The Pros and Cons of Nice-to-Have Support and the Importance of the Navigator Function
This article was machine-translated from Japanese by AI (Claude). It may contain errors. Read the original Japanese article.
A while ago, I talked about how there is "advice that is correct but not important" and "advice that is correct but bad."
Take the advice to "draw a Business Model Canvas," for example. I do think it is certainly better to do it, but in many cases it is not that important, because it often has little effect. Still, if the question is whether it is better to do it or not, it is certainly better to do it. So we cannot flatly dismiss it by saying, "That advice is not correct."
The same goes for advice like "you should expand your network." It is correct, but there are probably many entrepreneurs for whom it is not what they should really prioritize right now. Such advice is "correct, but not important right now."
However, if entrepreneurs then spend a lot of time on networking or on drawing a Business Model Canvas, it becomes "correct, but bad advice."
And for startups, whose resources such as money and time are extremely limited, I think it is fair to say that advice, especially nice-to-have advice, tends to become bad advice because it so often wastes those resources.
Going further, general advice is correct as long as priorities are not taken into account, but at any given moment it can easily become "correct, but bad advice."
The Pros and Cons of Nice-to-Have Support
I think this is an important perspective for those who provide support as well.
That is, support that is correct but low in priority, or nice-to-have support, can also turn out badly.
Of course, if you can introduce the best person at the right moment, that is excellent support. But take the support of holding events to provide networking opportunities. It will certainly be good when that network pays off, but it is often not a high priority. If so, whether that networking support is good or bad depends considerably on the situation the entrepreneur is in at the time.
And in Japan (especially Tokyo), where the ecosystem of support providers seems to be expanding faster than the number of entrepreneurs, I suspect that the abundance of options on the support side is also increasing the chance that entrepreneurs run into bad support.
Of course, I believe entrepreneurs themselves should judge what support they need. But not only entrepreneurs: people in general usually do not know what support they need right now, and even when they think they do, they can be off the mark. This is because the effective support they need is often outside their own knowledge.
On the other hand, support providers do not fully know the entrepreneurs' situations either, so it seems it is often difficult for them to provide accurate support.
The Navigation Function in Startup Support
What becomes important here, I think, is not the support itself but a function that acts as a navigator, guiding entrepreneurs to appropriate support.
More specifically, this is a person who observes an entrepreneur's situation and "introduces" the just-in-time support needed at that moment. Such people are also called brokers or intermediaries (mediators). Or it may take the form of people who have such a function.
As mentioned above, entrepreneurs themselves often do not know "what they want right now," nor do they know what kinds of support exist. In such cases, I think there should be more people on the support side with a navigator-like function: people who understand the entrepreneur's situation, properly grasp the challenge of the moment, and suggest which support to turn to next.
There could be dedicated people (though that would merely add to the middle layer of support, which may not be a good thing), or support providers could provide the support they are good at while also serving concurrently as navigators. For example, they could make sure they can refer entrepreneurs to appropriate sources of support when entrepreneurs need capabilities they do not have. Of course, to do that, they need to know what kind of support others can provide.
I have heard that this is also needed in informal learning. In a region with multiple science museums, FabLabs, and the like, the point is that it is important to have people who can suggest the appropriate place to learn according to the learner's level and interests.
Conclusion
Precisely because the number of support providers has grown, high-quality support is needed for the support ecosystem to reach the next level. To that end, I think each supporter is expected to raise their capabilities for "must-have" rather than "nice-to-have" support while also holding a navigator's perspective, and to offer programs that respect entrepreneurs' autonomy.
Addendum
Note that there is also advice and support that is simply "not correct." One example is recommending contract development without any strategy to entrepreneurs who are aiming to build a unicorn or the like. Not all advice is correct, so I think we need to be careful about that.