Is Starting a Business an Art or a Science?

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Business as Art
Fact: Entrepreneurship is an irrational pursuit. Founding a company–much less one that could “change the world”–entails insane amounts of risk, ridiculously low chances of success and zero work-life balance.

Nevertheless, the value of risk-taking is incalculable, insists Steve Blank, professor of entrepreneurship at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, who pioneered the Lean LaunchPad course that the National Science Foundation adopted for its new incubator boot camp, I-Corps. Blank started a total of eight technology companies–two of them massive failures, one that set him up for life–before turning his attention to the next generation of visionaries, to whom he’s been extolling the virtues of embracing his particular brand of irrationality.

Why? Well, Blank says, illogical ideas are how society achieves progress.

Every great entrepreneur, from Richard Branson to the late Steve Jobs, made decisions that seemed crazy to the rest of us. But those decisions did eventually change the world. And almost every great entrepreneur, when asked to share the secret behind such success, chalks some of it up to “gut instinct.” (Seriously, check out their quotes.)

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