Thinking Ahead
As Harvard Professor Noam Wasserman has shown in his research, entrepreneurs do well to think of their core motivations as they make pivotal business decisions. Those seeking great wealth, will make different decisions than those who want to retain supreme control over their businesses.
https://blogs.ubc.ca/e101/feature-interview-noam-wasserman/
If yours is a business that you hope will last your lifetime, then how might your entrepreneurial motivations around it change as you age? If you see yourself as more of a serial entrepreneur, cycling in and out of different businesses, then how might your entrepreneurial motivations and life circumstances affect the types of businesses you build?
Foresight is 20/100 and one cannot predict how the organization and the market will morph. Nevertheless, it is important to think about business stages in the context of your own life stages.
If you haven’t already, start by taking the following questionnaire to see where you sit currently in your entrepreneurial motives.
https://blogs.ubc.ca/e101/entrepreneurial-motives/
Life & Business Stages
A. Fill in your current entrepreneurial motive list, from highest to lowest. Where do you fall on Wealth, Control, Freedom & Impact?
B through E. Fill out the chart for each of your life stages. These can be stages you have or have not yet gone through.
C. When you look at your best guesses of the big picture around your life and business stages, what implications do you see for how you build out your entrepreneurial path?