Praxis – Innovator (was Author/ Inventor)
Most Comfortable, Productive Phase
Business: Early Stage – StartUp, Inception, Napkin Sketches, Infancy, Survival, New Venture, Creativity, Entrepreneurial, Inception
- Many Authors (and Builders) make a career out of entrepreneuring, always starting and launching businesses, never sticking around after a few years, not part of a corporation or larger firm.
Project: Definition, justification, design
Position Types
- entrepreneurs
- architects
- visionaries
- initiate many startups with VC help
- authors who do remain in large firms are the idea originators of most new
- business units
- many seek the safety of corporate
- research settings where they are free to explore ideas
Works Best
- initially and only initially
- Where an innovative idea is championed and developed and where the business is initiated.
- In nurturing climates for the authors of ideas, innovations, and new institutions
being creative - constantly offering hypotheses and ideas to everyone around them
- when they and their idea have little organizational grounding
- more comfortable working outside the processes of the large firm
Trouble Spots
- unhappy when they are not permitted to express their creativity
- when others fail to rally to their ideas
- Builders and Authors are rarely found running franchises or mainstreet businesses.
- Not satisfied in traditional roles in the medical or legal professions, in education, or in the delivery of services.
- author working in the extend stage will not perform well – Customers of mature products look for assistance and understanding, not an author’s new ideas.
Theme & Focus
“My big idea is…”
- Innovation
- vision
- abstractions
- entrepreneurial
- breaking the rules
- rewriting the rulebook
Character
- Explorers
- Have the big ideas, dive in and champion an idea that nobody else has thought about before
- Always have fresh new ideas
- Small percentage champion those ideas year after year, until proven correct
- risk takers
- relatively unstructured
- revolutionary
- bold
- hold a stubborn persistence to their own ideas
- generally disdain details, financial controls, and aggressive marketing
- personality traits that are strengths work against success later in the evolution of the business unit
Strength(s)
- ability to conceive and champion an idea
- strong initiators – success makers as
- opposed to success followers
- clarity of vision
- strength of conviction
Limits
- poor at leading
- poor at communicating
- poor at delegating
- frequently disruptive to teams due to narcissist driven competition for best idea
- won’t let go of idea (classic challenge facing many business units – startup or large firm is the succession plan of the original author entrepreneur)
- hard to understand
- can’t let go of control
- get distracted by new ideas before existing ideas are “fully baked”
Seen by others as:
- overconfident
- unrealistic about the business appeal of their ideas
- scattered
- disruptive
- controlling
- “just frivolous idea guys who will never amount to anything”
Innovator Perceptions
| Praxis | Sees Them As: |
|---|---|
| Innovators | Perfectly logical and relatable |
| Builders | Unstructured, undisciplined, impractical, disruptive, controlling, egotistical |
| Capitalizers | Just frivolous idea guys who will likely never amount to anything |
| Captains | Just frivolous idea guys who will likely never amount to anything |
| Extenders | Interesting, but too risky. Lots of good ideas, but impractical. |
