Start with Opportunity

I feel that one cause of failed new business launches, common among many entrepreneurs aiming for high-growth startups and many people working on new ventures at large companies, is putting too much weight on "what I want to do." This seems to be an especially marked tendency in bottom-up new businesses at large companies.

Of course, I think it is wonderful to stay true to what you want to do, run a proud small business, and earn a decent profit. On the other hand, high-growth startups and new businesses at large companies come with an expectation and a premise from those around them that "in the future it will reach annual revenue in the tens of billions of yen." In that setting, if you push through with "what I want to do," it no longer fits those expectations and that premise, and I have often seen a pattern in which both the person and the people around them end up exhausted. I have also heard many times that new business initiatives at large companies are "a way to let employees vent their frustrations."

Over the past decade or so, I feel that the trend of the times has put weight on "what you want to do" and "what you love" in entrepreneurship and new business as well. I think there was a period when this worked in the IT field, but it seems to have been only temporary. If you are going to build a business, it is still important to size up the business opportunity.

And if there is a goal you want to reach, I think the process of thinking should basically be to work backward from the goal. In terms of business, the order is to start by thinking about a good business opportunity, and within it, explore what you want to do and what you can do.

If you want to put what you want to do first, you only need to think of a means that lets you do that. If you want to build a new business, what matters is sizing up the business opportunity, and by extension the market opportunity.

Explore Beyond What You Can Do

Besides putting too much weight on "what I want to do (will)," another common pattern of failure is starting only from "what I can do (can)."

If you think mainly in terms of "what I can do," the range of your exploration naturally narrows. It is like "searching for your keys under a streetlight." But no matter how dark and hard to see an area is, unless you search where a big opportunity seems likely to be found, you will not reach a big opportunity.

Here too, I think we need the perspective of how to start from opportunity.

Some entrepreneurs pivot many times to find a big opportunity. That in itself is a flexible attitude of actively seeking opportunity without clinging to your own "what I want to do," but my impression is that people who keep searching within the range of what they can do or what they can already see have a hard time finding good opportunities.

On the other hand, there are people who search in places where a big opportunity seems likely to exist, even when they do not know the area that well. Even if it is a place with an opportunity they could not grasp on their own, they find ways to get closer, or borrow someone's strength to seize it. People who adopt this kind of exploration find big opportunities sooner.

Start Your Career with Opportunity Too

So far I have talked about business. Likewise, in the case of careers and the like, there are times when I think it is better to start from opportunity.

For businesspeople, as long as they are reasonably capable at business (people with abilities that suit business), I feel that differences in career and ability arise less from differences in innate qualities and abilities than from whether they were blessed with opportunities.

In other words, opportunities develop us.

If you put weight on "what you want to do" in that context, the options for opportunities you can take inevitably stay within your past experience and your own imagination. But if you look to opportunities further out, you can meet opportunities you had never imagined. Whether you are open to such opportunities, and whether you were in a place where you could encounter them, greatly shapes your growth afterward.

So if you want to grow, I think what matters is whether you can put yourself in a place where you can get opportunities¹.

What is often said is that, for businesspeople, it is important to put yourself in a growing market or company. Opportunities inevitably go to people who stand out and people higher up, but when the market or company is growing, the people above cannot take on all of the opportunities. Then the overflowing opportunities come down to those below. In a growing market, opportunities beyond your current stature tend to fall into your lap.

The other is aiming for places that are relatively uncrowded or not yet popular. No matter how much the market or company as a whole is growing, it is hard to win where there are many excellent people. You have to prove that you are excellent, and even after you have proved it, you have to keep running. Continuing to win such battles is one way to go, but I think it is also quite hard.

People often say, "Create opportunities yourself, and let opportunities change you," but creating opportunities yourself is difficult. That is especially true at the start of a career. In that case, I think you need the awareness of putting yourself where opportunities are likely to overflow.

Be Where the Big Opportunities Are

Opportunities come in various kinds and various sizes.

Opportunities are not measured by money alone, and they may be measured by social impact and the like. Each is important. But if you want to grow, you should think carefully not only about the kind but also about "whether it is a big opportunity."

In life, sudden opportunities sometimes appear. Responding to them nimbly is one approach, but most sudden opportunities vanish like bubbles. When an opportunity comes up, you need to think carefully about "whether it is big and whether it will last."

"Big opportunities" tend to be found around challenges at the scale of humanity or of nations, and they appear as "what we should do as humanity" or "what we should do as a country." Such challenges can feel too big. But the people around you feel the same. Many people are intimidated. That is why there are not many competitors. And because the opportunity itself is big, many opportunities go to a few people.

In fact, I think the reason the speakers at startup events on Climate Tech and similar topics tend to be "the usual members" is that few people take on such big opportunities.

Starting a company and becoming its president now seems to be recognized among excellent students as one way to seize opportunities in a career as well, but it tends to become "entrepreneurship within what students can do," and as a result it tends to get crowded. Many people also want to "make money in a short time," which crowds it further. As a result, it looks like a melee in which excellent young presidents compete fiercely and fight their way through.

On the other hand, few people take on big challenges, and few people take on challenges beyond their own abilities. Taking into account the size of the opportunity and how crowded it is, wouldn't taking on big challenges also lead to maximizing the opportunities you yourself can get?

Summary

It is said that environment makes the person, but from the viewpoint of a person's growth, I think a large part of it is that people are made by the opportunities brought by the environment they put themselves in.

Of course, if you have no axis at all and keep spotting opportunities and jumping to them, you will be called opportunistic. A person who jumps to a different trend every two or three years will also find it hard to discover good opportunities. Even so, I do not think it is right to take opportunities lightly either.

So I would like to recommend to excellent people with a strong desire to grow that they first start by thinking about "big opportunities" and "opportunities you can stay with for a long time," and then look for "what you can do" and "what you want to do," in that order.

In fact, I hope that as more excellent people take on such challenges, society's many problems will become easier to solve.

※ The image was inspired by the cover of Start with the Issue.

Footnotes

1. This is also why situations in which opportunities differ by gender and the like are better resolved. ↩