Idea Management: Supporting Business Growth by Investing in People with Erik Gross (1/2)

Entrepreneurs have no shortage of ideas. But how do they know if a new business idea is actually a good idea? Our guest this week would advise seeking fast feedback during the ideation process to save time, preserve energy, and remain focused on delivering value to your intended audience.

This week in episode 294 we’re rejoined by Erik Gross to discuss some of the lessons learned from his recent entrepreneurial pursuits. We’ll talk through how the entrepreneur can go from ideation to taking action. This includes generating ideas, capturing ideas, scrutinizing or testing ideas, and deciding to abandon certain ideas. We also discuss how the entrepreneur, business owner, or manager can invest in employees even before they start work by making roles occupiable. And it starts with putting all the pre-requisites in place to write good job descriptions.

Original Recording Date: 09-07-2024

Topics – Entrepreneurs and Ideas, Focus and Subjecting Ideas to Scrutiny, Sources of Feedback, Scaling Business Opportunities with Automation, Entrepreneurial Succession Planning and Attitudes, Investing in People and Making Roles Occupiable, Thoughts on Employee Onboarding, Transferring Duties to Others

2:29 – Entrepreneurs and Ideas

• Erik Gross is a developer, an architect, and an entrepreneur who has been very active in the tech space over the last 10-15 years.
  • This is a return visit for Erik to our show. You can find our previous discussions with him in the following episodes:
    • Episode 267 – A Theme of Learning with Erik Gross (1/3)
    • Episode 268 – Ownership through Failures: An Entrepreneur’s Take on Difficult Decisions with Erik Gross (2/3)
    • Episode 269 – Monetize Yourself: Leveraging Your Most Valuable Knowledge with Erik Gross (3/3)
• Though we did talk about entrepreneurship a little in episode 268, does the entrepreneur naturally get a bunch of ideas to chase, or is there more science behind it?
  • Erik knows many entrepreneurs and says in general the entrepreneur has a plethora of new ideas, and this can be both good and bad.
  • Erik learned the idea itself is less valuable than executing on an idea, but he still gets excited when he gets what seems like a great idea.
  • “If you’re paying attention, if you’re interested in helping people, if you’re interested in starting and growing things…you’ll have lots of ideas. Is it going to withstand a scrutiny from the marketplace? Will people pay for it? Is it something that has legs? There are a lot of other questions. But yeah, the ideas…most entrepreneurs…they are full of something, but generally ideas are what they are full of.” – Erik Gross
• Do most entrepreneurs keep a list of ideas they will go back and reference?
  • Erik, like many technologists, is a nerd for tools. He uses Obsidian to capture ideas.
  • When an idea hits, Erik has been known to pull over if driving to capture the idea and get it out of his head. Otherwise the idea might be lost, which is a terrible feeling.
  • Even if people make lists of ideas, it does not mean they are going to execute on any of them. Periodic review of your ideas is a good practice because something you jotted down a while back may be related to what you are currently doing.
  • Nick says keeping a list of ideas makes sense whether we are an entrepreneur or just a technologist, a people leader, etc. These ideas can be for things we wa