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- >Malcolm Gladwell
What makes a good entrepreneur?
The key characteristics of successful entrepreneurs include intelligence, courage and having no fear of social exclusion, international best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell said today.
Addressing a packed session at the Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference, Mr. Gladwell also talked about the importance of encouraging entrepreneurship within the global economy.
“We need to find a way to cultivate social risk taking, to make it easier for people to do things that may antagonize or earn the respect of their peers.” he said.
“In order to do this, we need to radicalize the sort of people we bring into our institutions. You need outsiders in your organization….and people with profoundly, culturally different perspectives.”
Mr. Gladwell gave a number of examples of 20th century entrepreneurs to illustrate the nature of entrepreneurship, the attitude towards risk and the characteristics that set entrepreneurs apart in a given market place.
The first example he gave was Professor Emil J. Freireich, the 20th century hematologist and medical entrepreneur, who undertook a pioneering research project in the 1950’s into childhood leukemia, one of the most common causes of death for children under the age of ten at the time.
During the 1950s, Freireich researched four drugs used to treat patients with leukemia, which at the time did not cure the disease and had serious side effects. He had two insights: firstly, all four drugs attacked leukemia in different ways and secondly, all of the drugs had very different side effects with no overlap. Freireich realized that if all four drugs were administered to the patient in combination, they might defeat the disease, which wouldn’t be the case if given independently. He also realized that if the side effects were aggressively dealt with, the patient would survive.
As a result, in the early 1960s Freireich undertook the first and highly successful ‘combination drug study’ in the history of leukemia with twelve children.
Mr. Gladwell analysed the characteristics of Freireich, which set him apart from his peer group and made him so successful.
He argues that Freireich had taken the equivalent of an “asymmetrical trade” with huge upside, categorizing him as “a bi-modal risk taker – operationally risk averse, but an incredible social risk taker”.
Mr. Gladwell went on to argue that when you observe entrepreneurs, you see a similar pattern of bi-modal risk taking. Having studied the relevant data, Mr. Gladwell concluded that there are three characteristics that set entrepreneurs apart from employees who work in organizations – they work harder, earn less money and are generally much happier in their work.
He gave two other examples of entrepreneurs, both of whom took social risks, to illustrate his point. The first was Ingvar Kamprad, the Swedish founder of Ikea in the 1950s, who decided to set up his business in Poland at the time of the Cold War, following opposition by the unions in his home country. He was able to take advantage of lower labour costs, which were a quarter of those in Sweden.
The second example cited was Ted Turner, the American media entrepreneur who bought Channel 17 in the 1970s, whose peers failed to see the strategic fit of combining the bill board business with the TV business.
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Day 5: Photo Album
