Economic Development Myth 12 - We've Tried That Before

I’m just finishing off two events that remind me of the phrase:

We’ve Tried That Before

The corollary, in reality, is this belief:

It Didn’t Work, So Why Try It Again?

The first event was a dinner meeting with a group of VCs and an executive from an early stage startup; the VCs are - for the most part - people I worked with or for during the heyday of the late 1990s, doing go to market strategies and market / competitive landscape strategies. They’re now back in the business of moving video from one place to another, but doing it with handsets instead of desktop computers (the song’s the same, only the devices have changed).

The second event is a recap article I’m writing for one of the magazines I have the honor of writing for in my spare time between consulting projects - www.streamingmedia.com - as the magazine / website turn 10 years old this year. This has brought me back into contact with another group of peers that I’ve interviewed to find out “where are they now?”

Guess what? Some of them have moved to different industries but are shaking those industries up as well (one went into real estate technology, another into early influencer marketing, and a third into fashion). Still others have taken a break from the work, after selling a company, and are back in the game in the venture, angel or executive role. 

Some of them are even trying again what they tried in the late 1990s but couldn’t complete because the technology, environment and user base weren’t honed to the level that they now are.

So the next time you hear a government official say “we tried that before,” give this one back to them

If the situation is exactly the same - including the same customers, constituency and backers - maybe the failure wasn’t the idea. If the situation is different, are we trying it again or a different way?

My favorite use of the phrase “We’ve already tried that” comes when talking about entrepreneurs and incubators. Those government agencies which have tried an incubator and failed did so not because they didn’t have potential success stories, but because they refused to prune the system of the dead wood of “wannabe” entrepreneurs to let the true success stories grow. And then they made matters worse by stunting the success stories by asking them to remain as “anchor tenants”. Entrepreneurs that use incubation the right way get the heck out of Dodge when it’s time to grow, and then return to the incubator again when it’s time to seed the next idea.

Pushing the incubated business out the door often means you’ll get two or three more within six-seven years from that same entrepreneur. My former colleagues - the new VCs - will attest to that as many of them are looking to start private incubators to remedy the ill-attempted public incubators.