Have you seen ‘A Complete Unknown’ - the new Bob Dylan film? Even if you’re not a huge Dylan fan, I’d recommend it. It’s a beautiful musical and cultural journey through 60’s America, with a big lesson for today's troubled world.
In 1965, Bob Dylan walked onto the stage at the Newport Folk Festival, plugged in an electric guitar and outraged folk fans across the world.
They booed him and called him a sellout.
But Dylan wasn’t bothered.
Watching the film, it struck me - Dylan is a classic entrepreneur. He had asked himself an important question – what’s the bigger risk?
Because for him, staying where he was comfortable would be selling himself out. Even if it meant alienating some, many even, he was chasing something bigger – the excitement of something new, a journey which was yet unwritten.
That moment backstage, deciding whether to take his acoustic or electric guitar on stage, holds a lesson for anyone trying to build something new.
Entrepreneurs, creatives and change-makers all face the same challenge: when you push boundaries, you will ruffle feathers. Some won’t want to join you on that journey. Others might actively try and stop you. Maybe because they are scared. Or they have a different risk threshold. Or they aren’t ready to leave their comfortable place.
And so when you step outside what people expect, you risk criticism. But staying in your comfort zone? That’s a much bigger risk, particularly in today's rapidly changing world.
The best ideas, the ones that move industries and societies forward, often face resistance to start with. But you can’t put an idea back in the box.
Like all entrepreneurs, Dylan has kept evolving and developing. Today, he’s seen as a pioneer, not a sellout.
When you want to challenge the status quo, it can be hard to stick to your vision, particularly if the world isn’t ready for it yet.
But remember this - as Nicholas Klein, a trade union activist, said in a 1918 speech: “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you”.
Gandhi is popularly attributed as saying the much more famous version of: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
So if you’re working on something bold and facing push back, be that solutions to climate change, EDI / DEI initiatives, building a change-making / purpose led organisations – whatever it may be - take a page out of Dylan’s playbook.
Keep going and back yourself. In these mad times, we need principled innovators who aren’t scared to think outside the box.
The baying crowd will shout, but time will put them in their place and the noise will eventually fade.
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