“Who wants to change the world?” Director for the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Ted D. Zoller asks a group of undergraduate students in a Duke University classroom this question in regards to their understanding of entrepreneurship and innovation.
He challenges Duke students to think outside the box, and focus on being good entrepreneurs. Students are requested to challenge their notion on what makes a good startup, and the old way of thinking versus the new way of thinking about startups.
For instance, the Superpedestrian startup that launched the Copenhagen Wheel thought well about the evolution of pedestrian transportation. They developed a model similar to that of the phases of human evolution that transpired thousands of years ago.
Zoller notes that it is a peculiar, yet exciting time in the fields of tech and commerce because of the wealth of innovation. Due to the high volume of distribution channels for consumer products and services, the current generation is at an ultimate advantage in merging into and driving a startup the business world.
He also encourages young entrepreneurs to spend less time thinking and have a just-do-it mentality. Once your creativity starts to flow, and you brainstorm on how to build a solution to a problem, you can achieve great entrepreneurship.
Finding out what the customer wants is very important. Whatever compels them to buy a service or product is the greatest reward because not only can you sell to them, but segment them into a special group that buys your product.
Being a successful entrepreneur means having rigor. Entrepreneurship is a state of mind according to Zoller. If you have a rigorous mindset, you will be able to discover what you don’t know and need to improve upon as a startup. He says good entrepreneurs are obsessive about what they want to change.
When you are receptive to change, you can begin to solve large problems within your startup organization. As long as you adopt the concept of always striving to be better, you will be better at running your organization and achieve better results.
