Creativity

"In modern global markets it is not so much financial capacity, but creative capability that is the key to success."

Stephen Boyko and Aron A. Gottesman, Small is Beautiful, The National Interest

According to a 2004 Small Business Administration study, entrepreneurs and concept stage companies are the principal creators of new systems (innovation) in the USA. In other words, America has led because its people have been free to pursue their hopes of becoming better than they are, to take risks: and to do it in their own peculiar fashions.

Our job at CFI is to help prepare innovation and its creators for success in institutional capital and commercial markets. Our job is to emotionally support entrepreneurs' creativity, champion their "systems," and break down barriers.

The work is challenging: experience teaches how ferociously fate can conspire against change. The ultimate "operator," Machiavelli, once lamented that nothing was so difficult as to implement a new system. He noted that while the old system's beneficiaries were passionate advocates of the status quo, none championed the new because there were not yet beneficiaries.

An understanding that every mutatuion, however odd, carries a chance of something wonderful to smooth the way for future generations is a prerequisite for our work. Psychological strength to persevere in the face of failure and the ability to thrive in uncertain envionments are also required. Uncertainty, not risk, characterizes the work. Chaos theory, rather than risk analysis and linear B-school modeling, is the more appropriate tool.

Thereafter, few rules apply. Sometimes, it is merely seeing: the best ideas may be "obvious." Who, for example, has consciously noted that "doors, pots, windows, and wheels are most useful where there is nothing," although the observation was recorded more than a millennium ago? Sometimes, it is planning: "the person who does not consider what is still far off will not avoid being alarmed by what is near at hand," also written a millennium ago. Sometimes, it is execution: "any violently executed plan is superior to a perfect plan," Patton once observed. Sometimes, it is portion control: "the difference between a drug and a poison is the dose," Paracelsus said.

Often, it is focus on a few key things: the center of gravity, as Clausewitz calls it.

On Best Practice

The "Best Practice Manual" for entrepreneurial activity is not yet written.

Lao Tzu stated, "A way can be a guide, but not a fixed path" one thousand years before Deming cautioned that . . .

"Reduction of complexity should wait until the aim of the system is clear."

In undertaking the journey more than 300 times at CFI, we have learned little compared to what there is to learn.

Nevertheless, we take pride in knowing we are contibuting to the "Manual."