M3-S1 - Session notes

Definition of entrepeneurship:

A process by which individuals either on their own or inside organisations, pursue opportunities without regards to the resources they currently control

Suggested reading: "An integrated set of actions" Coyne 1986 Business Horizons

Risk management: p = chance of success Q = expected value

Value risk is p * Q.

As p cannot be determined accurately therefor focus on Q. Therefore we should keep the 'Experiments' as small as possible. Investors will make sure that the entrepreneur is at personal risk to loose everything.

Elements of uncertainty:

• What is truly knowable
• What is knowable, but you don't know you know
• What is knowable, but you know you don't know
• What you do know, but with an imprecise estimate
• What you do know, and with a precise estimate of probability

Biggest influence you can have as an entrepreneur is to:

• Stage experiments
• Make sure you frequently involve others for review.

Disciplined, iterative experimentation

• Hypothesize
  • Working hypothesize
  • Screen thru "deep" and "wide" knowledge
  • Identify the sources of uncertainty
  • Key drivers of success
• Assemble required resources
  • Design minimalist experiments
  • Just-enough resources
  • Stay minimalist until the business model has stability
  • Outsource
• Experiment
  • Partical, Holistics, Stage
  • Avoid creep
  • Kill failures and learn

"Celebrate failures" in experiments! Example of asperin versus paracetemol:

• It never broke thru until they removed the 'no side effects (stomach damage)' in the slogan and focused purely on "strongest pain killer available"

Beyond a financial perspective:

• The visionary company understands profit in the way that a biologist undestands oxygen- not the goalof life, but the thing without which there is no life
• However the company describes its motivating principles, profit does not appear as the goal but as the side effect of pursuing those principles