As a CommercialiSE Fellow I have been having to think harder and harder about the potential market for a business I could set up. I’ve been having to think about the marketing plan that would be written.
Marketing plan:
- Who are the customers?
- What do they want from you?
- What is your marketing strategy?
- How will you sell to your customers?
The more I think about this document the more I feel in my gut that I am not an entrepreneur. I’m not looking to set up and develop a clear product to bring to market, I have no interest in ever entering discussions with business angels or potential investors.
While I enjoy the freedom of a lifestyle company through which I can occasionally consult, teach or train, I am more and more sure that I am not, by nature, a business owner.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have a passion for teaching, training and leading in industry.
It just leaves me with the vital consideration of whether I am the career academic I thought or, after all these years, really just a potential industry employee.
Looking at practice, looking at industry cannot help but lead me towards it. Industry beckons with the mythical grail outcome of a decent salary. I love the freedom in academia, and I have no problems teaching, but I fear never being able to afford to pay my own way.
Where am I going with the work I am doing? If I am my customer what do I want?
As a friend said to me in San Francisco: “You do know that the streets are paved with gold for people like you here?”
I worry not that he was right but that I am tempted.
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