Hallmarks of the Entrepreneur
- Breaks rules
- Continually steps (or stays) off the prescribed path
- Challenges or questions authority
- Sees a world outside the usual definitions
- Has a minority of peers
- Is accustomed to risk
- Is open to failure (indeed, successful entrepreneurs are typified by significant past failures)
- Invests and believes primarily in himself – his brand is himself
- Blends experimental and analytical approaches to problems (see ‘accustomed to risk’)
- Continually flirts with ideas outside the box (brainstorms)
- Makes judgments (discriminates between what is helpful and what isn’t: rules, relationships, adventures, and ideas)
And for all these things, the entrepreneur is widely considered arrogant, a rebel, and any host of words that may mean “anti-social” or proud or untamed. Despite the pejorative use of the term: he is the “cowboy” of the modern era.
