Successful Entrepreneurs Are People Who Can Feel Their Way To Solutions

Finding solutions is never an easy process. It takes time, patience, skills, and luck. What’s more, you have to operate with incomplete information. Even if you think you’ve had a great idea, it only passes as one when it performs in the real world.

The example of the flying car is pertinent. The technology to create one has been around for at least fifty years, probably longer, and the concept makes sense. But no company has yet successfully brought the technology to the masses. 

The same is true of the humanoid robot. The basic idea has been around for a long time, but the implementation is sorely lacking. Technology simply hasn’t caught up with human ingenuity. 

However, some things that were once considered impossible have happened because of entrepreneurs and creative thinkers. The first powered flight, for instance, is one example. The smartphone and the iPod are additional concepts on a similar theme. These technologies were impossible until they weren’t. 

Conventional thinking tells you that these innovations occurred because of pioneering research and risk-taking by the inventors and entrepreneurs behind them. It states these individuals were in the right place at the right time, ready to create something extraordinary. If someone else had been in their place, they would have done roughly the same thing. 

However, there’s another school of thought that suggests there’s something intrinsically special about entrepreneurs themselves. These individuals have a knack for feeling their way to solutions (when others can’t), enabling them to thrive in what seem like impossible circumstances. 

Elon Musk is an excellent example of this phenomenon in action. He set about creating two impossible companies – a private rocket firm and an electric car brand – and broadly succeeded with both. When describing the challenges he faced, he said he was never sure whether it was going to work out. But even with low odds, he still persevered, believing something might come from it. 

Of course, his intuition (not his rational mind) was right. And that’s what’s so remarkable about his story. Despite the protestations of logic and history, he still forged ahead with his ideas and made them happen. 

Intuition As A Tool

Whether intuition is a tool entrepreneurs use to become successful remains controversial. Some analysts believe it is the key, while others think getting to the top of the business world requires doing business-like things (such as planning cash flow and getting marketing right). The idea that going along using nothing but gut instinct would be helpful seems farcical. 

Even so, intuition is what seems to propel many of the most successful business leaders forward. These individuals seem to have a sixth sense that tells them whether something’s going to work or not. 

Materialists are keen to point out that these abilities aren’t magic but based on experience, but that doesn’t make sense for every entrepreneur. For example, some gain momentum from a young age, even before they’ve had time to make mistakes. Others make just one or two good decisions in their entire lives and run on those instincts, no matter how counterintuitive it might seem. These cases don’t seem to fit the mold.

But Isn’t Business About Data? 

These days, data is trying to usurp intuition as the primary method business leaders use to navigate the world. Instead of going by a gut feeling, companies are turning to information to try to get an edge. 

Information is a kind of proxy for intuition, collecting all the data and then analyzing it rigorously to identify patterns. It requires a huge quantity of information to come up with something meaningful and helpful. 

And this is really the main point: businesses never have complete information. If they did, they’d always know the next step to take. But because they don’t, they rely on data. 

Nobody is saying that data isn’t valuable. Some companies can see tremendous success on the back of it, like Google and Amazon did. But it might not explain everything. 

So What Does This Mean For You? 

Going forward, what does this idea mean for you? Ultimately, it should change how you approach business. Whenever you create business cards or marketing materials, it is something that helps to listen to what your instinct is telling you. A small fraction of entrepreneurs can sniff out opportunities and work out ways to get themselves to the top of the pile. 

Business guides will often explain it’s not about feeling. But many of the people writing those haven’t actually used the power of feeling their way to solutions. And that could be why it remains rarified knowledge.