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What Do Cats, Kids and Entrepreneurs Have
in Common? Anita Schillhorn van Veen “Curiosity killed the cat.” This old saying is a warning to the curious child, especially one whose curiosity leads him to test rules. But curiosity is essential for any new endeavor; it is the rightful property of children, scientists, artists, academics, and entrepreneurs. Every discovery, from a child’s first words to a scientific breakthrough to a new solution for an age-old problem, is initiated by questioning established rules – and sometimes breaking them. The child’s retort,“satisfaction brought him back,” illustrates the ultimate reward for curiosity. The true entrepreneur lives on this cycle of curiosity and satisfaction, testing rules and finding new solutions, failing or succeeding. What is curiosity? It is an eagerness to learn. It encompasses research and play. However many man-hours, and however much investment is poured into any venture, it begins with a spark of curiosity. Any business venture is an adventure, and cannot be accomplished without first stepping outside of what one knows. According to Robert Hisrich, Chair of Entrepreneurship at University of Tulsa, the entrepreneurial process involves “a movement from a present life-style to forming a new enterprise.”1 Hisrich explores other factors that foster entrepreneurship, but he finds that key to any entrepreneurial activity is the motivation towards the new. Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop, exemplifies the entrepreneur as adventurer. She spent her early years traveling through Tahiti, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Australia and South Africa. Her curiosity has led to multiple lifestyle shifts – from running an eight-room motel with her husband, to starting the Body Shop out of her garage in England, to heading a multinational company worth hundreds of millions, to frontline spokeswoman for social causes. Roddick found success in following her curiosity and embracing adventure. “Any definition of success should be personal because it's so transitory. It's about shaping my own destiny,” says Roddick.2 Her continual redefinition of success has led her into new territories where she has broken established rules to create a new business environment in which social consciousness has a voice. Curiosity is boundless. Just as children across the world play, and cats across the world leap, curiosity manifests itself in every culture and every age – and in every field of business. From an immigrant getting her real estate license to a college drop-out starting a software business, from a teenager trying his hand at stocks to a company pioneering new markets, the entrepreneur tests the rules of his destiny with the question, “what if?” Neville Medhora, still in college at University of Texas Austin, tests this question on everything from internet companies to lottery tickets. He is garnering attention for his financial blog, recently featured in the New York Times.3 Alongside lists of spendings and savings, pitches for his web companies, and accounts of his attempts to be photographed with the Dalai Lama, Medhora describes his own experiments in microenterprise – selling water on the roadside, buying 100 lottery tickets, and charting his investment and profit. His curiosity leads him to test simple money-making propositions that are most often the property of the poor – and, in the comments on his blog, gets advice from self-touted millionaires on how to improve these business plans. It is not his two-dollar profit on lottery tickets that motivates his entrepreneurship; rather, it is a sense of play and discovery that inspires his low-cost research studies on the laws of return. If satisfaction is the reward of curiosity, it comes in two forms – success and failure. The rewards of a successful business venture are easy to list: a sense of accomplishment, a profit, a feather in the cap, an extra resume line. To feel rewarded by failing is to have learned what doesn’t work, and to be able to apply it in the future. Like the results of research, both success and failure demonstrate an answer to the question, “what if?” Both satisfy curiosity. One’s curiosity is satisfied by success as well as by failure, for with failure, one learns that his hypothesis didn’t work. Thomas Edison, inventor extraordinaire, said, “If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward....”4 Every failure is one possibility eliminated, leaving many more possibilities to try. It takes a resilient nature to deal with a failure. The cat, curious or otherwise, is rumored to have nine lives. The child falls and gets back up. The entrepreneur turns an idea into a plan, and a plan into action; if it falters or fails, the entrepreneur starts with another idea. An inquisitive nature can be dunked but not drowned. It can be submerged but will always resurface. In effect, curiosity floats. “What if?” is a question that can engender endless speculation, or can be answered through action. The early 1990s was an entrepreneur’s playground. Office spaces shed their cubicles and traded in their conference tables for pool tables. Ideas flowed, and whether they succeeded or failed, there was support for them to be tested. In this environment, curiosity was buoyed. In a world that felt safe – in that ideas tried were almost guaranteed to garner returns – everyone was able to exercise their curiosity, innovate and play. The question “what if” had a rich soil in which to grow, and many people took action to realize their ideas. Amar Bose, Philadelphian and founder of the Bose stereo company, continues to support a research and development-driven environment at his company. He refuses to allow his company to go public because answering to shareholders would cramp his curiosity, and thereby the company’s ability to innovate. “If you want to do things in the long run, you want to be able to back up a couple of steps, to make a giant leap forward later on,” says Bose.5 In the bottom-line environment of the public company, less time would be spent on learning from mistakes, testing various hypotheses, and developing an excellent product. Bose’s commitment to research and the exploration of new possibilities in engineering has also led him to create an unconventional business model that supports curiosity. As the world of business and innovation speed up, curiosity is a necessity. The power of the new is the path to success. J. Robert Baum and Edwin A. Locke of the Department of Management and Organization at the University of Maryland identify “new resource skill,” or the ability to learn about and acquire the resources needed to start an organization, as key to entrepreneurial success.6 They propose that the better an entrepreneur is at acquiring new resources, the more successful her venture will be. Josh Koplin, a founder of Humanistic Robotics, says that curiosity is necessary to know a field and introduce new ideas – especially if those new ideas can save lives and save costs. Using a background in industrial design to build a more efficient, less costly landmine-sweeper, Koplin applies a broad knowledge of environmental issues, human rights and design to help create a better world. “If you build another Microsoft, no one will be interested. But if you improve it or create a new solution, your work will make a difference. And you need curiosity to know the old and find the new,” Koplin says.7 The entrepreneurial spirit is born with curiosity. As children, our curiosity leads us through the learning needed to function in the world. But if we can cultivate that curiosity through our entire lives, as Roddick, Edison, Bose and the young Medhora and Koplin demonstrate, we can do more than just function. Curiosity can lead us to adventure, invention, play, and success, on our own terms. 1 Hisrich, 1990, p. 210 Baum, J. Robert, Locke, Edwin A. (2004, August). The Relationship of Entrepreneurial Traits, Skill, and Motivation to Subsequent Venture Growth. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 209-222 Bose, Amar. (n.d.) Retrieved October 3, 2005 from BuckleYourShoe.com Edison, Thomas. (n.d.) Retrieved September 28, 2005 from Entrepreneur-Support.com Hisrich, Robert D., (1990, February). Entrepreneurship/Intrapreneurship. American Psychologist, 45, 587-598 Medhora, Neville. Retrieved September 28, 2005 from NevBlog.com Roddick, Anita. (2003, September) Retrieved September 28, 2005 from AnitaRoddick.com |
