This post from the WSJ is a familiar story: Passionate entrepreneur starts a company, grows the biz to where what made them successful starting out is now a liability. Hires a president to run the company and scale it. Founder has trouble letting go, afraid that her original vision will be changed and that her ego won’t know what to do if she’s not the center of things anymore. Who am I if not this company?

There’s a similar situation with the "innovators with remarkable wisdom" that ABV is designed to serve. Who am I if not this wisdom/idea?

In both cases, holding on to control limits how big the idea or business can become. To the innovator, like the entrepreneur, it’s a paradox. Want a bigger voice in the world? Great. Let’s hone and crystallize that voice so that you can attract people who resonate with your wisdom. And once you do that, it’s your job to encourage a community of kindred spirits to shape it, so that something bigger than you can come into the world. Give up control, push away ego, in service to a more sustainable, evolved concept.

In other words, birth the baby, love it dearly and then let it go.

I consider myself an innovator and an entrepreneur. I trip over myself when I forget that I’m enabling a process but I am not the process itself. I’m the channel but not the content. I’m the womb, but not the baby.  Because great ideas can never be contained by a single individual. Great ideas are tugged at, poked and prodded, torn apart, examined from multiple perspectives and ultimately, emerge richer, deeper and more relevant.

Hooray for letting go of control.