made a decision early to source...

Christina Fagan Pardy started Shit That I Knit as a side hustle. It's now a thriving knitwear business. She made a decision early to source sustainable materials and pay living wages to South American workers, and that has come with many costs, many challenges... and many rewards. Sponsor: Paper & Packaging Board. Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com

How Smart Passive Income's Cofounders Thrive Together

How do you build a great cofounder relationship? Pat Flynn and Matt Gartland have figured it out — and have built Smart Passive Income into...

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How FamousBirthdays.com Drives 25 Million Users A Month

FamousBirthdays.com looks simple — it just collects the birthdays of famous (and not-so-famous) people. But the business and thinking behind it is much more complex....

FamousBirthdays.com looks simple — it just collects the birthdays of famous (and not-so-famous) people. But the business and thinking behind it is much more complex. In this episode, a journey into the system behind one of the internet's most curious destinations.

Solve Big Problems By Solving Little Problems

How can a mission-oriented company help tackle gigantic global problems? By narrowing your focus. That's the message from Ryan Jeffrey, senior managing director at a...

How can a mission-oriented company help tackle gigantic global problems? By narrowing your focus. That's the message from Ryan Jeffrey, senior managing director at a VC firm and accelerator called gener8tor, which supports startups that focus on climate change. We discuss how to identify a small problem worth solving inside of a gigantic issue. Sponsor: Paper & Packaging Board. Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com

How to Delegate in Three Easy Steps

Are you bad at delegation? Just follow these three steps: Do it, document it, delegate it. That's the framework that Trainual founder (and operations expert)...

Are you bad at delegation? Just follow these three steps: Do it, document it, delegate it. That's the framework that Trainual founder (and operations expert) Chris Ronzio uses to teach people how to delegate. In this episode, he explains how to put it to use.

How to Promote Yourself, Even When You’re Uncomfortable

The first rule of talking about you: It’s not actually about you. Here's how to do it.

Why Quitting Something Can Be Your Best Move

Entrepreneurs love telling stories of perseverance. But that can be misleading. "In order to succeed, you're going to have to quit the things that aren't...

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The Climate Problem We All Have Wrong

Climate change is described as a “generational battle,” in which young people care and older people don’t. But this is a perfect example of how...

Climate change is described as a “generational battle,” in which young people care and older people don’t. But this is a perfect example of how we think about generations all wrong — and that has big consequences. If we can drop our assumptions about generational divides, we might just have a shot at solving some of the world’s most urgent problems. Sponsor: Paper & Packaging Board. Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com

What Happens When You Stop Checking Email Daily

Yes, it's possible to detach yourself from email! And it might even help you get more work done. Kim Kaupe, founder of Bright Ideas Only,...

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Chip Gaines: "Without Change, There's No Growth"

Change didn't come easy to Chip Gaines, who went through an "identity crisis" as he transformed from an anonymous home builder to one of the...

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Treat Your Brain and Your Team Sustainably

What does it mean to run a sustainable business? It's about building something that can last. In this episode we look at two unexpected "sustainable"...

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How to Predict the Future (But for Real)

Do you wish you could predict the future? Not in a street-corner psychic kind of way, but in a more personal, meaningful way — to...

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Spot the Opportunities That Others Don't

If you're struggling to solve a problem, you may be looking at it just 1% wrong. In this excerpt from Jason Feifer's new book "Build...

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Solving the Unsolvable Problems, with Russ Roberts

How do you solve the problems for which there are no right answers? That's what economist Russ Roberts set to find out in his new...

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How Values Can Shape Your Business Model

What does it really take to make a brand eco-friendly? For Shine Pet Food, it meant sweating every CO2 molecule—and making hard, expensive decisions. Sponsor:...

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Push Beyond Your Boundaries, with John Lee

How do you develop an entrepreneurial mindset, and then apply it to everything you do? Investor and author John Lee shares how he started from...

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How to Get the Information You Need

As business and local media shrinks, how can you find the information that helps you grow your business? Chris Roush, author of the book "The...

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Use the Right Words to Reach More People

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Why Is This Company A Web3 Company?

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Emails That Should Have Never Been Sent, with Nicole Lapin

Before you send your next email, listen to this! Jason opens his inbox and reads some of the worst pitches he's received, and then he...

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Sustainability Is A Business Opportunity

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The Four-Day Workweek Is Here

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Catholic entrepreneur launches business startup program for teenagers

April 20, 2024 Catholic News Agency News Briefs 1 Print

CNA Staff, Apr 20, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

When Luke Burgis moved to Silicon Valley to start a business, he never expected he would become a seminarian and then go on to launch entrepreneurship programs for Catholic students.

Burgis had attended NYU, worked on Wall Street, started several businesses in Silicon Valley, and moved to Las Vegas before deciding he wanted more meaning in his life. With the encouragement of a friend, he rekindled his Catholic faith. After five years in seminary, he ultimately discerned he would not become a priest, but he still found himself in need of deeper meaning in his work.

So he founded Catholic Entrepreneurship and Design Experience (CEDE, pronounced “seed”) in 2020 to help students across the country connect their working lives with their faith.

Four years later, CEDE is a thriving organization based at Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, D.C., with programs and educational materials across the world. Burgis is the entrepreneur-in-residence and assistant clinical professor of business at CUA. He has developed educational materials shared with Catholic schools and home-school communities in addition to teaching business classes at CUA.

“I didn’t understand how I could actually live out my values and be a Catholic in the business world that I was in, even after I’d had that reconversion experience,” Burgis said when asked what inspired him to found CEDE.

“But I knew that there was some gap that we had to close in Catholic education between the theoretical or the principles of Catholic social teaching and the way that it actually plays out on the ground, if you’re trying to start something,” he explained. “We launched CEDE to try to reintegrate these disciplines.”

This year, Burgis is launching a new project for CEDE — a summer entrepreneurship program for high school students. The 10-week virtual Startup Venture Challenge will teach high schoolers how to start a business.

“CEDE introduces students to basic principles of entrepreneurship within the context of Catholic social teaching and helps them understand that ultimately they are the entrepreneurs of their own lives, whether they ever start a business or not,” Burgis said.

“We’re trying to train young Catholics to think more like an entrepreneur, which means finding creative ways to solve problems or to see solutions where other people only see problems,” he said. “We think that that’s really important for all Catholics, period, and that if we had a more entrepreneurial Church, we would have a more adaptive and creative Church.”

But being a “Catholic entrepreneur” isn’t necessarily about starting a business, Burgis noted.

“Our goal here is not really to create more business owners,” he explained. “Our goal is to help more young Catholics in Catholic schools be equipped and confident to go out into the world, whatever their vocation is.”

Burgis wanted to connect what he learned about business with Catholic teaching.

“[At NYU] I just learned: ‘Here’s what profit is. Profit is good. Pursue it,’” he recalled. “Most of my classmates simply wanted to make as much money as they could.”

“When I left seminary, I realized that there was a real disintegration or gap between what I had learned at my Catholic schools … and what things actually look like in practice when you’re actually out there in the world trying to do things,” he explained.

CEDE’s model of education is about “experiential learning,” “creative problem-solving,” and independence and “differs” from the rules-based form of education many American students are accustomed to, Burgis said.

“That’s much of what being an entrepreneur feels like,” he said of the model. “You’re not given a roadmap, you’re not told what to do, you have to figure things out, and you have to make decisions and take responsibility for those decisions.”

Burgis said it will feel like “a challenge.”

“You’re being challenged, being given this mission,” he said. “We want to empower the students to accomplish that mission by working together and finding creative ways to solve problems on their own without being told how to do it. We actually want to make them a little uncomfortable.”

Students don’t need to have business ideas to join, as the first three weeks will be spent building up an idea. The full schedule involves a discernment stage, launching, testing, and then a resources and community stage.

“We want them to feel what it feels like to have a fire ignited within themselves, to exercise their own creativity, to take ownership of it, to take total responsibility, and to be proud of that, and to be able to serve others through their gifts and talents,” Burgis said.

The program runs from June 10 to Aug. 12 and is fully virtual and amenable to the students’ work schedules. The cost is $250, with scholarships available. Applications are open for teenagers ages 14–18.

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