Gather and Gather and Gather.

Just as I predicted in last week’s blog post, the ideas that we were able to come up with for this semester’s potential ventures could have been endless. Luckily our fearless leader, Dr. Essig, made sure to give us a reasonable limit, or we would have spent hours coming up with what we thought were new and innovative ideas. Coming into the class at the beginning of January, I had already plotted out in my own mind things that I thought would be interesting or fun to work on over the course of the semester, but after our brainstorming session, all of those ideas have been put aside in order to explore, with greater excitement, the ideas of our collective imagination. Once again, a class session has worked to prove to myself and the rest of the class that many heads are better than one.

I have recently been studying my way through a series of books about commercial producing in New York theatre, and I have found over and over again a similar sentiment. Those producers who go out on their own and independently try to mount multi-million dollar Broadway shows are often those that find themselves failing or puttering along as middling successes. However, those producers who engage in 3 or 4 person partnerships, enlisting the brain power and talents of multiple humans, seem to have a better shot at the elusive Broadway hit. When venturing into unknown territory, a collective is always safer than going out on your own..have popular horror movies taught us nothing?

Furthermore, last week’s class has gotten me closer acquainted to the idea that it’s okay to exist in the realm of unknowns. We literally haven’t a clue what the journey ahead looks like, or how we will even begin to make our list of venture ideas come to fruition. In fact, we don’t even know who we’ll be working with at this point. But, that’s okay. What this class has been so effective at teaching me thus far is that you must research, brainstorm, learn, and understand before you ever begin to formulate a plan. Many times in my previous producing or entrepreneurial journeys I have found myself diving in and moving forward long before I ever took a step back to assess the situation and first discover where I am and what I know before deciding where to go and what to do. Already in a few short weeks, the process of this class has given me greater comfort resting in the unknown, especially when that means researching and planning in order to know more and uncover what that unknown is.

In the classic sense, entrepreneurs are the go-getters who run fast, work hard, and hustle their way to the top. And while these are certainly necessary components of launching a venture, I have also come to appreciate the image of an entrepreneur we are building together in our class. One who gathers and gathers and gathers and then uses all of that information to step out into the unknown, prepared for whatever may be inside it.