Ideation

Incubators

Incubators warm you up until it’s time to hatch.

They are similar to coworking spaces, but incubators often focus on entrepreneurial education. This developmental focus attracts newer entrepreneurs and has incubators most often found in educational environments, with semester or year-long programs. Incubators can also be found outside educational environments. Public incubators may have less rigidity, but there’s still urgency that most entrepreneurs benefit from. The timelines of an incubator are not as compressed as accelerators, but there is usually a beginning and an end to these programs.

This rotational nature of incubators provide a cyclical, yet stabilizing effect within startup communities. Entrepreneurs working through incubator programs become stronger founders eager to stay connected. As founders transition out of an incubator, they add human, intellectual, network, and cultural capital to the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Their departure also makes room for the next class of entrepreneurs eager to develop a business within the incubator.

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Wondering how your business should evolve? Work around other entrepreneurs.

Another common draw of an incubator, is less expensive office space. Low rent alone attracts early tenants, but here lies the motive for many unhealthy incubators. If an incubator is only about cheap office space, the lack of heart will suck the cool right out. A fixation on cheap rent leads to less interest in helping entrepreneurs. This leaves floundering tenants starving for community. As cultural starvation occurs, entrepreneurs migrate and programs fail.

Incubators must be safe cocoons for less experienced entrepreneurs. They should allow entrepreneurs to repeatedly test, fail, and improve alongside their peers. With a supportive space dedicated to nurturing the entrepreneurial spirit, incubators allow connected entrepreneurs to hatch fresh ideas ready to fly.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Ideaworks

Our daily lives gobble up mental bandwidth. If you’re interested in building a business, compelling ideas may hit but lasting intention is needed to build momentum.

It’s unlikely that lightning will strike in a single brainstorm. Instead, combine detail-oriented initiative with pure wonder and open-mindedness to attract earned luck, thanks to serendipity. As ideas fueled by action create chemistry over time, different combinations will map more opportunities.

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We get what we repeat.

How might combining ideas be like a colorful fireworks show? Let’s begin with the anticipation a crowd feels before the show. Then a bright light flashes, and the sound of that first colorful explosion is celebrated.

To get color popping in the night sky, a fuse was required to spark early progress. Fuses such as linking slowness with urgency, actively listening, allowing new experiences to shift your perspective, and always staying curious give the idea machine more ways to continuously flip the switch.

As each fuse is lit, we hear that thump of a distant firework being shot into the sky. This sound of propulsion is like ideas darting into the limitless atmosphere of our mind.

With each idea sparked, there’s a thrilling hope that what’s about to pop is exactly what we’ve always wanted. Even if it’s not an absolute showstopper, each ideawork sparkles with different colors, shapes, and sounds that inspire the sky and connect into the broader experience.

Looking up into the stars, we appreciate each blast in different ways, based on the vantage point. This awakens the fact that every idea has value. Bad ideas lead to better ideas. This can spark great ideas that reverberate, and when given the space to merge, combine into a fantastic reality.

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Don’t wait for next year.

As ideas pop to create a tune, it’s like the grand finale a crowd waits for. The audience may scurry in different directions after the show, but they’ll keep talking about the experience long after that floating smoke clears.

When songs rhyme with a melody, the idea machine sparkles. When execution is a habit, even duds can’t stop a remarkable show from lighting up the sky.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Minerva

The pursuit to find Pluto is a neat example of how imagination, obsession, and reason align what can be seen. After scientists at the Lowell Observatory finally discovered “Planet X” in 1930, the world weighed in on what to name it. Let’s brew on naming your project.

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Pluto was the second choice of scientists who discovered this beloved dwarf planet. Minerva was the team’s first choice, but it was already taken by an existing asteroid.

A name makes a project feel real. It creates identity. If you’ve been thinking about something for a while, a name may naturally emerge. If you’re struggling or feel uneasy about the name you have in mind, here’s how to fuel confidence and land on something scalable.

Be descriptive. If it’s impossible to guess what you’re offering, you’re taking an early gamble. Hyper specific names may stand out in the moment, but too much definiteness can limit your ability to evolve. Attention is hard to earn, so avoid obscurity, names that trap you, or anything that makes the business hard to remember.

Verify availability. It’s tough to set yourself apart while still being memorable. As you consider naming a business, get creative, but do your homework before falling in love. Do not hope something may not exist; try to find it. Boldly research existing trademarks, domain names, social media accounts, industry competitors, and funky spellings. The result can be a name that is all yours versus something that may be catchy but could spawn future liabilities.

Think long-term. To withstand the test of time, consider how this name supports lasting growth. If the trend upon which you’ve based a name fades, might you look outdated? Will highlighting a location eliminate the ability to expand? In short, don’t corner yourself unless it’s on purpose.

Once you lock in a name, start using it within customer discovery to explore how it’s received by those you seek to serve. When a name clicks, align your marketing and overall vocabulary around the newly established identity. This will make your company recognizable, and over time it connects you to more true fans.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Listen

Listening is louder than it sounds.

Most entrepreneurs like to talk and the more obsessed we are, the more vociferous we seem to get. Idea machines must be willing to share compelling stories, but listening is a key part of any transmission. This may seem obvious, but with precious air time up for grabs and knowing so much about our own interests, listening can devolve into feeling like a required distraction.

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Hearing is passive. Listening is active.

As we guide people through the layers of understanding, active listening forms a bond much faster than forcing yourself to be heard. The fear of not having time to deliver your message will linger, but when we truly tune into what another person is saying, it shows we care. It also helps us better harmonize our thoughts within the moment and counters the common mistake of overloading others with too much numbing details all at once. Knowing each conversation is part of a broader relationship and community-building journey, good listeners are almost always given a chance to make a bigger impact.

Ready for an experiment? The next time you meet someone new, embrace your inner scientist. Set your introverted/extroverted mindset aside and focus your attention on asking as many thoughtful questions as you can. The less you talk, the better. This will feel awkward if you just fire question after question, so be concise with each response, then return to more thoughtful questions for a more natural interaction. Consider expanding this social experiment by purposely doing this throughout an entire networking event. Remember who you talked with and track how the listening-focused conversations evolve. Over time, how do these relationships built on listening, compare to others where you’ve been more outspoken? Here are a few tactics to support your practice.

  • Center your internal attention.
  • Stay engaged with eye contact.
  • Use jarring questions to dodge small talk.
  • Don’t interrupt or jump to conclusions.
  • Occasionally paraphrase what was said.
  • Avoid the urge to make it about you.
  • Ask curious questions to go deeper.
  • Exit gracefully, without a sense of rush.

This type of active listening will extend your ability to hear more, but also make your responses more in-tune with what others are thinking, versus always trying to prove your point. Selflessness may keep a conversation from landing exactly where you want in that moment, but as you move from one topic to the next, you’ll learn how others work. When done well, an unspoken bond forms. This synchronization creates space to explore more directions you’d like to take future conversations, but now with the priceless ingredient of shared enthusiasm.

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Listening within a support network ignites optimism, connection, and motivation. A healthy balance is to also listen to your challenge network, which keeps us intellectually humble and rooted in reality.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Stealth Mode

We’re all guilty of thinking our idea is better than it is.

Stealth mode is when entrepreneurs wait to start telling their story. Staying quiet about a new project often starts with good intentions. Curiosity and a bit of mystery can generate hype, especially if you’ve been successful in the past. Too often however, people hold onto silence because they fear feedback or that what they’re building may not work in the wild.

To avoid failure, the choice to continue building in stealth mode keeps everything safely in the workshop. This may be wise if the project needs work or when the competition are known pirates, but there are few ideas that require much secrecy. With 8 billion humans on earth, your idea is probably not unique and when it comes to shipping your art, it all comes down to execution. Survey the market and research existing patents to help guide decision making, but stealth mode will soon lag toward being an excuse to procrastinate. Even if you have something big, it can be deflated without the open air of honest feedback. Stealth mode may sound nice, but silence, pride, and fear can devolve into a suffocating sinkhole.

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Winners are good at losing.

If you decide to build in stealth mode, give yourself firm timelines. Determine if intellectual property needs legal protection. If you need to keep certain aspects of the project under wraps, do so while still allowing the idea to breathe. Stealth mode only works when it results in a stronger story. It’s hard to know how strong your story is unless you share it.

Yes, we can only be new once, but the leverage of a startup is an ability to quickly evolve. As your team connects with the true market through strategic, creative, and generous execution, humility paired with persistence will pay off in the form of confidence. Even if something fails, it’ll be more like a pit stop on your path toward product-market fit. Be a scientist. Experiment thoughtfully, iterate often, and invite doubt knowing that if you’re wrong, it can activate a signal that guides the project toward a more sustainable future.

Be careful with the comfort of stealth mode. Those who build in too much silence can go quiet themselves.

By Ben McDougal, ago