Brown - Own your future : how to think like an entrepreneur and thrive in an unpredictable economy

OWN YOUR FUTURE

HOW TO THINK LIKE AN ENTREPRENEUR AND
THRIVE IN AN UNPREDICTABLE ECONOMY

PAUL B. BROWN

WITH CHARLES F. KIEFER AND
LEONARD A. SCHLESINGER

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brown, Paul B.

Own your future : how to think like an entrepreneur and thrive in an unpredictable economy / Paul B. Brown ; with Charles F. Kiefer and Leonard A. Schlesinger.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8144-3409-3 (hardcover)

ISBN-10: 0-8144-3409-6 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 978-0-8144-3410-9 (ebook)

1. Success in business. 2. Entrepreneurship. 3. Career development. 4. Success. I. Kiefer, Charles F. II. Schlesinger, Leonard A. III. Title.

HF5386.B8763 2014

2014 Paul B. Brown, Charles F. Kiefer, and Leonard A. Schlesinger

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

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Printing number

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

SECTION I:
DID THE EARTH MOVE? YES. IT DID.

SECTION II:
GET OUT OF THE HEADLIGHTS, DEAR

SECTION III:
WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO?

SECTION IV:
YOU DONT HAVE TO BE AN ENTREPRENEUR (HOW TO THINK AND ACT ENTREPRENEURIALLY WITHOUT STARTING A BUSINESS)

The world doesnt need another book about entrepre neurs. The world does, however, need a book on how to navigate the complexity, uncertainty, and risks of modern work lifeand that is what you will find here.

As you will read, we hold up the experiences of serial entrepreneursthose individuals who have created at least two successful venturesas role models. Why? Because there is nothing more uncertain than starting a business, and serial entrepreneurs are masters at it.

The question motivating us as we set out to write this book was straightforward: How can those of us who dont necessarily want to start businesses of our own apply what serial entrepreneurs have learned about navigating uncertainty in order to increase the odds for success in our personal and professional lives?

Like many people, you may never have thought of yourself as an entrepreneur, or even that entrepreneurship has any relationship to your life. But the capacity to think and act entrepreneurially has increasingly become a critical life skillvital in a world where the levels of uncertainty are high and the challenges that uncertainty causes are daunting.

What serial entrepreneurs have in common is making uncertainty work to their advantage. As you will see, what works for them will work for you as well, and it isnt as hard as you think. You actually knew what to do when you were an infant, and you unlearned it when you went through an education process that is entirely rooted in how to manage our lives in a predictable world. In the pages ahead, we will help you rediscover how you can regain the core skills of thinking and acting entrepreneurially.

Central to this book are the benefits of smart action. Decades of researchmost notably by Saras Sarasvathy of the University of Virginias Darden School of Businessand everyday observation show that the best entrepreneurs dont overthink and worry about all possible outcomes. They consciously and deliberately take small, smart steps toward their goal.

Well summarize for you how they do this, and reveal how they evaluate what they learn from taking those small, smart steps, and how what they learn shapes what they do next.

As you will see, we looked at how entrepreneurs actually behaverejecting the myths and misconceptions about the lives of entrepreneur superstars. Instead, we drew upon the entrepreneurial life experiences of all kinds of people (not just entrepreneurs) and the array of tools and approaches they employed to succeed, so that we all can learn from these experiences as well.

So, think of this book as an owners manual for having a more successful life. Were not all going to become entrepreneurs as traditionally defined, but we must all still think and act the way they do. In todays uncertain world, this is the surest path to achieving what we wantin work and all aspects of our lives.

Like most things in life, our thinking about all this is a work in progress. You can follow how it evolves at the blog Paul writes for Forbes: Action Trumps Everything, http://www.forbes.com/sites/actiontrumpseverything/ .

We Love the Idea. Its Just Too Darn Depressing to Publish.

If you hit me over the head long enough, the message will finally get through.

That, in fifteen words, sums up the long, roundabout trip I took in order to bring this book into being.

But it was well worth the journey. Let me explain.

A couple of years ago Len Schlesinger, Charlie Kiefer, and I wrote a book called Just Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, Create the Future. We addressed what organizations and people should do when they dont know what to do, and laid out a course of action to follow when you or your organization are faced with uncertainty.

Today, one of the most uncertain things imaginable is trying to predict whether youre going to have a job in five years. So, thats our focus this time around. Specifically, we set off to answer this question: How can you create a prosperous career in an economic world that is being radically reshaped in real time?