Comfortably Uncomfortable

Incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces should be full of creative tension. That’s right, tension: an unsettling feeling which elicits a response of some kind.

photo credit: Presidio of Monterey: DLIFLC & USAG via photopin cc

Many make the mistake of making their programs too comfortable. Come in, put your feet up, and relax. No, entrepreneur development programs need to be comfortably uncomfortable. That is, they should provide just the right balance between someone enjoying the process and their wanting to move proactively through it, towards graduation and closer to real-world success.

Think about high school. You were learning and growing, but you didn’t want to stay there forever, did you?

Keep in mind this is a positive, not negative, tension you want to foster. It’s not about creating fear nor employing scare tactics to keep people on their toes. It’s about an environment and system that establishes clear expectations of behavior and progress. Where startups keep one another accountable to their own benchmarks and are vested in one another’s success. Where everyone is moving in different directions, but everyone is doing everything they can to move FORWARD.

I don’t know about you, but that’s the kind of program I would want to be a part of. And my guess is that this is where you would want to be too.

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