{"id":1995,"date":"2009-04-06T09:02:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-06T14:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2009\/04\/entrepreneurial-ambiguity\/"},"modified":"2009-04-06T09:00:23","modified_gmt":"2009-04-06T14:00:23","slug":"entrepreneurial-ambiguity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2009\/04\/entrepreneurial-ambiguity\/","title":{"rendered":"Entrepreneurial Ambiguity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Inc.com is celebrating its 30th birthday with some fascinating articles including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.inc.com\/magazine\/20090401\/in-times-like-these-you-get-a-chance_pagen_2.html\" target=\"_blank\">an interview with Jim Collins<\/a>.\u00a0 The interviewer asked for his definition of entrepreneurship which involves a paint-by-numbers vs. blank canvas analogy.\u00a0 However, the follow up question and answer was notable:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>It has to do with your ability to handle risk, no?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Not risk. Ambiguity. People confuse the two. My students used to come to me at Stanford and say, &#8220;I&#8217;d really like to do something on my own, but I&#8217;m just not ready to take that much risk. So I took the job with IBM.&#8221; And I would say, &#8220;You&#8217;re not ready for risk? What&#8217;s the first thing you learn about investing? Never put all your eggs in one basket. You&#8217;ve just put all your eggs in one basket that is held by somebody else.&#8221; As an entrepreneur, you know what the risks are. You see them. You understand them. You manage them. If you join someone else&#8217;s company, you may not know those risks, and not because they don&#8217;t exist. You just can&#8217;t see them, and so you can&#8217;t manage them. That&#8217;s a much more exposed position than the entrepreneur faces. But there&#8217;s lower ambiguity on the paint-by-numbers path: very clear but more risky. The entrepreneurial path: very ambiguous but less risk. Of course, the truth is that it&#8217;s all ambiguous, anyway. If you think you can predict the future, you&#8217;re crazy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That ought to get your mind racing this Monday morning.\u00a0 As being someone on both sides of the proverbial fence, I know exactly what he is saying.\u00a0 The key component to managing risk is seeing\/knowing the risk.\u00a0 Ignorance of the risk is tolerable to those who don\u2019t possess the entrepreneurial spirit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Inc.com is celebrating its 30th birthday with some fascinating articles including an interview with Jim Collins.\u00a0 The interviewer asked for his definition of entrepreneurship which involves a paint-by-numbers vs. blank canvas analogy.\u00a0 However, the follow up question and answer was notable: It has to do with your ability to handle risk, no? Not risk. Ambiguity. People confuse the two. My students used to come to me at Stanford and say, &#8220;I&#8217;d really like to do something on my own, but I&#8217;m just not ready to take that much risk. So I took the job with IBM.&#8221; And I would say, &#8220;You&#8217;re not ready for risk? What&#8217;s the first thing you&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2009\/04\/entrepreneurial-ambiguity\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,11],"tags":[1303,1306,1305,1304],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-wb","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1996,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995\/revisions\/1996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. The path to wp-cache-phase1.php in wp-content/advanced-cache.php must be fixed! -->