If you are an entrepreneur, if you are a private entrepreneur, if you are starting a business, you must read this book.
This is from the evaluation of the famous entrepreneur Feng Lun, who is talking about the book "Re-Understanding Entrepreneurial Spirit". I just finished reading it and would also like to share some insights with everyone.
The author of this book is economist Zhang Weiying, and it was published in June 2022. Zhang Weiying is currently a distinguished professor at the National Development Research Institute of Peking University and director of the Market and Network Economics Research Center.
The book includes the author's 40 years of research and insights. The phrase "Re-Understanding Entrepreneurial Spirit" accurately summarizes the problems that today's business leaders and entrepreneurs are constantly thinking about and self-examining.
"Entrepreneurial Spirit" had just been written into the 20th CPC National Congress Report, entering the mainstream narrative system. It can be seen that Zhang Weiying's research is in line with the mainstream policy direction and is worth learning from, thinking about, and guiding ourselves to understand and implement the true "Entrepreneurial Spirit".
Entrepreneurial decision making is unscientific
The author believes that in order to truly help entrepreneurs and provide them with a better environment for development, it is necessary to understand what entrepreneurs and their spirit are.
Understanding what the spirit of entrepreneurship is, and what it is not, is the key to all work.
The author first points out that entrepreneurial decision-making is not based on science or calculations, but on imagination and judgment. This is because with an outdated map, it is impossible to discover new lands.
The author concludes that human development requires both hard knowledge and soft knowledge. Hard knowledge, such as language, writing, numbers, charts, formulas, etc., can be acquired and communicated easily in this age.
However, the development and decision-making of entrepreneurs relies more on soft knowledge. Soft knowledge refers to knowledge that cannot be expressed or communicated through language, writing, numbers, charts, formulas, etc., such as tricks and intuition. It is subjective and personalized, and can only be understood but not explained.
Even though everyone mocked Columbus at that time and believed that the new land was already there, whoever went there could find it. In fact, Columbus had a different imagination and adventurous spirit than ordinary people. If decisions were made based on experience and data at that time, the one who invented the car should have been the most experienced coachman.
Similarly, if entrepreneurs make decisions based on science and data, there would not be as many innovations and discoveries.
Entrepreneurship consists of four main points
This is one of the questions I have been pondering about the most recently: What exactly constitutes a true entrepreneur? Are all those people who made money and started a company considered entrepreneurs?
If not, then what qualities enable someone to become a successful entrepreneur and business owner?
The author emphasizes four points: alertness to profit opportunities, simplicity, imagination, and perseverance and patience.
As time goes by, some soft knowledge gradually becomes hard knowledge. Things that were once only understood through intuition can later be modeled and theorized, such as business management theories.
We still need imagination. What is imagination?
"It is a combining ability that can adopt new, unique, unlimited, and constantly changing ways to combine things, events, ideas, and concepts... it can penetrate the invisible world around us, which is the scientific world."
This quote is taken from the mother of software programming, Augusta Ada Lovelace, the daughter of the famous British poet Byron.
In addition, alertness will make entrepreneurs who don't have rice find ways to plant rice, produce rice, and sell rice. Perseverance and patience allow entrepreneurs to fight repeatedly and tirelessly pursue their goals.
The world is calling for more entrepreneurs
The role of entrepreneurial spirit in economic growth is critical. The growth theory centered on entrepreneurs is summarized as the "Smith-Schumpeter model".
In this growth model, entrepreneurs occupy a central position. The market is not naturally existing and visible to everyone. The market is discovered and created, and an important job of entrepreneurs is to discover and create the market.
The book explains that there are two types of entrepreneurs: one is the opportunistic entrepreneur and the other is the innovative. China has gone through the road of other countries in just a few decades, and now it is an era where a large number of innovative entrepreneurs are needed.
Now, there are many entrepreneurs around us. The space for opportunism is getting smaller and only innovation can truly make money and make a contribution to development. To truly emerge as innovative entrepreneurs, it is necessary for us to make some very important changes to the existing economic and political systems, and also requires us to think more deeply, be more patient and persistent.
End.
The past 3 years had been quite difficult with the Covid-19. Some entrepreneurs blindly pursue hot trends or just want to make a quick profit without considering long-term development. Since starting a business, these processes of participation, choice and reflection have also been a process of constant self-reflection and improvement of my own understanding.
I hope that we can all understand and learn the entrepreneurial spirit, constantly improve ourselves, and make the ecosystem better and better, making the appropriate contributions to society.