Musings on Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Saturday, November 20, 2004Why Wait for Genius?
There are special entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurship is not special. To the extent that we behave as if the very act of entrepreneurship is the domain of an exclusive minority, we will undermine our opportunities to develop ourselves, our companies, and our communities.
Consider the assertion I made in a previous post:
The history of entrepreneurship research and journalism is replete with celebrations of entrepreneurial genius; analysis of the distinctive characteristics of successful entrepreneurs; and assertions that entrepreneurs are born, not made. Those messages are, in a perverse way, comforting to those of us who are less accomplished, because they relieve us of responsibility. But, the real world - and Minsky's analysis - suggests that entrepreneurial genius is much like genius in any other field of human endeavor. Entrepreneurship is an iterative learning process that relies upon the effective integration of a complementary set of skills and resources.
The great man theory is, nevertheless, resilient, notwithstanding its pernicous effect. Thomas Carlyle, the historian, once claimed, "The history of the world is but the biography of great men." More prosaically, it's easier to remember a person's name than it is to tease meaning from the complex interactions of a collective. As biologist Edward O. Wilson said, "Genius is the summed production of the many with the names of the few attached for easy recall."
One beneficiary of the entrepreneurial genius label was Henry Ford, the supposed inventor of mass production. But consider his own testimony:
I invented nothing new. I simply assembled into a car the discoveries of other men behind whom were centures of work...Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that made for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worse sort of nonsense.
Physicist Mark Buchanan would, no doubt, agree:
So while great characters are at the center of great happenings, they do not supply the forces that drive them. Instead, the role is more important than the person who occupies it, for the role is the point where great social forces collide, and it is in filling such pivotal roles that great men or women become great...Rather, what makes an individual notable and "great" is his or her ability to unleash pent-up forces--the will of the age--and so enable those immeasurably greater forces to have their effect.
Our time, too, is marked by the shifting accumulations of history. There are important roles to be filled; opportunities to be actualized. Why wait for genius?
