Entrepreneurs, investors, advisors … We are all in the search of the next big thing – trends, ideas, companies, investments. I admit I can relate to this, but we are much better of slightly changing the focus and spending the energy on searching for those who are hungry for success – be it partners, entrepreneurs, ecosystems…
We like to work with people, who did it before. And yes, Intel has emmense power to make things happen. But Google – who represent premier ecosystems with massive resources concentrated in one spot, communication networks, trust, etc. all in place already – spends tremendous resources trying to maintain innovation power. So why is this?
Because success breeds satisfaction and satiety. In that respect, success is a lousy teacher – it seduces smart people into thinking they cannot lose.
Malcolm Gladwell found the key denominator to all successful people’s success is not natural aptitude, and not the IQ. The key denominator is hard work. About 10,000 hours of it.
But there is no hunger in paradise – it is close to impossible to maintain that factor that makes you spend the next 10,000 hours to get on top of things, unless you have the inner drive. The inner drive is deeply rooted in you.
So, even inside Intel, Google, or even when considering entrepreneurs who already had success, the key to unlock the X factor and achieve the ‘next big thing’ lies in identifying the person who hasn’t been to his own paradise yet. We, ourselves, are at least as concerned with this than with the capabilities of the full team.