Delusion is a belief or impression held despite it contradicts reality and rational arguments. Typically a symptom of a mental disorder.
Entrepreneurship is an activity of setting up a business where the entrepreneur takes financial risks in the hope of a profit.
In times when entrepreneurship can become an alternative to a fashion statement, calling oneself one may be similar to bragging wearing fashionable clothes. It is the cool factor which may not be cool looking at cause-effect dynamics.
Entrepreneurs are separated from normal people because they tend to have unconventional ideas. Frustrated by the traditional banking system – you have a field of FinTech, traditional education – EduTech, the efficiency of current energy supply – CleanTech. There are many fields where ideas to improve are welcome.
Normally, you come up with an idea and work on it.
The simple truth about ideas is they are idealistic while the reality is real. Ideas are not real that is why they tend to approach delusion rather than tangible progress. People spending time on reading, discussing and speculating things are often rich in ideas and opinions. A good thing to have.
Unfortunately, ideas tend to ignore practical reality. The religion of success is seducing young minds and spinning them into a loop with continual admiration without a practical consequence. It means that nothing comes from ideas and ideas stay as ideas. It does not become a product or service.
Anyone can have ideas on how to change the world. However, if one fails to organize one’s life, then many have doubts about the practical side of more complex things.
You cannot draw a triangle without a line and you cannot produce a line without dots. In the same way, it is very unlikely to change the way millions of people operate if one cannot change oneself. Entrepreneurs tend to want to revolutionize something.
So technically, and traditionally, having an idea approaches a delusional state if it does not match reality. This is a mental disorder because you see what is not there. Entrepreneurship is a hard and often lonely thing. Without a talent of executing processes and selling products to the public, the whole idea leads to a well-known unfortunate result – unsuccessful attempt. A failure.
Without personal resilience and knowledge, such an unhappy ending will crush entrepreneurs who tried something unconventional or give them another reason to succeed. While small minority will claim the excitement of being entrepreneurs – the reality is dark, hard and promising because you may be pursuing what is not there but can be. Many entrepreneurs will retain the tendency of a disaster. However, those who succeed – succeed well. They succeed partly due to resilience and logistics of things.
From another standpoint, an entrepreneur is just a significantly less stable version of a businessman. In well-established businesses, things become predictable. You make something out of something and trade something into something. Time and effort bring you money. Innovation or any novelty is excluded from this equation.
Businessmen and entrepreneurs operate on the same ground, just entrepreneurship is a less stable one.
It is a good thing to recognize the moment of practicality which is lacking when entrepreneurship becomes nearly fashion-like. To avoid delusion in entrepreneurship, what you need is to realize that entrepreneurship is a practical thing. Practical, risky and hopeful.
Within a delusional state under the seductive influence of ideas, people forget to question how the result of the ideas can be useful, and most importantly – the skill set supporting the idea.
Production, distribution and consumption have their subsets of technical sophistication. Making a product requires some effort. Then making the product available and desired to use.
“All ideas are great but is it useful and can you sell it?” makes the whole thing more sobering.
Entrepreneurs under personal delusion may ignore practical elements to satisfy this cycle. Seeing the summit of the mountain but ignoring the mountain is not a good strategy. Making a product or service is less idealistic than many would think. It definitely requires knowledge and practical skill to make an idea tangible and ready for distribution and use.
Buzz words that revolutionize the industry providing cutting-edge technology to disrupt the current market and change the landscape of how businesses acquire talents – is a beautiful phrasing and also verbose if we judge from a practical standpoint. Recruiting app is what intended to be said.
The moment delusion in entrepreneurial types is recognized, first, by verbosity and, second, by lack of practical grounding. If you are aware of questology as a metaphor for logic, deduction and expansive thinking you will quickly find flaws to disarm entrepreneurial verbosity with nothing in it:
How is it made?
How will it work?
What is the segment of the market you will fulfill?
Who will be your competitors?
Answers require knowledge. If actual knowledge fails to serve as a tool, then delusion has been revealed. Good to know for an entrepreneur before pursuing ideas.
If knowledge does not back up your ideas – you are operating on dangerous ground.
So when it comes to the moment of entrepreneurship and your participation in it you will know that knowledge capital you can rally around will influence the success of your idea. Ideas without connections to any knowledge – welcome to a delusion land.
