One of the good things about the blog is the people you meet (virtually). I got an email recently from Andrew Canton (based in London). Here is an excerpt from one of his posts on confronting change:
To say that we are confronting change on an unprecedented scale cannot even begin to describe the disruptions facing us in the coming decade. From the continued growth and pervasiveness of the Internet and the resulting changes in consumer attitudes and expectations towards business and government to the constant introduction of new innovations and technologies across countless industries we are living through one of the most momentous times in the last century.
In a rapidly changing environment, there are those that proactively rally their resources in a quest for “opportunities” across new frontiers while others only respond reactively to “threats” while trying to protect their existing dominion.
True leadership (usually closely followed by economic success) can only be found amongst the first group as the other scrambles and struggles to eat from the leftovers.
Here is what Andrew has to say about entrepreneurs:
An entrepreneur can never start a venture with a business plan premised on threats. He/she will always have to start a business in the pursuit of new opportunities as no investor will be prepared to fund them otherwise.
So what’s so important about having entrepreneurs pursuing these opportunities? Well there’s one simple prevailing fact about entrepreneurs: in order to succeed they know that they must create something that is somewhat or significantly better than what is currently available because customers will otherwise have absolutely no reason to flock to their products or services. Entrepreneurs are the ones who risk to dream the future, who have the courage to succeed, the ones who must have the motivation and energy to make it work because there isn’t a nice ‘cushion’ to sustain them if things don’t work out – they have to make it work. Naturally not all entrepreneurs will approach their business in this spirit and may also fall in the ‘play to play’ category but the odds are that most will.
