Entrepreneurship

Earlier I put out a poll about nature versus nurture when it comes to entrepreneurship, and I didn't put out my own answer. In general, I think we all have our natural inclinations that we can work to improve upon.  I will use the Guiding Principle of Principled Entrepreneurship™ to motivate my more detailed answer: 

Principled Entrepreneurship™ 
Demonstrate the sense of urgency, discipline, accountability, judgment, initiative, economic and critical thinking skills, and the risk-taking mentality necessary to generate the greatest contribution to the company and
society. 

***Warning: This is Ann's take and not representative of research or any official view. I'm putting out specifics in hopes of starting a conversation.***

So, off the cuff, here's my two second take on each attribute. 

Sense of Urgency: This can be cultivated. However, my personal experience has been that there has to be some baseline of nature that is close to the appropriate amount you need for your job. A sense of urgency is not panic, but it's also not a lack of urgency. 

Discipline: I think that discipline is mostly a learned skill, but some of us are more naturally inclined to it than others.  

Accountability: This is a tough one to think about. I keep getting wrapped up on if this is a internal accountability or an external accountability. Does anyone have any thoughts about accountability? 

Judgment: This might be a cop-out, but I put this 50% nurture and 50% nature. I've encountered people who just seem to have good judgement despite little experience. I've know people who've gained judgement over time, and others that despite great learning opportunities, never seem to develop judgement. 

Initiative: I think this follows a basic model of some baseline that we can improve upon.

Economic and critical thinking skills: I firmly believe that if someone is sufficiently intelligent, they can be taught these skills. I don't know exactly what "sufficiently" is, but people are economists every day and can work hard to consciously apply their thinking deliberately. 

Risk-taking mentality: We all have some natural level of risk we are willing to take. When it comes to risk-taking mentality at work, I think it's about attuning our risk-taking to what is appropriate for our team, workplace and job. In this sense, I do think this is a learned skill. Those of us who are naturally inclined to take more risks have to learn how to tone it down. Those of us that tend to be very risk adverse may have to learn to take more risks. 

As I wrote this, it was amazing how interrelated they are. Without discipline, how can one systematically apply their economic thinking? Without initiative, how can people take time to learn economic thinking skills? Can one have a sense of urgency without initiative? Moreover, I'm glad that I have co-workers to help me to be a principled entrepreneur! Let me know what you think in comments. 

Comments

[Ben]

I think risk-taking mentality is about acquiring and applying the appropriate mental models around risk. For example, as employees, most of us put too much weight on downsides than upsides - we're more worried about losing than winning, so we are typically risk-averse, which is costly to the organization.

There are other areas of business life where we may be willing to take more of a risk than the overall organization would tolerate - for example, we might be willing to risk our personal safety walking across an ice patch rather than around it to get to our car in the company parking lot, trusting our reflexes, in order to save time. Or we -- as individuals -- might be willing to click the "Accept Terms and Conditions" button when downloading "freeware" to our PC. These are compliance risks that the broader organization is not willing to take -- at all.

So to me, a risk-taking mentality is aligning your risk profile with the broader organizations.

[Jeff]

Long-time reader, first-time commenter...

I'm inclined toward an approach that emphasizes the relationship between entrepreneurship and institutions. Entrepreneurship is omnipresent. We all can be, and are, alert to profit opportunities. The question is whether or not that entrepreneurship is productive or unproductive.

Further, I think there's a terminology problem. I'm not terribly fond on the term "intrapreneurship" but I do think we need to distinguish between entrepreneurship in the market and entrepreneurship in the firm. An employee can engage in entrepreneurship that is not productive for the firm. That is, I can create value for myself while not creating value for the firm.

I think the literature on institutions is instructive here. The consensus seems to be that private property, rule of law, trust, and other informal and formal institutions provide the framework for productive entrepreneurship. Likewise, the equivalent of those institutions, within in the firm, seem likely to help insure that individual entrepreneurial behavior also creates value for the firm.

In my opinion, a big part of the value added by MBM stems from the fact that it attempts to bring these institutions (or their rough equivalents) into the firm.

P.S. Really enjoying the added blogging here. Keep up the good work!