Institutional America has knocked the start out of us. We need to get back to being great at starting things in our country. Calling all entrepreneurs. This means you.  Yes, you.  In talking with some of the most entrepreneurial people on the planet I am surprised by how many don’t think of themselves as entrepreneurs.  When did that happen?  Our economic history is all about starting stuff but we have gotten away from our entrepreneurial heritage. We need a national entrepreneurship movement, one that transforms our current entrepreneurship conversation.

Many visitors to the Entrepreneur StoryBooth, an on-line platform the Business Innovation Factory (BIF) launched with Babson College to capture the voice and experience of entrepreneurs, have shared that despite significant experience in starting stuff they don’t think of themselves as entrepreneurs. The prevailing definition of an entrepreneur just doesn’t seem to apply.  I consistently reply asserting the opposite, their experience is exactly what we need in the mix. These diverse stories are critical to changing our national entrepreneurship conversation and launching a new economic era. It’s a big ‘aha’ for me so many entrepreneurs don’t think of themselves that way.  I have to admit, upon personal reflection, as much as I love to start new projects, ventures, and movements, I too don’t think of myself as an entrepreneur.  Go figure.  Clearly, we have serious work to do if our economic future is about entrepreneurship.

When did we reserve the entrepreneur moniker solely for technology ventures started by iconic college dropouts like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg? I know we all love a good company origin story but by elevating these stories to mythical proportions aren’t we placing entrepreneurship out of reach for the rest of us mere mortals.

When did we so completely buy into a national invention narrative suggesting that if we invest enough in university based research it will produce a steady supply of new technologies, companies, and high-wage jobs. We have structured our entire national entrepreneur support system around an invention narrative in the hopes that tech transfer, venture capital, and technology company incubators will give rise to the promised new economy. It’s hard to see it happening any time soon with such a narrow definition of entrepreneurship. Maybe it’s time for a new expanded entrepreneurship narrative and support system.

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Saul Kaplan: Calling All Entrepreneurs

Need to turn around your company? Trying to start a movement? Want to change the world? Easy Peasy! Just turn it in to a game. Everywhere we turn, it seems there are experts claiming that the best path forward is to engage people with elements of competitive play. The business world in particular has gone gaga for gamification.

I thought games were mainly for kids, and the occasional ice-breaker or temporary escape from reality. Why encourage more of them? As adults, aren’t we supposed to set aside childish things and get down to work on the problems of the real world?

Truth be told, I have always loved games. Stratego was a mainstay among my school buddies. We spent hour upon hour lining up red and blue soldiers to protect our flags. My family’s Monopoly  games were epic battles, beginning with the fight over game pieces. (No, I get the Scottish Terrier!) The side deals we struck and the arguments that ensued still liven up family gatherings. In college I became a professional Risk player. Tell me you didn’t learn about the challenges of fighting a multi-front war from playing Risk. Who among us hasn’t attempted to conquer the world by way of Kamchatka?

Games ruled – till it was time to make my way in the real world where they didn’t. By the time online games exploded onto the scene, I was so immersed in reality that I managed to ignore them. I’ve never created a level-80 character in World of Warcraft, won the staff of life in Spore, mastered an artichoke crop in Farmville, or knocked over any pigs with Angry Birds. But others have – hundreds of millions of them around the world. Already, 5.93 million years of total time has been spent playing World of Warcraft alone.

One response to this is to despair of all that wasted time. Imagine if only a fraction of it had been focused on improving our education, health care, energy, and economic systems. Another response, though, is to say: if you can’t beat them, why not join them?

Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken makes a strong case for leveraging game design and mechanics to work on the big social challenges of our time. McGonigal suggests that the four defining traits of any game – a goal, clear rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation – can be applied to any challenge. She even says game-playing makes us better people. The book is a passionate articulation of why we should pay attention to what is going on in the world of games.

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Saul Kaplan: If All the World were Gamified

I highly recommend mapping your organization or community genome.  Understanding the basic genetic code or wiring of any organization is key to understanding what drives the behavior of both internal and external stakeholders.  Intimate knowledge of the genome’s chromosomal makeup is a prerequisite for alignment and making meaningful progress.  It explains why employees, customers, and collaborators are attracted to an organization or why they aren’t.  Passion for an organization, community, or movement is coded at the genetic level.  If you want to transform an organization or a system, forget process reengineering and think genetic reengineering.  If you want to launch a movement make your genome transparent and accessible to anyone with a similar genetic make-up.

I offer up the BIF genome as an example and with the hope you will improve it. The Business Innovation Factory (BIF) is catalyzing a movement to transform the next decade. This is no time to think small! Together with a growing community of passionate innovators we are re-imagining the future of education, health care, energy, and entrepreneurship. We have identified and mapped 11 chromosomes that comprise the genome of the BIF innovation community and transformation movement.  Do they resonate with you?  Do you share a similar genetic make-up?  If yes, do we have a movement for you!

BIF Innovation Community Genome

1)   Off the whiteboard and into the real world. Experiment all the time.

Work fast, make mistakes, push into territories of the unknown.Taking risks is an essential part of innovation. Exceed your own expectations.

2)   Business model innovation is itself a creative act.

Design better ways to create, deliver, and capture value.   Tweaking won’t work. Transformation is about new business models and systems.

3)   Stories can change the world.

Storytelling is magic. Share compelling stories to create stronger emotional connections and purposeful networks.

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Saul Kaplan: Genome of an Innovation Movement

My friend Eric Patrick Marr, a passionate social entrepreneur, has been working to promote entrepreneurship in the Bluegrass Region of Kentucky. At his invitation, I went  to the state’s two largest cities, Lexington and Louisville, to talk with local entrepreneurs and community leaders about what it takes to spur more innovation and entrepreneurship in a region.

It’s a goal that nearly every locale seems to have these days, but here there’s a particular sense of urgency given the recent election of new mayors in both towns. Lexington Mayor Jim Gray and Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer are both first-time office holders coming to public service directly from successful private sector business careers. Both new mayors ran and won on economic development platforms. Like me, they believe it’s vital to think about the challenge of fostering entrepreneurship and innovation at the level of the city — and that their cities have the potential to lead the way by becoming innovation hotspots.

Each has a deep and rich economic heritage to draw on — and to overcome — in that quest.Louisville’s economic legacy is that of a classic industrial-era city; Lexington, only 75 miles north, has a predominantly agrarian heritage, centered on the region’s many beautiful and expansive horse farms. In both cities, even as people take pride in the past, some worry that it hasn’t equipped them to build new engines of regional prosperity and job creation. It’s a concern I see in cities in every mature economy that once lived in high-growth prosperity but no longer do. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, they yearn to get back to it, but think it might take something magical, the economic equivalent of ruby red slippers, to effect the change.

My take is that they already have the power within them. I’ll admit this is based on a quick impression. But in my 24 hour visit I met individually with Mayor Gray and Mayor Fischer, talked with the Lexington City Council, taught a class on business model innovation at the University of Kentucky, and met with over 150 local entrepreneurs at several sessions bouncing back and forth between Lexington and Louisville. Talk about total immersion. It was incredibly energizing.

What I perceived was a critical mass of entrepreneurs and innovators who are passionate about the local community and stand ready to co-create their region’s economic future. This really hit me during that class session at the University of Kentucky. When I asked, “How many of you are fromKentucky?” every hand in the room went up. These students constitute a network with deep roots in the community and deep commitment to it. Soon to be part of the local workforce, they are also trained to be entrepreneurial in whatever they do, and eager to make a difference. They are the net-generation, with an unprecedented ability to self-organize, mobilize social change, and create their own economic opportunities. They don’t need ruby red slippers.

My message to them, and to the entrepreneurs and innovators I met, was this: don’t wait for local institutions to clear a path. You have to lead. And once you demonstrate real progress, the institutions will get on board. They will not want to be left behind.

Meanwhile, my advice to community leaders was to play a catalyst role. What does that mean? I like to think of the work of the catalyst as having three parts:

Connect. Winning communities enable random collisions among unusual suspects. They know the most important value-creating opportunities are found in the gray areas between sectors, silos, and disciplines. So, get better at enabling the cross-community connections that will give rise to productive collaborations.

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Saul Kaplan: Will the Sun Shine Bright on Kentucky Innovation?

Learn by doing. Constantly test new ideas. Learn, share and repeat. The world is ever changing — stay ahead of the curve. Embrace the art of discovery.

We need to try more stuff. Innovation is never about silver bullets. It’s about experimentation and doing whatever it takes, even if it means trying 1,000 things, to deliver value. Business model innovation requires a lot more experimentation than we are comfortable with today. Tweaking existing business models won’t work. Technology as a sustaining innovation may improve the efficiency of current business models but will not result in the transformation that we all want and need. We need to learn how to leverage technology for disruptive innovation and to experiment with new business models.

Geoffrey Canada, the inspiring founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone in NYC, reminds us of the importance of constant experimentation. Everyone wants to know the one thing that makes a program like Harlem Children’s Zone successful. What is the silver bullet that will allow the program to be replicated with ease across the country? We are always looking for an easy answer. There is no silver bullet and it is not easy to transform any business model or social system. According to Canada, at Harlem Children’s Zone it is doing 1,000 things with passion to help those children succeed. It is about focusing on the customer, in this case, the children within 100 city blocks in Harlem and doing what ever it takes to help them secure a bright future. There is no one thing.

Business model innovation is all about experimentation. It is about combining and recombining capabilities from across silos until something clicks and value is delivered in a new way. It is never just one thing. It starts with a big idea that gets the juices flowing and attracts others with similar passion to the new approach. The big idea has to be translated from the white board on to a real world test bed to demonstrate that the idea is feasible. Starting small and demonstrating progress is key to building credibility and expanding a network of interested stakeholders. An ongoing portfolio of small-scale experiments to fail fast on those without merit and to prioritize those with the potential to scale is critical.

We also must get far more comfortable with hacking capabilities. Capabilities are the amino acids of innovation. They are the building blocks that enable value delivery. Innovation is a better way to deliver value and is often the result of repurposing existing capabilities. Locking capabilities into rigid organization structures and proprietary closed systems gets in the way of unleashing new sources of value and solving many of the important challenges of our time. Innovation is about hacking capabilities. Business model innovation happens when we enable random capability collisions resulting in new and unexpected ways to deliver value.

A good example of the power and potential of hacking capabilities is Microsoft’s (MSFT) Kinect. Microsoft introduced Kinect in November 2010 as a product extension to its Xbox franchise. Kinect adds a very cool capability for Xbox game players by getting rid of the hand held game controller and turning players into their own controllers. Microsoft and cool haven’t been used in the same sentence for a long time. Kinect is cool.

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Saul Kaplan: Experiment All the Time