Entrepreneurship: I don´t really believe that it´s about risk taking or calculating. It´s rather about the ability to believe in creativity.

Yesterday I was talking to my friend Therese Gedda over the phone. She had just come back from a TIE event in the Silicon Valley and was fueled with interesting experiences of the world wide indian entrepreneurship network. As we discussed her experiences we started talking about entrepreneurship in more general terms and at one point, in passing, the old entrepreneurship truism "entrepreneurs are not risk takers rather they take calculated risks" was stated. It was just a passage meant to build an other argument, but we got stuck there as I surprised myself with the following analysis:

"I don´t really believe that it´s actually about risk taking or risk calculating. I rather believe it´s about the ability to believe in and understand creativity. The ability to believe in the gut feeling that ones "brain-laboratory idea" could actually be better than reality. The problem is that most people believe that most good solutions have already been done and tested. They don´t trust that gut feeling that this might be a real challenger to common practice. Most people sincerely believe that the solutions adopted by the society today must be really good as they are so commonly used. The belief that proof of concept is the same as proof of a good and possibly the best concept. Well, out of that perspecitve it´s logical not to believe in creating something new and disruptive. Why challenge the best? You´re facing an obvious defeat, so why bother? It seems crazy and because people don´t want to offend anyone they name it "risky". If they are really nice they will call it "taking calculated risks". The entrepreneur instead keeps an open mind and has an unsentimental relationship to common practice. It can always be questioned and the question is always valid. And when stumbling upon something really interesting in his "brain laboratory of ideas" he is capable of taking that idea into serious consideration as a possible challenger to the real world common practice."

When done with my analysis I really wondered, where did that idea come from? I was quite happy about it. Of cause the reasoning is really simplified. I don´t state it here as my ultimate belief. Just an interesting thought possibly worth sharing. Thanks Therese always nice to talk to you.