The Entrepreneur

I've just finished reading "Sure Thing" by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker about entrepreneurs. Completely redefines "entrepreneurial." An entrepreneur, one thinks, would be a gambler, one who takes enormous risks and, with great charisma, pulls off a stunt we'd never have dared to even think about. This is almost never the case, however. Ted Turner, the television mogul who started NBC, seemed like a nonchalant guy who threw money into whatever he wanted, but in actuality, he took the safest bets, and, the one true defining trait of an entrepreneur, had the mindset of a predator. Predators are not gamblers, they like the safest, most successful route, even at a lower profit than by gambling. Sociologists Hongwei Xu and Martin Ruef took a large sample of entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs and asked them to choose between: a) a business with a potential profit of 5 million dollars with 20% chance success, b) profit of 2 million dollars with 50% chance success and c) a profit of only 1.25 million but 80% chance of success. Entrepreneurs, the study suggested, were more likely to take the third, safest, lowest potential profit choice. Why? They're predators and "a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush."