{"id":498859,"date":"2010-04-01T04:21:18","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T08:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xconomy.com\/?p=71225"},"modified":"2010-04-01T04:21:18","modified_gmt":"2010-04-01T08:21:18","slug":"don%e2%80%99t-listen-to-your-critics-vcs-are-not-enough-and-other-lessons-from-breakthrough-idea-forum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/498859","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Listen To Your Critics, VCs Are Not Enough, and Other Lessons from Breakthrough Idea Forum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
ideas<\/a>, people<\/a>, Analysis<\/a><\/div>\n

\t\t\"What's<\/a>
\n\t\tGregory T. Huang wrote:<\/strong><\/p>\n

This week, I\u2019ve learned a lot about game-changing ideas and how to think about making them work. Like anything meaningful, some of the lessons will take more time and effort to sink in. But here are five lessons to take away from our Xconomy Forum (\u201cWhat\u2019s Your Breakthrough Idea\u201d) held at the University of Washington on Monday<\/a>:<\/p>\n

1. Not everything is, or should be, a breakthrough idea<\/strong>. Nick Hanauer of Second Avenue Partners<\/a> framed the whole discussion by pointing out that entrepreneurs have different motivations: some might want to make a lot of money whether or not they change the world; others may want to change the world whether or not they make much money. Either approach is perfectly valid; just be true to yourself.<\/p>\n

2. Venture capital alone won\u2019t sustain breakthrough ideas<\/strong>. VCs don\u2019t fund new ideas or the invention process, said Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures<\/a>. Instead, they fund \u201czillions of \u2018me-too\u2019 ideas,\u201d he said. Which is why Myhrvold is trying to create a new \u201cinvention capital\u201d marketplace—and why his company has awarded $315 million to individual inventors in the U.S. and has deals with more than 100 universities to support the invention process.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Hanauer told me last week that most VCs don\u2019t take risks anymore<\/a> because the VC business model rewards those who can simply avoid a major screw-up. \u201cThe business model is toxic to risk-taking, because it\u2019s so unbelievably profitable for the partners just if it doesn\u2019t fail,\u201d he said. (Of course, VCs will tell you that their model isn\u2019t broken—because it isn\u2019t.)<\/p>\n

3. The proper mindset of breakthrough-idea thinking is to be \u201cnarrowly insane but not a total whack job,\u201d<\/strong> as Myhrvold put it. By narrowly insane, he meant that inventors need to be crazy enough to think they can do something unprecedented, without being delusional. Put a different way, it\u2019s helpful to be a \u201chigh-functioning contrarian,\u201d as Hanauer says Jeff Bezos has described him. (\u201cA low-functioning contrarian means you\u2019re in prison,\u201d Hanauer adds.) In other words, try to see the world differently, and imagine what would happen if things were arranged in other ways. Amazon.com, for example, delivered more than 10 times the selection of a brick-and-mortar store at a cost savings of more than 25 percent. That\u2019s the kind of thinking that can transform an entire industry—in this case, those who sell books (for starters).<\/p>\n

4. Part of being a good entrepreneur means not listening to your critics, or the entrenched interests<\/strong>. As Lee Hood from the Institute for Systems Biology<\/a> and Integrated Diagnostics<\/a> put it succinctly (I\u2019m paraphrasing), people have seriously doubted him six or seven times in the past—and he\u2019s been right every time. (He didn\u2019t say how long it took to be proven right.) But the basic message was that if you want to change the world, you will meet with resistance—the people and companies in power don\u2019t want things to change—but don\u2019t let that deter you. Hanauer stressed the importance of …Next Page »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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ideas, people, Analysis Gregory T. Huang wrote: This week, I\u2019ve learned a lot about game-changing ideas and how to think about making them work. Like anything meaningful, some of the lessons will take more time and effort to sink in. But here are five lessons to take away from our Xconomy Forum (\u201cWhat\u2019s Your Breakthrough […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1747,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-498859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-news","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}