<i>Ingvar Kamprad, arranged to get his furniture made in Communist Poland for half of what it
would cost him in Sweden... Would we so revere risk-taking if we realised that the people who are
supposedly taking bold risks in the cause of entrepreneurship are actually doing no such
thing?</i><p>Only Gladwell could:<p>1. Be dazzled by the <i>innovation</i> of something as ordinary as wage arbitrage, and yet<p>2. Think that opening a factory in a communist country is not an example of "risk taking".<p><i>Long after he became wealthy, he would take the bus to his offices in midtown, and the train out to
his summer house on Long Island.</i><p>Surely a man of the people would take public transit to his mansion!
The first key idea is that the successful entrepreneur is one who executes transactions where she has a different model of value than the other party. This is why it pays to wonder about the things "you can't say" and pay attention to the fringes.<p>I think that the predator mindset is also key. If one is running scared with the herd and if one's hope is based on a vague notion or an outside chance, then one is the opposite of a predator. (The dot-com and Web 2.0 booms were full of groups with this mindset.) If one has an insight that others do not and prepared to execute on it, then one is like a predator stalking prey.<p>How does one study and internalize such a mindset? Is there a safe way to practice it?
I would recommend reading the whole thing, but the second paragraph on page 7 is packed with real world advice. This is what it says _failed_ entrepreneurs do most:<p>- Wildly under-capitalized<p>- Organize as a sole proprietorship rather than a corporation<p>- Don’t write a business plan<p>- Start from scratch<p>- Sell to consumers rather than businesses<p>- Under-emphasize marketing<p>- Don't understand financial controls<p>- Try to compete on price
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