Natural Enterprise: The Book, The Title, The Web Tools, and the Journey

Posted on September 10, 2007 by Dave Pollard

As you probably know, my book on creating sustainable, responsible, joyful, community-based businesses will be published in the Spring by Chelsea Green. I need some assistance from readers to finalize a title and subtitle, and to design the web tools that will accompany the book.

The original title for the book was Natural Enterprise. In discussions with another publisher and with my agent, the title morphed to Working Naturally: Discovering What You Were Meant to Do and How to Do It Responsibly, Sustainably, and Joyfully.

Chelsea Green has challenged me to revisit the original title (or something close: The Natural Entrepreneur) and to condense or change the subtitle to something shorter and punchier.

As the graphic above suggests, the book’s purpose is:

To help you better understand and overcome the fears of entrepreneurship, and assess whether you have it in you to be an entrepreneur — i.e. when you’re dissatisfied with your current work (or lack of work), to help you answer the question “now what do I do?”
To help you discover the ‘sweet spot’ where your Gifts (what you do uniquely well), your Passions (what you love doing) and your Purpose (what is needed in the market, that you care about) intersect i.e. what you were meant to do; and also who you were meant to work with
To explain to you what a Natural Enterprise is, and the important ways it differs from most modern businesses, and why Natural Enterprises are inherently more responsible, sustainable, improvisational, collaborative, resilient, and joyful
To teach you how to do exceptional market research, to find unmet needs that are in your ‘sweet spot’
To help you imagine ways to fill those needs, and then teach you the innovation process to bring your ideas to fruition

So what do you think — do you prefer Natural Enterprise, Working Naturally, The Natural Entrepreneur, or something else as the main title? And how would you shorten or change the subtitle to capture the gist in fewer words than my sixteen?

The three-part website accompanying my book will contain tools to help people (a) find their ‘sweet spot’, and people to make a living with, (b) share success stories and war stories of what has worked and what hasn’t, and (c) expose needs and ideas that might address them to ‘the wisdom of crowds’.

The first of these tools, Finding Natural Partners, would enable you to discover and share your ‘sweet spot’ with others — you could identify the Gift(s) and Passion(s) you have that are ‘on Purpose’. You could search for other people who share your Purpose and whose Gift(s) and Passion(s) complement your own — potential Natural Enterprise partners. You could discover what other people have identified as their Purpose and (if it resonated with you) make it your own. You could discover how Natural Partnerships had emerged in other communities, and replicate them in your own community.

The tool for doing this would have to be very simple, intuitive, and fun to use. Any complexity would have to be ‘buried under the hood’. It should also enable both virtual conversations and face-to-face meetings. It has to be more structured than a discussion forum but less structured than a form-filling exercise. The process of discovering your ‘sweet spot’ is iterative, so the process of using the tool has to be flexible and not tedious. I’m not even sure it can be ‘specified’ — it may have to evolve. Peer production, anyone? Should I set up a very simple wiki or some other tool to ‘talk through’ its design?

The second tool is the Natural Enterprise Community, and while it sounds like a forum, it’s actually more of a storybook. I foresee it being a place where people could tell their story, complete with moral (“remember to do this” or “don’t do that”), in the first person plural. Because I have never discovered a Natural Enterprise that’s a sole proprietorship, I will seed this with some collective success stories and some cautionary war stories about people who tried to do everything themselves. I’d like to offer a story template, but not impose it on anyone. Stories are valuable because they provide context through detail and specifics (so-called ‘best practices’ and ‘benchmarks’ usually oversimplify and sacrifice that essential context). We are all natural storytellers, and I just want to create a place where people can share their stories.

The third tool is the Natural Collaboratory. This is an ‘idea market’ with a difference — no money changes hands. It’s a place for people to float ideas, do some secondary research, and get a ‘crowd’ of prospective customers and coworkers to assess these ideas, and perhaps even serve as the launching pad for Open Source, Peer Production or Open Space activities to move these ideas forward.

I see this third tool as being more structured. Each idea should be based on some real, primary research that indicates there is an unmet need to be filled, and the need and the research needs to be spelled out, as context for the idea (and to avoid people just being lazy and posting their pet ideas without having done the homework, and to shut up people who just ‘black hat’ ideas by claiming there is no unmet need for them). But beyond that I can see the idea development as very collaborative, very conversational, going where it will, facilitated by some real-time Skype or other inexpensive technology to allow more iteration and rapid idea development than forums permit. This is not intended to be a vehicle for innovation — in most cases I think innovation needs more resources and energy than any online tool could manage. It is a vehicle for ideation — for thinking out loud about how identified needs might be solved, imaginatively, without getting sidetracked by the details of commercialization.

I am a little worried that people will be afraid to float ideas in case someone else steals them. The book explains that even great ideas are pre-commercial, and it is the innovation process that separates great ideas from great products and services. But some fear is inevitable. I am going to see whether we might use some kind of preemptive ‘idea registration’ process to preclude anyone taking a great idea and spending a fortune to patent every imaginable application of it. Ideas should always be free, and freely shared.

I’d welcome your thoughts on these tools. I don’t want anyone rushing ahead to prototype them, because they need to be collectively imagined and talked through first. I doubt that anyone will be able to make money developing them — my hope is that they will serve as ‘working models’ for other applications that need similar enabling processes and infrastructure.

They might even be among the first of a new generation of social networking tools that have actually been designed to meet a specific business need, so that unlike Web 1.0 and 2.0 tools they might actually achieve sustainedtraction in the business community. It’s worth a try.

So — title, subtitle, tool evolution — what do you think?

Category: Creating Natural Enterprises

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25 Responses to Natural Enterprise: The Book, The Title, The Web Tools, and the Journey

Marty Avery says:

September 10, 2007 at 19:22

Sounds incredible!a) Finding the “sweet spot” is iterative and thus elusive or rather ever evolving. I’ve been trying to build repeatable process around this but it’s hard to automate self reflection and intuitive processing. Harder still to get old thinking to take one to new possibilities. Perhaps Collaboratory could feedback into this first stage with others helping probe possibilities?b) Natural Enterprise Community sounds like real time “lessons from the edge” gathered and analyzed by Jana Matthews. Her books and approach have been very helpful to entrepreneur in my circle.c) I would add the genius in an idea is the DOING not just the thought innovation. a,b,c) all would do well to consider roles that one is suited for if not destined to be “entrepreneur” or start-up spark plug. To show working and struggling partnerships (as those can make or break any initiative/heart) and how to assess fit (what happens when it’s very very good or bad–how to tell). Overall the roles needed to succeed in entreprise at the start as well as how all roles evolve over time as enterprise evolves.
prad says:

September 10, 2007 at 19:23

naturpreneurship: partnership,community,collaboratory
Haig says:

September 10, 2007 at 19:31

Some shots at a title/subtitle:Title: Authentic Entrepreneurship/The Authentic Entrepreneursubtitle: Creating a business and a life you are proud of.subtitle: working to live instead of living to worksubtitle: Putting the (life|living) back in ‘making a living’.subtitle: Making a living worth living.I’ll try to brainstorm more when I have more time.Regarding the tools:The first tool, ‘Finding natural partners’, is actually two tools: 1-finding about yourself, 2-finding others to compliment yourself. Have you taken a look at http://www.startupnation.com. I think they have done a good job with your tool #2.And for tool #3, a collaborative idea market, there are many online but either they are too broad or too narrow and vertically focused.All that being said, startupnation.com is really cool and just lacks certain ‘natural’ aspects that you focus on.
Marty Avery says:

September 10, 2007 at 19:37

Roles like money-flow watcher, rainmaker, process creator, people pleaser, law guard, wise sage, naive upstart, actualizer etc. Also important in stage 1. know thyself is learning what you do exceedingly poorly, and getting someone else to do that really well. Each time I’ve started an enterprise, finding someone who does well what I do poorly has been exceedingly difficult and where I have struggled.Wiki might be a good idea.Am presenting on this topic at Web of Change in BC later this month. Wish you were going to be there! http://www.webofchange.comMaybe you can present next year once book is out.Title of book “Natural Prosperity” : How to build and sustain purposeful, joyful, sustainable work.or “Enterprising Ecosystems”: Thrive while pursuing your life’s purpose. (“work” substitutes for “purpose”) . “Natural” becomes a sub brand. or “Natural Enterprise”: Do what your DNA tells you.
Marty Avery says:

September 10, 2007 at 19:37

Roles like money-flow watcher, rainmaker, process creator, people pleaser, law guard, wise sage, naive upstart, actualizer etc. Also important in stage 1. know thyself is learning what you do exceedingly poorly, and getting someone else to do that really well. Each time I’ve started an enterprise, finding someone who does well what I do poorly has been exceedingly difficult and where I have struggled.Wiki might be a good idea.Am presenting on this topic at Web of Change in BC later this month. Wish you were going to be there! http://www.webofchange.comMaybe you can present next year once book is out.Title of book “Natural Prosperity” : How to build and sustain purposeful, joyful, sustainable work.or “Enterprising Ecosystems”: Thrive while pursuing your life’s purpose. (“work” substitutes for “purpose”) . “Natural” becomes a sub brand. or “Natural Enterprise”: Do what your DNA tells you and thrive!
Paul says:

September 10, 2007 at 20:34

Now What Do I Do?: Discovering the Natural Entrepreneur In You
Theresa says:

September 10, 2007 at 23:59

I don’t have a suggestion for the title but I would suggest that anyplace where you might need to use the word “maximum” you should replace it with “optimum” – as in “optimum growth”. We are still so focused on unrestrained growth and getting the most out of everything a small change in the use of words might help your readers focus on the “best” amount of prosperity rather than the maximum. Just a thought. I don’t know if the word “maximum” even comes up, but if it does then I think “optimum” is a better choice.
Jim Hanna says:

September 11, 2007 at 00:32

My take:Natural Ventures: Discovering what’s right for you and the planet
PaulSweeney says:

September 11, 2007 at 03:13

Some ideas around names: (1) The Integrated Entrepreneur (2) Inventing Your Life (3) Lifetime Working (4) Naturally Enterprising
lugon says:

September 11, 2007 at 03:46

offtopic, but google for “wiki epilepsy wisdom crowd” and look for the first link which should be economist.com … or maybe not so offtopic if people with some diseases help each other enterpreunerly? :-)
lugon says:

September 11, 2007 at 03:54

maybe you want to get past the “work” word … after all, “work” is said to be a biblical punishment, isn’t it? ;-)”natural” … maybe “natwork” (pronounced as “network” but not quite, maybe more like “not work”)”natpreunership”?”natnovation”?
Richard Hare says:

September 11, 2007 at 09:35

I’d be interested in a book titled “The Natural Entrepreneur”. It strikes me as personal, concrete, challenging and aspirational.
Mike says:

September 11, 2007 at 11:27

Nothing useful to suggest, despite racking my brain for ideas all day, BUT: “Working Naturally: Discovering What You Were Meant to Do and How to Do It Responsibly, Sustainably, and Joyfully” just sucks. Sorry…
Christopher says:

September 11, 2007 at 12:24

Honestly? I only read a third through this post and I think you’ve already found your title. You used it twice: The Sweet Spot. And I don’t know how you might work this into a subtitle but there’s another phrase you put in quotation marks in your post that seems like it’d work well: ‘working models.’
Mariella says:

September 11, 2007 at 15:23

– – to help you flow in (or with) the entrepeneurship issues (or facts), and …- – entrepreneurship: how to flow with or how to change to something else- – Everybody has a sweet spot where gifts, passion and purpose meet…..- – ¿Is it possible?… a Joyful more responsible sustainable, improvisational, collaborative, resilient… enterprise?- – Natural enterprise: ¿your ideal day to day activity? (or something like that without mentioning the word work)
Claude Whitmyer says:

September 11, 2007 at 16:21

The Natural Entrepreneur:A handbook for responsible, sustainable, joyful enterprise.
Claude Whitmyer says:

September 11, 2007 at 16:22

The Natural Entrepreneur:A handbook for creating responsible, sustainable, joyful enterprise.
Claude Whitmyer says:

September 11, 2007 at 22:16

The Sweet Spot: A handbook for creating responsible, sustainable, joyful enterprise
dermot casey says:

September 12, 2007 at 03:31

DaveEither “Working Naturally” or “Natural Work” work for me.The subtitle is too long. leave it at “Discovering what you were meant to do” its long enough to get people to pick up the book by describing well whats inside (and thats got to be the only purpose here) and not so long as to put people off. Any idea when it will be available as I’m looking forward to reading it?Dermot
lugon says:

September 12, 2007 at 07:54

The sweet spot
chasby says:

September 14, 2007 at 12:07

I like “Natural Work: Discovering How to Work Responsibly, Sustainably, Joyfully.”
Marty Avery says:

September 14, 2007 at 15:08

I like the Sweet Spot combos especially Claude’s. Not so academic and repulsive. Sweet Spot says it in 2 syllables. Nice!
Christopher says:

September 15, 2007 at 04:39

I like Claude’s too! What aboutThe Sweet Spot: Working models for (creating?) responsible, sustainable, joyful enterprise
Siona says:

September 16, 2007 at 00:27

I love The Sweet Spot, too. Brilliant. And sweet.
braden.d.kelley@gmail.com says:

September 24, 2007 at 23:30

It looks like an interesting article. I will have to bookmark it and come back tomorrow when I have more time. Too many people just say “do what you love”, so I look forward to seeing what you have to say.