Disruptive Thinking & Entrepreneurship

Where to find the knowledge you need to make a startup?

In other entries we have talked about the 5 entrepreneur’s needs: technical knowledge, access to experts, business knowledge, financing and security about the paternity of their ideas. But, what exactly the needs to cover are about and how to satisfy them? That is what we are going to develop in this series of posts. Welcome to disruptive thinking applied to entrepreneurship’ world!

Let’s imagine you have an idea, and you begin to think about developing it. For instance, I have an idea about cultivating “X” under certain conditions. Let’s suppose I am an biologist and very good at what I do… but in order to structure, define and validate my idea I would need to know about genetics, about a specific type of crop, about how to collect data with IoT devices or through drones and then process the images , about how to analyze data with artificial intelligence……, but I know my stuff, not these different topics. And not only I need general information but also to know what is the latest thing that is being done in these field.

Where to find such depth technical information to really serve my needs? There are several possible options:

  • Acquaintances. It is the best of all, if you are lucky enough to be at university, business, or research environment, related to the topic you are looking for, and if you have the possibility of moving between different circles and fields of knowledge. Perhaps you had a friend who has been working in a thesis about the topic you are looking for! But unfortunately, that’s not always the case. And the more topics you have to validate, the worse.

 

Scientific knowledge sources
  • On the Internet. Yes, it really is a fantastic source, and “everything” is on the Internet… but where? Pick any topic; the browser will offer you millions of ordered responses. You start reading the first twenty (skipping all the advertising entries) and find the first informative information. Very interesting, but once you’ve read 10, the rest starts to be more of the same. Well, you already know a little about the subject, but what you are looking for would be in the position two million and ….; of course, the chances that you have of finding it are nil.

Do not forget when reading this, that you are looking for information on topics in which you are not an expert at all…, so, when doing the searches you are illiterate in the matter

  • Thirdly, you can go to scientific repositories, which are growing in number and contain information on the latest research projects carried out. But of course, they are scientific repositories designed for experts in the field and, normally, you must be accredited as such expert and with specific access to information. Many times, the repositories are an indexed base on the projects carried out, but there is really no access to the generated documentation.

Let’s remember that the entrepreneur we are talking about may be an expert in his field, but he is a layman in the matters he needs to investigate. So, even knowing which projects have been done on a subject and who has done them -in case you knew which directories to search and how to access them-, doesn’t give you the information you need.

  • Let’s go to more traditional ways: training. On almost any subject it is possible to find courses -face-to-face or online- with varied durations and any cost. And they are a magnificent source, although, the level of knowledge is directly proportional to the duration and cost. You won’t know if its content is going to cover your need , until you start it

It is worth remembering that, many times, the entrepreneur needs to validate ideas from various scientific and technological fields and if he has to take courses on each of the collateral topics, only the validation phase can be crazy and one of the most important reasons for withdrawal.

As far as I know, these are the existing sources, and none of them covers what an entrepreneur may need: either they are not updated or they are too expensive or their duration is far excessive or the difficulty of accessing information constitutes a radical entry barrier.

The characteristics of the source of knowledge that meets the needs of entrepreneurs should  be:

  1. Universal access, for anyone and wherever you are
  2. Complete and updated information about the scientific-technological field we are talking about
  3. User-oriented system for locating the necessary information (don’t forget entrepreneurs are non-experts)
  4. Free, because normally the economic capacities of entrepreneurs in the initial phases are quite limited.

Obviously, today there is no a Complete and Updated Information Universal Access Solution, Easy to Use and Free on the market, but it is possible, and it is not particularly complex to build such a solution.

You only need to use disruptive thinking

Entrepreneur knowledge needs

This is one of the aspects we are working on at DreamRoom, in order to have a complete solution to accomplish the entrepreneurs’ needs: a scientific & technological knowledge solution

It will meet the 4 axes: Universal, Complete and Updated, Easy to Use and Free.

Follow us if interested in entrepreneurial ecosystem, and share your comments

By DreamRoom Team  ©DreamRoom2023

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