Dynamic Business

Calculated Risks

Hindle will concede, however, that certain cognitive processes feature strongly in entrepreneurs. “Entrepreneurs tend to be more overly optimistic or they may tend to overrate their own ability,” he explains. “They’re able to make decisions fairly quickly and they’re able to short-circuit information rightly or wrongly. They have a cognitive ability to perceive and implement new combinations, and that’s really important because a lot of people can’t do that.

“It all adds up to having the ability to think in ways that don’t impede action. Entrepreneurs are not synonymous with gamblers. They’re attracted to challenge, not risk, but they are not afraid to take a risk if it seems a reasonable one.”"Entrepreneurs tend to be curious, creative, innovative, and they’re willing to take the biggest risks. The difference is, they manage those risks,” Delves agrees. “They’re not people who do things flippantly, they’re not people who take wild punts or guesses. These people understand their market, their people, and the risk that’s in front of them. The key is, they move very quickly and they know which risks to take.”Hindle explains that, historically, only around 4.5 to 5.5 percent of the small business sector are going to be gazelles. “That is, those businesses that do grow enormously are tremendously innovative and dynamic, and will create the jobs of the future.”"Entrepreneurs are about what [Austrian economist] Schumpeter called creative destruction-they actually destroy old ways of doing things and old industries, old mindsets, old everything. They’re the ones who create the jobs, wealth, and the high value-added of tomorrow.”  

Australian Entrepreneurs

While Australia has produced many successful entrepreneurs-one only has to read this magazine to digest their stories-we’re not an ‘entrepreneurial nation’, according to the 2005 GEM (Global Entrepreneur Monitor) Australia findings, and analysis of the results by Hindle, who heads the Australian research team.The most significant indicator of this is Australian business owners’ lack of innovation. “Nearly every survey that has ever been done on innovation with the general Australian population, comes up with the fact that the majority of people think innovation is just the newness-doing something new,” Hindle explains. “But we’ve got to get some understanding and respect that innovation involves the implementation of invention, not just the invention.” This means, Hindle adds, that most Australian business owners are managers, not entrepreneurs. “Their businesses aren’t innovative and they’re not growth-oriented,” he says.That’s not to say being a good manager is without merit, it just isn’t being entrepreneurial. “All I would say is, we could do with a bit more entrepreneurship,” Hindle says.So, how do we foster more entrepreneurship in Australia? “We’ve got to get better at commercialisation,” says Hindle. “In our national policies and everywhere, we do all kinds of research that’s capable of creating newness (new knowledge) but we do very little research on understanding the commercialisation, the entrepreneurship process.”Then, we have to introduce into schools a cultural acceptance that it’s an exciting, responsible and wonderful thing to start your own business, particularly if it’s an innovative one. We train our young people to become employees, not to create new ventures. We need to get entrepreneurship into the high school curriculum and that will affect the cultural change.”

Delves agrees. “Imagine, if when children left school many more of them thought about becoming an entrepreneur rather than just getting a job, what type of country would we have in 10 years time?” 

Entrepreneurial Activity

For a complete outline and analysis of entrepreneurial activity in Australia and the Global Entrepreneur Monitor Australia findings-past and present-check out the GEM Australia website, http://www.gemaustralia.com.au