Entrepreneurs Are Artists

http://steveblank.com/2011/04/09/entrepreneurs-are-artists/

by cwan • 15 years ago

22 9 15 years ago

I'm a massive fan of Steve Blank and I like this video, but I think it's incomplete - the artist skillset is incredibly valuable, but it's not the only way to get there from here. And people without the artist makeup ought not be discouraged from jumping into the fray to build and create.

Take John Rockefeller. I was just reading a wonderful short summary about his life, and the author mentioned that Rockefeller had two unique skillsets that are extremely rare to find in one person - the selling/enterprising/visionary skillset, as well as the manager/kaizen/numbers skillset.

He was enterprising - he took on lots of speculative engineering and chemistry projects, bid speculatively on things and started projects betting they'd invent technology necessary to realize gains later - even though the technology didn't exist when they started the project, and might not when they needed it.

This is the "artist" skillset - there's some intuition, some vision as Steve Blank calls it... it's subjective, there's a lot of feel and the most rigorous analysts have still never been able to codify it. Just when people are starting to get a handle on what works, the economy has transformed and new industries are on the rise with slightly different patterns of business in them.

In that regard, yes, many entrepreneurs are artists. And any newly-founded company will likely need an enterprising/artist/visionary type if they intend to grow quite large.

But the second skillset - numbers/manager/kaizen - more "scientist" than artist - is also incredibly valuable and makes a great entrepreneur. The person that can make the nuts and bolts work, that can save a penny here and there by using 39 drops of steel to seal a barrel instead of 40... that's also good and crucial. Someone with an amazing grasp of numbers, finance, accounting, statistics, probability, expenses, lifetime value of a customer, cashflows... someone that lives and loves numbers... that person can be a major, major asset to a growing business.

It's extraordinarily rare to find both in one person. If you don't want to develop the visionary/enterprising/artist skillset and want to build something world-changing, you'd do well to search and try to connect with people with that skillset.

But that doesn't mean that you must be of that skillset to succeed as an entrepreneur. Scientist/numbers/precision/kaizen entrepreneurs also build massive amounts of wealth, though you hear about them less often because it's naturally less flashy.

jaxn2• 15 years ago

Do you have a link to the stuff on Rockefeller? Sounds like an interesting read.

durbin• 15 years ago

I haven't read the article and I'm not a Steve Blank fan but I upvoted because I love and agree with the headline.

wheels• 15 years ago

This is one of those things that continually rubs me the wrong way. There seems to be a perversion of the term "artist" to mean "someone who create stuff" or "someone who creates stuff that I find inspiring". But artists are people who create art.

Founders are (at least in some cases) craftsmen. That's the word that they're looking for. There are all sorts of craftsmen who are not "artists". It sounds cooler to style ourselves artists, but that doesn't make it true.

There's a spectrum between functional craft and pure art, but it's not entirely clear to me that startups are even on that spectrum and if they are, it's hard panned towards the functional side.

silves89• 15 years ago

I guess everyone loves a story that makes themselves special.

george_morgan• 15 years ago

I think it’s partly to do with the (over) use of the phrase “x is an art,” usually meaning “x is a very skilled and hard thing to do successfully.” For example, it feels quite natural to say something such as “running a business is an art.”

Which is fine, but the natural corollary of x is an art is that whoever does x is an artist. Which leads to this confusion.

jaxn2• 15 years ago

Isn't that just semantics? Is a master woodworker not an artist? I have seen some really beautiful furniture in are galleries (functional furniture too).

Don't the best craftsmen consider themselves artists?

jamesbritt• 15 years ago

Isn't that just semantics? Is a master woodworker not an artist?

Do you mean a highly skilled crafts-person, i.e. an artisan? Or do you mean someone who creates experiences that challenge one's understanding and perception of themselves and their world?

I have seen some really beautiful furniture in are galleries (functional furniture too).

So have I, but I've yet to see any furniture that created an experience for me similar to to that of seeing certain works by van Gogh or Delacroix or Duchamp, or hearing works by Tchaikovsky or Reich.

wcsun• 15 years ago

He emphasized on the vision. Great craftsmanship follows.

Entrepreneurs Are Artists

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