The most dangerous place for a business idea is inside someone's head.
Every year, millions of people around the world say they want to start a business. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2023 report, approximately 30% of working-age adults across the globe express entrepreneurial intentions. Yet only a fraction of them will ever take the first concrete step toward building a venture.
This is not a problem of ideas. It is a problem of action.
The Intention-Action Gap
In entrepreneurship research, there is a well-documented phenomenon known as the intention-action gap — the space between wanting to start a business and actually doing it. This gap is where dreams go to die quietly, not from rejection or failure, but from hesitation.
The formation of entrepreneurial intention is influenced by three key factors, as identified by Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior (1991): personal attitude toward entrepreneurship, subjective norms (how society views entrepreneurship), and perceived behavioral control (whether you believe you can actually do it). But intention alone is not enough.
As the entrepreneurship literature makes clear, the passage from intention to action is the most critical — and most difficult — stage in the entire entrepreneurial process. You can have the best idea, the strongest motivation, and the clearest vision, but if you never act, none of it matters.
Three Pathways to Entrepreneurial Action
1. The Deliberate Path: Intention Builds Over Time
For some entrepreneurs, the decision to launch is the result of a long, deliberate process. Their intention grows steadily — shaped by education, professional experience, exposure to role models, and personal reflection — until it reaches a tipping point where action becomes inevitable. This is the classic planned entrepreneur: someone who spends months or years preparing, researching, and waiting for the right moment. The strength of this path is preparation. The risk is perpetual preparation — what some call analysis paralysis.
2. The Triggered Path: An External Event Accelerates Action
In this scenario, the individual carries an entrepreneurial intention but lacks the catalyst to act. Then something external changes the equation: a new technology emerges, funding becomes available, a market gap appears, or a mentor offers support. The external trigger does not create the intention — it unlocks it. This is why entrepreneurial ecosystems matter so much. Universities, incubators, competitions, and government programs serve as triggers that help latent entrepreneurs cross the threshold from thinking to doing.
3. The Forced Path: Action Without Prior Intention
Sometimes entrepreneurship is not a choice — it is a necessity. Job loss, economic crisis, or family circumstances can push someone into entrepreneurship without any prior intention. In Haiti, where formal employment opportunities are scarce, necessity-driven entrepreneurship accounts for a significant share of new business creation. While this path carries higher risk due to less preparation, it also produces some of the most resilient entrepreneurs — people who build ventures not because they wanted to, but because they had to.
The Weight of Environment
No entrepreneur operates in a vacuum. The environment in which an individual exists plays a decisive role in whether intention translates to action. This environment includes society and its cultural attitudes toward risk, family and their emotional and financial support, the education system and access to knowledge, professional networks of mentors and peers, and institutional support from government policies and access to capital.
Research consistently shows that individuals who are well-supported by their environment are significantly more likely to convert entrepreneurial intentions into action (Fayolle and Degeorge, 2012). This is why building supportive ecosystems — not just individual skills — is essential for fostering entrepreneurship.
Practical Steps: From Thinking to Doing
If you are sitting with an idea that you have been thinking about for months or years, here is a structured approach to move forward. First, clarify your vision — where do you want to go, what problem are you solving, and for whom? Second, evaluate yourself honestly — what are your strengths, what skills do you lack, and who can complement you? Third, start small — the effectual approach to entrepreneurship, developed by Saras Sarasvathy (2001), suggests starting with what you have: your skills, your network, and your available resources. Fourth, find your trigger — enter a competition, join an incubator, talk to a potential customer. Fifth, accept imperfection — the business plan can be refined, the product improved, the strategy evolved. But none of that happens if you never start.
The Cardboard Wall Between Intention and Action
The barrier between where you are and where you want to be is rarely as solid as it appears. In my own experience — from teaching entrepreneurship at four universities in Haiti to building ventures as a graduate student at Colorado State University — I have seen brilliant ideas abandoned not because they were flawed, but because their creators could not bring themselves to act.
The wall between intention and action is a cardboard wall. It looks imposing. It feels solid. But it collapses the moment you push through it with determination and clarity. The question is not whether your idea is good enough. The question is whether you are willing to take the first step.
Originally developed as part of an entrepreneurship training manual prepared for Anseye Pou Ayiti through PIGraN CSE (Centre de Services aux Entreprises), March 2023. Adapted and expanded for an international professional audience.
References
Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179-211. | Bruyat, C. (1993). Creation d'entreprise: contributions epistemologiques et modelisation. These de doctorat, Universite Pierre Mendes France de Grenoble. | Fayolle, A. and Degeorge, J-M. (2012). Dynamique entrepreneuriale: le comportement de l'entrepreneur. De Boeck, Bruxelles. | Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (2023). GEM 2023/2024 Global Report. | Sarasvathy, S. D. (2001). Causation and effectuation. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 243-263. | Simon, H. A. (1983). Administration et processus de decision. Paris: Economica. | Timmons, J. A. (1994). New Venture Creation. Irwin.