We have all heard stories about setting up office space at the old shed (that also housed your grandparents CD recorder) or in a shamble stock garage at the back of grandmothers family home (which has been around for generations). This was quite the norm for entrepreneurs during the 60s,70s and even the 90s! We all know that Google started in a garage, Amazon and Apple in a shed and Atlassian (now Australia’s most valued listed software company) at the back of a university tutorial (Yes – one of the TWO founders was in fact at UNSW and typing away on what seemed to be his Macbook and not paying attention to class at all).
Today, everyone has ambitions to network, collaborate and identify commercial opportunities. The environment is very different today than it was back then (and even different to yesterday) and a lot of books across the Harvard Business School press hold the connotation that future business innovations and competitions will not be between companies but between business networks!
What does this tell us? Is higher education only for those who wish to pursue a flashy corporate job title, associated email signature and the subset of politics that ensues? Or is university a breeding ground for those who yearn to find their true purpose in life? Or, even better, is it a place to forge relationships, find the A (and B team) and traverse the dynamic world of startups! Well, it all depends really, on core principles of what you want to build and the nature of the industry you want to veer into – as all are different (with information flows in abundance). Is it a NewCo that operates as a strategic innovation to CoreCo or is it something that is taking a completely different trajectory and following the tenets of Value Chain Evolution or Disruptive Innovation.
A single arrow is easily broken, but not ten in a bundle.
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (Srila Prabhupada – ISKON)
Before anyone makes this decision though, it’s important to note the following facts and think strong and hard about these elements!
- Start-ups cannot really forecast the pace of change as this is multivariate and many emergent forces internal and external are at play. Hard work always bring results, so forecasts and business plans must always be dynamic to cater for variability. You cannot commit to long term leases for example, nor can you project headcount, revenue dynamics, expense ratios (whilst you can budget for it – you can practically track and see how much from budget you are front running or under running). Therefore, whilst you should have a basic business plan – it must be scalable and a living breathing thing! A project framework model is required, one I describe here and one that will (if embraced wholeheartedly), result in rapid levels of innovation and the reciprocity to emergent strategy within, across and beyond enterprises.
- Where will you host your office space? Will you employ a distributed team model or will you undertake investment in bricks and mortar office suites? Or will you actually resort to WeWork like setups and incubator hubs where you are provided with office space for a small fee and be able to mingle with other like minded individuals. Who knows, some new collaboration might emerge from that itself! I must say though, the WeWork model will either vertically integrate with real estate agents or operate in niched spaces – there just wasn’t enough barriers to entry to make this thrive as an industry it ought to be and hence the recent commentary on the profitability and viability of WeWork as a whole!
- What communication tools and team behaviours will you nurture? Will you use chain of command or an emergent strategy? I talk a lot about augmented intelligence which is where things are headed. Another article relevant here is this one where I explain the clear Rise With The Machines (where we create specialised automation capabilities and AI in focused sets). I also go into a bit of detail on how I implement CRM for example in one of my commercial endeavours in this article.
- With respect to team collaboration methodology and framework; an excellent team based approach to bridge the circles between virtual and physical teams to keep them engaged, innovative, efficient, focused, self-organising and autonomous is delineated in the Bioteaming Manfiesto. The bio teaming framework is appropriate. This framework is proven to create self-organising teams based on fundamental (and simple) rules from Nature’s teams (whom have survived millions of years of evolution). This is biomimicry at its best – i.e. to drive true augmented intelligence and amplify the human capital input into any system!
- Do you have capacity to stimulate your business operations or implement basic elements of gamification? Lets face it, we all have played games, and its proven to create new neurons (through neuroplasticity) that allows one to be creative yet instinctive at the same time. For companies that are spinning off a NewCo from CoreCo, immersion in business simulations are crucial across change management, operations, project management, operations management, collaborative working, strategic planning and all other activities that will define your value chain. It is crucial that you bridge the ‘digital-era leadership development gaps‘ between the three circles of BUSINESS & STRATEGY, EXECUTION, CHANGE & TEAMS in controlled and experimental environments that allows constant iteration adaptation of emergent strategy. This will bring together diverse and disparate concepts across neuroscience, blended learning and facilitated reflection. It allows you to complete the full learning pyramid, testing your business ambitions in a manner that allows you to embrace all roles that are required in NewCo creation from CoreCo (to learn more about this, please read my academic journal paper publication which summarises the principals of the forgetting, borrowing and learning challenge here). Another article that is relevant is this one here as I delineate how Knowledge Management should be conducted in a networked and digital era.
“The Main Thing Is To Keep The Main Thing The Main Thing!”
“Live out of your imagination, not your history”“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities”
Stephen Covey : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Covey
So when you are thinking of what to do, what kind of business to start, remember, that you are operating in a crowded space and you have to identify non-consuming contexts and deliver innovations to these markets to really strike a chord! To learn more on how to do this, read this article where I contextually describe this challenge!