REVIEW: Min Basadur, Michael Goldsby, and Rob Mathews — Design-Centered Entrepreneurship (BOOK)
Min Basadur, Michael Goldsby, and Rob Mathews are noteworthy for what they do as much as for what they don’t do. Basadur, Goldsby, and Mathews do provide extensive information in a concise, unpretentious house style boasting almost excess clarity. On the other hand, and likely because of inherent confidence in their understanding of the concepts, Basadur, Goldsby, and Mathews are free of the typical kind of brassy BS defining and maligning standard, run-of-the-mill business and overall leadership and self-help nonfiction subcategories.
This is a welcome relief, not only for the reader trying to get to the heart of the matter and understand all the information clearly, but for me as a writer and fan of the self-help genre. Basadur, Goldsby, and Mathews seem to be genuine practitioners of what they preach, and because of their own ingrained experience write with an informality that is as intellectually as emotively infectious. They make things feel inspiring. “Imagine a creative approach that helps your business thrive in your chosen market by solving problems no one has figured out yet. Think about it. A company dedicated to finding and solving the problems in the world around it. It’s quite a vision, and it’s one you can build by developing the skills and applying the process in this book. Our entrepreneurial approach is right for where the world is today.
It prepares you for an economy and world where empathy, creativity, smart risk taking, engagement, and savvy execution are needed to thrive and flourish. It’s an approach that helps you take charge of your future and connect deeply to the world around you, just as an entrepreneur should do every day,” they write. Their new book, by the way, is perfectly titled Design-Centered Entrepreneurship.
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Design-centered-Entrepreneurship-Min-Basadur/dp/1032070161
“We base our methodology on the premise that entrepreneurial activity is first and foremost about creative problem-solving,” Basadur, Goldsby, and Mathews continue. “No matter how great your technology or idea, if it does not solve an important problem for enough people you have little chance for success. However, with very limited means but the right insights you can build a successful business…Think of the many problems that challenge your potential customers. Why hasn’t someone capitalized on these opportunities?
Some of these problems might be obvious, but a good solution has not been discovered yet. On the other hand, some are more difficult to perceive, so no one even considers ways to better serve the customer. If an entrepreneur could tackle and uncover more problems and find better solutions, innovation would result in new or better products and services. However, most people work with a limited view of problem-solving, due mostly to using a restricted set of tools to handle problems…Gathering and analyzing statistical data, for example, is an excellent way to find facts to help define problems, but that alone leaves you short of developing a solution. Brainstorming is a wonderful technique for developing solution ideas once you’ve defined a problem, but it leaves you short of action and often yields off-target ideas.
Listing pros and cons of various solutions is only useful if you have already created alternatives, and it too still leaves you short of ways to implement it. By contrast, we will walk you through a complete process of creative problem-solving, which encompasses finding problems, developing creative solutions, and implementing your solutions.”
Colin Jordan
