Malcolm Gladwell, author of Tipping Point, Outliars and Blink, made an interesting  observation about entrepreneurs in a recent New Yorker magazine.  He purports that they don’t take risks, it just looks that way.

            Through his examples, Gladwell explains that entrepreneurs are predators of perceived value, investors of others’ money or savvy information gatherers. His points:   There is no risk in charging more than cost when value is perceived higher; Nor is there personal risk in structuring a deal to only risk the assets of others; And when you have knowledge of a sure thing, that eliminates risk as well.

            While I am a great fan of Gladwell’s, I beg to differ.  Hindsight is that wonderful thing that takes away all doubt.  And doubt can exist in the human mind even though some see a situation as a sure thing.  That doubt translates into perceived risk.  In other words, not everyone in the situations of Ted Turner or hedge-fund manager John Paulson would have acted, nor necessarily succeeded to the level that they did.

            Successful entrepreneurs are passionate, comfortable with themselves, and are confident in their pursuits.  And when they experience a mishap, they learn and move on. They are savvy in the sense that they reduce the number of unknowns along the way, and therefore reduce the risk.  But risk they do.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 11:46 am and is filed under Decision-making, Entrepreneurs, General Business, Leadership, Strategic Planning.