The entrepreneurial mindset of Brian Eno

Artists see things that we don't, and if you want to unleash your own creative spark, visit a gallery. I'm not sure how it works, but it feels like osmosis, just being around art makes you more inventive. Each of us has our own singularity and we don’t all find the works in a gallery equally appealing. But what prompts us to go from artwork to another? Why do we stop there for 15 minutes in front of a piece we enjoy, or why do we like different music?

Art engages the brain in a way that day to day business does not, it’s a counterweight yet I see creating art and creating a company as extensions of the same trait: taking an idea and  making it come to life. Creativity is the essence of entrepreneurship. Extending this thinking and inverting it, Brian Eno – one of my favourite musicians who has worked with John Cale, Bowie, Talking Heads Ultravox, U2,Devo and Harold Budd – has codified elements of creativity which I think can be applied to a founder’s startup’s creative process.

Best known by the mononym Eno, he's an English musician, composer, producer and visual artist, making pioneering contributions to the ambient and electronic genres of music, and for producing, recording, and writing works with a range of artists as highlighted above. Eno has introduced unconventional concepts and approaches to contemporary music. He is regarded as one of C20th and C21st music’s most influential and innovative figures.

Outside of his own music, he first came to the attention of many when he created the iconic Windows 95 startup sound. The brief that Microsoft gave to Eno was absurd: A piece of music that is inspiring, universal, futuristic, sentimental, emotional…and only 3.25 seconds long.  Eno created 84 versions of the sound. Microsoft paid him $35k for the work, which is an incredible deal considering it has probably been heard by over a billion people.

In 1975, he co-developed Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards featuring aphorisms intended to spur creative thinking. From this, and other Eno innovative output, here’s a list of what I think Eno’s entrepreneurial.mindset is all about, curated over the years which have helped my own creative thinking, and I've used them to help startup founders with their own creative endeavours.

1 Control versus Surrender Here is an Eno thought experiment. Imagine you are surfing. There are periods of control and surrender:

• ·       Control: You paddle past the breakers to find a good place to catch a wave.

• ·       Surrender: When the right wave comes, you let it take you.

Eno uses this analogy to explain everyday life:What I mean by surrender is a sort of active choice not to take control. It's an active choice to be part of the flow of something.

What you see when you watch surfers is that they take control momentarily to situate themselves on a wave, and then they surrender. They're carried along by it, and then they take control again and then they surrender.

I think that's a good analogy of what we do throughout our startup lives. We are constantly moving between the control and the surrender phase. The only thing is that we tend to dignify the control side of the spectrum more than the surrender phase. When we are not really the masters of the situation, we should simply let go some times to see where it takes us

When I did try surfing in Australia a number of years ago, most of the time I was surrendering unintentionally and ungracefully, simply trying to stay afloat, trying to use what little bit of control I had in a turbulent environment. We are not good at surrendering but a sense of 'going with the flow’ is just as much of a skill as being in control.

2 Beginnings are easy, endings are hard The main thrust is that it is so easy to start something new. Tools and ideas are plentiful. But the act of completing a project, which I’m sure all of you can relate to, is hard.  Here is Eno spitting more hot fire:

There are a lot of ways of getting something pretty respectable going quite early on. To quote Picasso, there's nothing worse than a brilliant beginning. But then there is that feeling of terror when you've done something that you know is good and you just don't know how not to ruin it. You think everything you try on will make it worse and yet you know it's not finished.

The fear that Eno explains isn’t some abstract concept. He has over 2, 800 incomplete works himself. I think you should think about this control and surrender thing. That's what I think this question is about. It's about where am I allowing myself to be on this spectrum.

3 The importance of deadlines Eno also shared some thoughts on how to apply the “control” mindset to his unfinished catalogue of over 2,800 songs. Specifically, he talks about why deadlines are important: My daughter was in my studio and she was looking at my archive where I have 2,809 unreleased pieces of music. And she said, ‘Dad, how do you actually finish any of these?’ And I said, ‘When there's a deadline.’ And that's really true, but I'll tell you why that's true.

When there's a deadline, there's also a destination, a context, a reason for something. And that's what makes me finish it. Up until that point, it's an experiment. It's sitting on my shelf and I can take it down again as I often do, work on it again, put it back on. [Then I can take it] out two years later and work on it some more. So everything's in progress until there's a reason to finish it.

4 Rawness vs. polish  Increasingly, the work that stand out will be rawer and more incomplete because, by definition, new ideas haven’t been optimised because they are new. Eno explains:

On one end, you have auto-tune that perfectly puts music into tune…which is sort of flawless and faultless. In contrast, the other side is clumsy, awkward, crude and unfinished things that we all actually like in the right context. I think the newness is such a big thrill that you don't care about a polished product.

Eno also cautions against introducing polish too early in the process. He calls it premature sheen. You can basically take any raw music and make it sound good right away. But if you do that too early, you’re short-circuiting the exploration process of what you are actually trying to create:

You can make anything look really good really quickly. Suddenly, you think ‘wow I've got something here.’ But you've gotten away from the actual original soul and purpose of the work.

You can’t be successful in art or in business if you are a slave to perfectionism. While both the crazy entrepreneur and artist seek perfectionism in their work, they are not stymied by it knowing they must produce either with speed in order to one day get it right. Don’t worry about mistakes. Making things out of mistakes, that’s creativity.

As Pablo Picasso said, Art washes away from the soul, the dust of everyday life. This is the heart of the matter for both artist and entrepreneur. It takes a true artist to see something out of nothing and an even greater artist to begin the process to shape the situation to match that which they envision. Sometimes no one can see what you see and sometimes people may even tell you that you are crazy for thinking you can see some kind of opportunity. Well you may be crazy, or maybe you are just crazy enough to believe what you see is possible.

5 The anchor of success Never be satisfied with your previous work. Don’t get pigeon-holed on previous successes.  If you do, you won’t have the creative space to explore new ideas and you’ll just be re-hashing old work:

There's a tendency in the world for people — if you've done something and it's been successful — to want you to always be doing that same thing again and again. I can completely understand it and I'm not blaming anyone for it. But it creates a sort of anchorage that I don't particularly enjoy.

People are always congratulating me for the album I made 20 years ago, and it sort of introduces three thoughts: Was it better? Have I deteriorated since then? Do I have any better ideas? The thrill is to go to the edge of what you can do instead of doing the same work over and over. That’s the thrill of working for me. If I feel the anchorage too much and the sense of looking backwards, it just holds me back.

When I ask myself, what does success look like? the answer is always simple: To do work that feels meaningful. Learn and discover new things. To be present with life and to create things with purpose. This definition of success grounds me and puts me at ease. It feels deeply personal. This is something within me, waiting to be expressed, not something out there to chase after.

6 Reality leaves a lot to the imagination I dream of painting, and then I paint my dream. That’s my favourite Van Gogh quote. Reality, plus a sprinkle of imagination and intuition, turns that which seems impossible into something that is possible. If you can imagine it, and you can believe it, you can achieve it by asking yourself the question, ‘What if?’ Then go do. The ability to follow your gut instincts as an entrepreneur is vital to the creation process and carving out your own niche. Steve Jobs followed his instincts to create the iPhone as much as Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel.

Entrepreneurs seek outlier success, which comes from them going out of their way to be disruptive, to make people think differently. Entrepreneurs know the value of being innovative and memorable like Eno, unlocking new conversations and possibilities.  The art of entrepreneurship is alive in Eno as an act of self-discovery, every artist paints what he is.

7 Be open minded One must spoil as many canvases as one succeeds with. Eno’s work was always drawn from a huge range of influences. His uniqueness was often the product of combining existing elements in new ways, with a prowess for producing something entirely his own, throwing ideas together randomly to discover new combinations and possibilities. This ability to create genuine uniqueness is a key trait of entrepreneurs.

Eno never succumbed to the stick-to-a-formula mantra. At the height of his success he re-emerged with something completely new and unexpected. Not all of his experiments worked, but this willingness to try out new ideas, knowing that not all will triumph, is a trait every innovator needs.

8 You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? Ignore the naysayers, your startup is your road of self-discovery. Listen to your inner voice and stand up tall knowing who you are. Like Eno, have ambition that reaches way beyond your current horizon.

If you do what everyone else has done, you will have what everyone else has. It is entrepreneurs who are willing to do what no one else is willing to do so they can have what no one else has.  .

9 Obsess on making it happen For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together Both artists and entrepreneurs are both obsessed to the point of being called crazy about what they are doing. They are well known for getting lost in their art or business and getting totally consumed by it. They love their work to degrees others can’t even understand.

It’s not uncommon to hear about the artist working in the studio until the wee hours of the morning. The same is true of the entrepreneur who works the weekend missing out on what others call ’normal’ life. It’s getting up every day and doing the work, taking thousands of fresh touches and refreshes alongside the productive mornings. It’s the same for your startup, it’s a combination of inspiration and sheer hard work.

10 Be patient In the course of building a new products, you'll experience moments when you're unsure of a successful outcome.. Or the way something gets set up seems a bit kludgy at the moment. Maybe this stuff is alright, maybe it's not, but it feels unsettled.I like these moments. It's practice. It's a chance to sit with them, to let them be, to work on other things while they marinate in the back of your mind. They aren't blockers, they aren't deal breakers — they're just things that may or may not work out.

Sometimes time makes them work. Or reveals that they certainly don't. Sometimes they're novel and unusual — which can be jarring to the uninitiated — but endearing to the experienced. Sometimes! So just let them be. Come back around to them later if they continue to bug you. It's perfectly OK to leave things unresolved, and let the resolution force itself on you eventually. If you forget about them, they didn't matter anyway. If you can't forget, maybe they do matter more than you realised. Projects unfold. Live with them for a while.

Eno is frequently referred to as one of popular music's most influential artists. Eno coined the term ambient music to describe his own work and defined the term. "the idea of modern music as subtle atmosphere, as chill-out, as impressionistic, as something that creates space for quiet reflection or relaxation." He has spread his techniques and theories primarily through his production; his distinctive style informed projects in which he has been involved, including Bowie's "Berlin Trilogy" and the albums he produced for Talking Heads and Devo in particular,

Eno combines a mindset filled with curiosity, creativity and a spark of determination to create something new. For me, founder mindset ultimately consists of initiating, adapting, learning, and coming out ahead. If this pattern continues and you can build a team, it is likely that you will be successful in your startup endeavours.