Incongruities, A Source of Entrepreneurial Opportunity

Exploiting Incongruities

In addition to capitalizing on unexpected success, individuals can also launch businesses by searching for and exploiting things that are incompatible, non-conforming, or inconsistent with themselves.  Drucker calls these “incongruities”.

An incongruity is a discrepancy, a dissonance, between what is and what “ought” to be, or between what is and what everyone assumes it to be.  We may not understand the reason for it; indeed, we often cannot figure it out.  Still, an incongruity is a symptom of an opportunity to innovate.  It bespeaks an underlying “fault,” to use the geologist term… …Like the unexpected event, whether success or failure, incongruity is a symptom of change.

Two instances of incongruities are when (a) the realities of an industry are in discrepancy with the assumptions about it, and (b) when the perceived values assigned to a given product or service and different from those placed on it by the customer.  Unlike the unexpected success however, these opportunities are usually only evident to those working in and having domain expertise with a given industry.  Take the case of Southwest Airlines.

Entrepreneurs: Made not Born.

Entrepreneurs, academic researchers, and other business professionals have long attempted to determine why certain individuals pursue their own ventures while others prefer the stability and certainty offered by a more traditional corporate job.

Citing genetic research and an individual’s early disposition towards such activities, many believe entrepreneurs are born.  Research conducted at the Northeastern University School of Technological Entrepreneurship corroborates this idea.  Two-thirds of the study’s participants attribute their start-up mindset to innate personal tendencies.  Forty-two percent stated that they had launched their first venture during childhood.

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