Critical thinking

Many entrepreneurs start their careers working for big business.  There are many things we can learn from big business. One of which is Critical Thinking – the ability to analyse a set of circumstances and make a commercial decision.

Every startup has gaps. Gaps in strategy, gaps in the launch campaign and gaps in financing the venture.

Gaps that would usually be criticized in large conglomerate X during the mandatory ‘Critical Thinking’ session. If we want to get our startup off the ground , then we simply must ‘unlearn’ some of the things which we have leanred and adopted from our life in the large corporate sector. Critical Thinking is one of them.

What we need is Complimentary Thinking.

Pointing out the good and building on the parts that will work. Is what entrpreneurship is about. To criticise anything in the embryonic stage is counter productive. Critical thinking aims at protecting revenue – not inventing it. Critical thinking leads to finding a reason not to do something. Complimentary thinking builds on what we have, it finds a way to make things happen and accept imperfection.

Our ability to unlearn ‘critical thinking’ is really one of the important differences between being an employee and becoming an entrepreneur.

2 thoughts on “Critical thinking

  1. Effective critical thinking can allow us to “creatively explore” options, and I agree the negatives are usually the stumbling blocks (of an uncreative culture) I taught Innovation a number of years back to tertiary students in business courses, and it’s hard sometimes to get them to think laterally. However if a “what if” (positive) approach is taken, interesting options can be explored, often opening up more possibility options than the starting point of negativity. Great post

Leave a Reply