Entrepreneur

A quick precis of a key point that I made in a conversation yesterday:

“The true art of an entrepreneur is not only having great ideas but ignoring them and only exploiting the great ideas of others”

Odd isn’t it?

An entrepreneur is by his very nature is an ‘ideas man’ (pardon the gender specific nature of this sentence, but that’s a reference to The Castle).

And yet, the successful entrepreneur has learnt the discipline of ignoring her own ideas and sponging good ones off others (see, I am good at the gender balancing).

It’s all about managing risk – the risk of not being able to effectively argue with yourself while assessing your own ideas.

In fact, minimising risk is one of the primary skills of an entrepreneur. It’s just as important as the ability to take a risk.

I have in my time met successful pseudo-entrepreneurs that have had one good idea, gone for it, and made it work.

I can assure you, they could never do it again. And some of them are even smart enough to know this; not many of them though.