Recently I was eating a great breakfast cooked by my friend Alex and we were discussing startups and entrepreneurship in East Tennessee and we started discussing “original” startups vs buying existing businessnes or franchises and the bias in the start up community that exists against the later.

Granted Alex and I both have experience in the consumer Internet startup space, but I do find it curious that there an unspoken bias against those that do not have the genisus but just the execution.  Curious since execution is prized over creation since “ideas are a dime a dozen” yet we look down our noses at those who buy their ideas vs pulling them out of thin air.  Even though pulling them out of thin air is an important skill.

So where they fit in the ecosystem?

How do we learn from these entrepreneurs who aren’t always obsessed with technology, yet often produce results?
Where do we engage with them?

What do you think?

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I’ve been using posterous as my way to save thoughs, ideas, statements, pictures, etc that I like.

Until I figure out a sweet way to pull my posterous into this blog – I’d recommend you check it out at

http://gavinbaker.posterous.com/

I ran across this excellent video yesterday while checking out some post designthinking.ideo.com IDEO’s blog.  The video is of Tim Brown, CEO IDEO answering 5 Questions at BusinessWeek.  He talks a bit about IDEO and then shifts to talk about design thinking.  He breaks design thinking down into 3 1/2 keys which I’ve listed below.

Check out the video and then I challenge you to think of 3 1/2 ways to change what you do.

3 1/2 Keys to design thinking

1. Think of everything as a project. It gives finite boundaries.

2. Go look at the world for insights instead of imaging imagining that you already know all the choices.

3. Make Ideas tangible. aka prototyping as quickly as possible and test it in the real world.
3 1/2. Be able to tell stories about your ideas. Ideas fail inside organizations because people don’t understand it, and if they don’t understand it, they won’t get behind the idea.

3 Ways to change

1.think about my work in project form.  In the past I’ve looked at the whole picture instead of just focusing on a 2 week or specific section.

2. I’m going to try to walk into situations assuming I don’t know all the pieces.  By nature I tend to look at the cards dealt and figure out the best scenario with what I’ve got – that’s more of the MacGyver mentality.  Instead I’m going to try to see solutions to problems by asking “what if?”

3.  I’m going to learn how to tell stories better.  Some people are naturally great at it, as you can guess by my last post about speaking in public – I’ve got a lot to learn.