Musings on Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Saturday, May 24, 2003Recommended reading: In addition to The Logic of Failure, I've been recommending Somebodies and Nobodies by Robert Fuller. In his chapter on "Deconstructing the Somebody Mystique," Fuller quotes Martin Hellman, a discoverer of public key encryption:
The way to get to the top of the heap in terms of developing original research is to be a fool, because only fools keep trying. You have idea number 1, you get excited, and it flops. Then you have ideas 2, you get excited, and it flops. Then you have idea number 99, you get excited, and it flops. Only a fool would be excited by the 100th idea, but it might take 100 ideas before one really pays off. Unless you're foolish enough to be continually excited, you won't have the motivation, you won't have the energy to carry it through. God rewards fools.
Entrepreneurial somebodies are people who have persisted as nobodies. The very best are those that continuously risk becoming nobody again.
