18, March 2026

In 2026 THECIS celebrates its 25th anniversary. To celebrate this, we are starting a 25th Anniversary Blog series where we ask prominent individuals to write a blog to provide perspective on a topic related to innovation and entrepreneurship. This Blog is by Perry Kinkaide, owner/operator of the KEI Network that publishes a newsletter and hosts the associated KEI Network’s webinars.

Entrepreneurship and the Forgotten Discipline: Know thy Customer. Blog #103

Entrepreneurship is often portrayed as a triumph of ideas — the flash of innovation, the breakthrough technology, the elegant product. Yet the hard truth learned in boardrooms, shop floors, and through more than a few personal failures is simpler: businesses do not succeed because of ideas. They succeed because someone understands a customer.

For over 20 years as the founder and CEO of the Alberta Council of Technologies Society and its successor, the KEI Network, I’ve engaged innovators and entrepreneurs in discussion about what it takes to succeed. A particularly instructive study focused on why small businesses fail to grow involving local Chambers of Commerce across Alberta. The lesson I learned and the message I carried was rarely fashionable in the age of venture capital and technology accelerators: before refining the product, understand the person who will buy it.

Five questions matter more than most business plans ever admit:

  • Who is the customer?
  • Where are they?
  • What do they buy?
  • Where do they buy it?
  • How do they buy it?

These questions sound elementary, yet they are routinely ignored. Entrepreneurs fall in love with their inventions. Institutes focus on research. Investors reinforce this orientation, pouring precious early financing into product development while overlooking the far more difficult work of building relationships.

A product does not enter a market. A relationship does. Without a customer there is no business.

Businesses survive and grow through networks — suppliers, distributors, customers, mentors, and trusted intermediaries. The entrepreneur who understands these relationships gains a practical intelligence about markets that no spreadsheet can provide. The one who ignores them discovers, often painfully, that innovation without connection rarely travels very far.

My own lessons came not from successes but from mistakes. Like many founders, I initially underestimated the power of networks and the discipline of networking. It seemed secondary to the “real work” of building the product. In reality, it was the real work.

This insight also sheds light on a broader economic challenge. For decades Alberta has struggled with the question of diversification. Governments, universities, and development agencies have searched for the missing ingredient that would create a thriving innovation ecosystem. The common diagnosis has been a shortage of capital — particularly angel financing – early-stage investment.

But capital is rarely the true constraint.

What Alberta has lacked is the dense web of commercial relationships that allows ideas to travel from laboratory to market. Successful innovation regions — whether in technology, manufacturing, or finance — thrive not simply because they invent things, but because they connect people. Entrepreneurs, investors, suppliers, customers, and advisors operate in overlapping networks where information flows quickly and trust accumulates.

In a young province, those networks are still forming. Too often the emphasis has fallen on academic research and product innovation, assuming that the missing piece is funding. Yet many ventures fail long before financing becomes decisive. They fail because founders lack the relational skills required to build markets — the patience to listen to customers, the humility to adapt, and the persistence to cultivate supply chains and distribution channels.

Entrepreneurship, in other words, is less about invention than about connection.

This observation aligns with a broader theme explored in my forthcoming book: The Last Commons: Reclaiming Personal Sovereignty. It emphasizes the critical importance of spaces where people exchange ideas freely and build understanding through dialogue.

Markets operate in a similar way. They depend on trust, communication, and shared knowledge. Without those relational foundations, even the most promising innovations struggle to find a place in the world.

The practical lesson for entrepreneurs is clear. Spend less time perfecting the product and more time understanding the customer. Build relationships before building scale. Respect the supply chain as much as the design studio. And recognize that networks — not merely capital — are the true infrastructure of enterprise.

Appreciate in a world of rapid change, of extraordinary innovation, new markets are forming and old collapsing. Products like knowledge require entrepreneurs to be nimble, market focused, and capable of finding or forming networks where none exist. Time is of the essence. Relationships are key to efficiency.

Ideas may start companies. But relationships are what allow them to endure.