(2020-09-04) Perez Breva A Society Of Tinkerers

Luis Perez-Breva: A Society of Tinkerers. (Epsilon Theory)

Note today by Luis Perez-Breva, author of Innovating: A Doer’s Manifesto (MIT Press: 2017), and MIT Faculty Director of Innovation Teams Enterprise.

We may have perfected the wrong economy; we’ve got one that struggles to protect the long-term survival of the species. But we can fix that.

put energy into building a Society of Tinkerers … with just enough good ol’ American ingenuity to invent our way to an economy in which greed is once again aligned with survival. (Tinkering)

There’s got to be a way to help humans help humans that’s compatible with making money, or we’re doomed.

We need to share hands-on knowledge with society so that anyone who wants to tinker with problems can tinker with problems. We need an alternative to the zero-sum speculation that poses as celebration of entrepreneurship.

every year in the United States, we expend about $75 billion to back new venture formation, with odds of success hovering around 1 in 10. That’s quite a “death rate.” By the way, every year nearly five times as much goes to philanthropy.

Does anyone really believe that this kind of “entrepreneurship” can get us out of our current crisis?

venture investing and an obvious desire in America to put money into worthy causes, I can’t help but wonder why we separate the two.

What if we could reinvigorate American ingenuity while creating breathing room for a kind of entrepreneurship intent on solving problems that matter and building great companies rather than just selling startups?

There are now at least three ways to play “entrepreneur,” but not all lead to the economic progress we now need. I call them: industrialist or businessperson (let’s call it Entrepreneur 1.0); Speculate-ship, as I mentioned at the beginning; and Tinkerer—the newest one and the basis for the society of tinkerers. Tinkerer is only now emerging. It longs for entrepreneurship with meaning

The key characteristic these Entrepreneur 1.0 people share is that they are driven to work on something they are curious about, care about doing, or think they are good at.

Entrepreneur 1.0-built organizations were built to last. Alnylam, Square, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as older examples such as Bloomberg, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon

Today there are still great examples of individuals set on the ways of Entrepreneur 1.0: Leila Phirajhi of Revivemed; Mariana Matus of BioBot analytics; Harry Schechter of the IoT company TempAlert; Ferran Adrià, the Spanish chef; Alexandra Wright-Gladstein of Ayar Labs; David Brewster and Tim Healy of EnerNOC

Most prevalent in the past few decades has been doing a startup — or more accurately Speculate-ship. The goal: found a startup born to be sold — and exit before it exits you. Built to Flip

&Speculate-ship is fueled by Lean Startup, Design Thinking, the 24 steps of Disciplined Entrepreneurship, and the Startup Owner’s Manual.* Strong disagree.

Back to the question Harvard students asked: “How do I find an idea?” It’s not really about “wealth” or “speed” — all approaches could lead to wealth, and speed is tremendously variable. Snap and Tesla Motors both went public about seven years after they were founded — the software startup required five times more investment than the car manufacturer.

The way to choose is to determine how you want to play it out

But what about the crises we face today? What about the doing good and doing well option? That’s the path I’ve called Tinkerer

Tinkering comes first, before an idea gels. That’s how Thomas Edison worked.

We don’t need more minimally viable products. We need more maximally viable organizations attacking big problems with a tinkerer’s mindset and a capitalist’s goals.

(Wow that's some major hand-waving without details.)