Are you Cut Out for Business?
To sell or not to sell – do you want to build a business, or get out while the going’s good?
Before you, as a technology innovator, move to develop your idea into a business, step back and think about what you are doing and why. Do you really want to move from being a creative innovator to be a business person with the very different entrepreneurial and business mindsets needed to be successful?
The rewards can be high but success requires strong communication and soft skills; the ability to handle personnel issues; marketing and sales acumen; and close attention to legal and financial details. As well as dealing with a minefield of other challenges.
It is an unfortunate fact but very many new businesses fail. The impact and cost to your family and home life will be colossal, and your intellectual property may never be taken up.
If you really do want to go ahead, then the UK Innovation Initiative was set up by people who have made it the hard way. UKII aims to help point you to the issues you must face and also to focus messaging about your innovation. We also look to help you to align closely with the corporate business mindset in general, and business "pain points" in particular.
The cultural and communications chasm between you as a technical innovator and the corporate end-user business environment is huge. Very few make it across. Before you make the decision to take that leap, there’s a lot to consider.
The real question you have to ask yourself is: are you, as a technical innovator, able to make the transition to being a business manager, learning a new suite of skills that will take you further away from the technology? And, more importantly, would you want to? Technologists-turned-business people often find that the business grind stifles creativity. If you do decide to make a business of your technology it would be well worth considering if you are the right person to run the show.
