I need a discussion done for week 8 for My New Business Venture and Enterepship class and a response to 2 other classmates

JWI_575_RTC_W8_lecture_1188.pdf

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JWI 575 New Business Ventures and Entrepreneurship

Week Eight Lecture Notes

BUILDING A WINNING TEAM What it Means In order to build a new venture based upon your “big idea”, you will need a strong team with a range of different backgrounds and qualities. Your extended team includes investors, partners, early adopters, and other stakeholders. But your core team is those first few employees you hire if you are an entrepreneur, or the colleagues who are willing to take the risk of working on your new initiative if you are an intrapreneur. How can you identify the best people to implement your new venture? What qualities do the people designing, launching, and building a new venture need to have?

In this lecture we examine some key qualities to look for as you create the team to support your new venture. Some of these qualities are relatively easy to understand and seek out, such as sales ability or a solid track record, while others are more difficult to assess, such as creative skills or “good instincts”. Taken together, these traits are what you will need in your founding team to tackle the inevitable roadblocks that will arise as you launch and build your new initiative.

Why it Matters

• Innovators need an effective core team to support and grow their new ventures • Specific key qualities are needed in a team that will design and build a new venture • Identifying people with these qualities will enable you to build a strong founding team

“Few tasks are more exciting than recruiting great people for a hot startup, and there are few factors that are more critical to success than great people.”

Guy Kawasaki

WHAT MAKES A WINNING TEAM?

As the founder of a new venture, you must have something of the visionary about your makeup. But once you start to build and grow the new venture based upon your “big idea”, it will take a strong team to achieve success. Your team includes your investors, partners, employees, and any other stakeholders. Finding the right people to support and work in your venture is vital to your success, so you need to do some careful thinking about what qualities you are seeking in members of your new team.

The Essential Qualities of a New Venture Team

There are a number of qualities that are really important to the success of a team starting up something new, whether it is a startup business or an innovative venture within an existing company. It may well be that no one team member demonstrates all of the below qualities, but these are the attributes you should be looking for. When you find several of these qualities strongly combined in one person, that individual is a great potential asset for your founding team.

Sales Ability

One of the first things entrepreneurs must do is convince others to follow them in their journey. Entrepreneurs not only sell their idea to customers, but they also sell to the people who become part of their team. They need to convey a genuine level of excitement to anyone they come into contact with. To get others to join their quest, members of your team, whether they are investors, partners, or employees, must have a knack for weaving together a compelling story that makes people want to be part of the venture.

Drive

Entrepreneurs wake up every day determined to move forward. Their sense of mission is totally captivating. However, a strong drive does not mean you should be inflexible. Some driven people are unable to change course. These individuals will not be a good resource for your venture, as you will likely have to change course and adapt your product or service multiple times. They must be willing to work through the tough process of product adaptation, iteration, and learning. The drive you are seeking is to keep making progress and to find a way to address challenges and remove obstacles along the way.

Domain Knowledge

Your venture cannot be all things to all customers - it must find an initial focus. Determine the specific domain of expertise that is key to your early success, and make sure that some members of your team have a deep knowledge in this area. You might have to think creatively about the domains that are useful to you. Imagine that you had been Thomas Edison and you wanted to build an electricity infrastructure across America where none had existed before. It might have proven difficult to find anyone with specific knowledge of this new domain. So where would you have turned? You might have thought about the telegraph companies, the railroads, and other businesses that tackled similar tasks. Locate the disciplines you need to support your venture, even if your field is so new that few experts exist.

Humility

When looking for people to join your team, make sure they know their limits and are comfortable with navigating unknown territory. There is no set path or route for launching a new venture. Your team has to expect the unexpected every day. Someone who claims to have all the answers will not do well in a small, agile company. Instead, look for people who can say, "I don't know" and who enjoy the challenge of searching for solutions.

A Solid Track Record

You want people with a proven ability to deliver, and a history of doing enterprising things. But take note that this quality is not a requirement nor is it at the top of the list. Often you can find raw talent or a college graduate who is well suited to your team. Recruiters can sometimes get so stuck scrutinizing resumes for just the right set of accomplishments that they overlook a person with high potential to grow into what the venture needs. That said, at least some part of your team should display a strong record of accomplishment in a field similar to yours. When you are assessing young candidates who lack professional experience, look for a solid track record in school, clubs, and sports. Top performers cannot help but excel in everything they do.

Formal Credentials

If you are looking to attract investors and customers, it is important to have some well-recognized credentials on your team. Look for traits such as membership in professional societies, awards, published papers, admittance to prestigious boards, and so on. The accomplishments of your top people rub off on the reputation of your venture, and these team members will also bring with them a network of potentially useful contacts.

Creative Skills

Some people are great at seeing new possibilities and brainstorming, and some are less visionary but great at getting things done. That is, some employees are idea generators and some are idea executors. Do you know which you are, and which you need? Make sure your team is well balanced between those who create and those who follow through.

Good Instincts

In the end, this is one of the hardest qualities to define. Study famous company founders, and observe the behavior of people that you admire, and you will be able to build your own checklist of what constitutes good instincts and a “can-do” attitude. Some people seem to exude an air of improvisation and confidence. They approach setbacks as learning opportunities, and they are determined to move forward past any and all obstacles and challenges. Be sure to surround yourself with people who have qualities like this.

The Power of a Winning Team

The founding team is the heart of a new venture. Product development will rarely go as planned and customer preferences will change. Market size estimates will turn out to be inaccurate and the competition will come up with unexpected counter-ideas. But if you hire a winning team, the people around you will be a constant source of strength. Pick a strong founding team for your venture, and you will be in a solid position to overcome initial challenges and win in the marketplace.

GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THIS WEEK’S CLASS

As you read the materials and participate in class activities, stay focused on the key learning outcomes for the week:

• Explore the benefits of well-matched partnerships and strategic alliances

Whether you are seeking people as investors, partners, customers, or as early employees in your venture, a good match is imperative for success. What can you do to find partners and team members who are a good match with your “big idea” and your venture based upon it? You know what you are seeking in a partner or a candidate or a customer, but put yourself in the other person’s shoes. What is in it for them? Is the opportunity attractive enough to them that they will stay involved for the long term? How will both sides benefit from the alliance so that it becomes a win-win partnership?

• Understand how a strong team contributes to a venture’s success

After reading this lecture, you will have a better understanding of the importance of a strong team to develop your new product or service into a successful business. Think about the key qualities described in this lecture. Where are they similar to qualities that most recruiters would seek in a new hire, and where are they distinctive traits needed to cope with the uncertainty and challenge of starting something new? What does “domain knowledge” mean in the context of your big idea? How would you define that elusive quality described as “good instincts”? How many of the key qualities described here do you think you can find in one candidate?

• Discuss how to identify and grow strong partnerships for your new venture

How will you identify the best people and organizations to become partners in your new venture? There are many ways to find potential partners but, once you have a list of possible prospective partners, how will you narrow down that list to the people and groups you want to engage with more seriously? Once you have set up alliances with like-minded people and organizations, you will need to nurture those relationships, so as to benefit both your growing venture and the partners who invest in and provide support for it. How will you build and strengthen your partnerships and strategic alliances, while still giving your new business venture the time and attention it needs to grow and thrive?