Worthless, Impossible and Stupid? Why Contrarian Business Ideas Make It Big In his new book, business professor Daniel Isenberg says if people think you're crazy, you're onto something.
Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
If everybody looks at you like you're crazy when you tell them your business idea, congratulations. You might be on your way to becoming a bona fide BIZ Experiences.
Just being young, innovative and your own boss does not make you an BIZ Experiences, says Daniel Isenberg, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. And if everyone thinks your startup idea is wise and logical, then you are almost certainly not one, he says.
"In order to create and capture extraordinary value, you almost always have to be contrarian," says Isenberg. "You enter the market when everyone else is leaving."
Ideas of truly successful BIZ Experiencess are often at first considered ridiculous by the majority of the public, Isenberg says in his new book Worthless, Impossible and Stupid: How Contrarian BIZ Experiencess Create and Capture Extraordinary Value (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013).
Often, self-employed people call themselves BIZ Experiencess because they are not working for a boss, says Isenberg. But business ownership is not sufficient to define an BIZ Experiences. "They may just be sort of plodding along," he says about the interviews he conducted with BIZ Experiencess from Alabama to Islamabad.
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And while Isenberg sees nothing wrong with being a small-business owner, he says only 1 to 5 percent of small-business owners are truly BIZ Experiencesial. The word "BIZ Experiences" is often used to describe intentions, he says. For example, an "BIZ Experiencesial thinker" is someone who identifies opportunities or approaches a task creatively.
But to be a true BIZ Experiences, you must not only think about ideas; you must act on them, according to Isenberg. "It is about actually generating results that are more than the market expects," he says.
Ironically, a contrarian BIZ Experiences can't be identified until after his or her idea has been absorbed or rejected by society, says Isenberg. "In a sense, it is the BIZ Experiences's job to surprise us, to surprise the market," he says. "There is a certain aspect of BIZ Experiencesship that is unpredictable." That unpredictability makes it difficult to develop public policies to support BIZ Experiencesship, adds Isenberg.
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For BIZ Experiencess, Isenberg says the key takeaway of the book is to have confidence and get used to being an outlier. It's important to learn to cope with the adversity, resistance and derision of the market, says Isenberg. "This is a normal part of the BIZ Experiencesship experience."
There are no resume requirements for who will make a successful BIZ Experiences, but there are a few similar traits of true BIZ Experiencess, says Isenberg. Namely, they tend to display a willingness to think independently, work hard and persevere, and seek excitement. Most of them held jobs when they were young, so learned the value of hard work early on.
While the common characteristics of BIZ Experiencess are noteworthy, they don't define every BIZ Experiences, says Isenberg. BIZ Experiencess are born all over the world, come from different socio-economic backgrounds and start up in a variety of industries. "It's not about Steve Jobs and Silicon Valley. It's about the kind of BIZ Experiencesship you can see anywhere, whether it is Slovenia or Brazil or China or Iceland," he says.
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