Entrepreneur Association of Tokyo
"Developing a 21st Century School & Today’s Wiki World"

The entrepreneurial model: the stages of being an entrepreneur
Patrick kicked off the seminar by introducing the ‘conscious competence learning model,’ a model of the entrepreneurial process that that describes the following four stages of entrepreneurial development.

Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence: This is the stage where you are a creator and leader, full of ideas and enthusiasm and with a dream, but perhaps blissfully unaware of any shortcomings you have or unaware of what you need to realize your dream.
Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence: This is the stage of development where you become “aware that you don’t know a lot,” where you begin to realize what is needed to make your dream come true and begin to work on building partnerships, infrastructure and relationships toward that end.
Stage 3: Unconscious Competence: This is the stage where your infrastructure is largely in place, you know your organization, you know your strengths and weaknesses, you know the kind of staff you need, and you know what you need to do.
Stage 4: Conscious Competence: The final stage where you are presiding over a successful organization that has everything in place.

Although Patrick mentioned that the distinction between stages 3 and 4 can be somewhat blurred, it is valuable to use the model to think about your organization and assess your personal development. As Patrick explained, the model can help you think about where you are, what you are doing and how you are focusing your time, making it an effective tool for self-analysis and goal setting and enabling you to better progress as an entrepreneur.

What are the characteristics that make a successful entrepreneur?
Building on the entrepreneurial model, Patrick got the audience discussing what they believed to be the characteristics of a successful entrepreneur, helping them to highlight their strengths and weaknesses and the traits that are important for their roles as leaders and creators. Patrick then moved on to discuss the importance of acting to overcome weaknesses and suggested two approaches to doing so:

Spend time building your skills
Find people that you can collaborate with who have the skills you lack

Whether you choose to fill your gaps in knowledge with partnerships or by working on self-development, or with a combination of the two, depends on your current situation and needs; there is no right way that works for everyone. What does work for any entrepreneur, however, is being able to evaluate your present situation and use your findings to move forward. In this regard, the entrepreneur model and skill assessment are essential tools.

EA goes back to school
Living up to his reputation as an innovative educator, Patrick spent the second half of the seminar guiding EA members through a series of discussions and pair work exercises that got them to think about both their development as entrepreneurs and the development of various facets of their organizations. You might benefit from considering some of them again.

What stage are you at on the entrepreneur model?
How would describe your organization in one minute in a way that exhibits emotion, that’s creative, that’s playful and that’s fun?
In one sentence, what is your organization’s (or your personal) mission and vision?
How can you see, hear and touch your mission in your organization?
What are the characteristics of your organization? What characteristics do you want your organization to have to make it different?
What is extraordinary about your organization?

Q&A
How did you manage to get this building? (The current school building)
That’s the million dollar question! Years and years and years of collaboration and negotiation…it took a lot of time and energy and work, and it was about building trust. And it was about the Japanese way of “sukoshi zutsu” and it was about the Japanese way of do we want “gaiatsu” or not right now. It was a balance of foreign pressure along the lines of building trust and the spirit of collaboration.

You seem to be well balanced, how do you do that?
It’s really important to have a balance. It’s extremely challenging during the beginning stages to do that and those in your life need to be supportive. It is very necessary to be able to step back to spend time with friends and family and that’s where some of the best ideas come from. So often you are just running and running and you don’t take the time to think. One of the things I have found and hear from people who do actually take the time to balance the other side life, is that it gives them a lot of time to reflect which will result in actually work smarter and will allow for things to come together much easier. Instead of trying to go against that wave that’s coming or the wall that’s there, this balance gives you an advantage.