by Mark Coopersmith
by Mark Coopersmith
Photo by Jim Block ©2019.
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or the past 30 years, I’ve pursued the answer to this question: “What distinguishes the best entrepreneurs and innovators from the rest of us?”

I’ve done this as a startup entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and as a corporate entrepreneur launching and building new businesses throughout the world. For the past 15 years, I’ve both studied and taught entrepreneurship and innovation at UC Berkeley, and have also taught entrepreneurs, executives and policy-makers around the world.

Throughout the past several decades, our understanding of the practice of entrepreneurship has evolved substantially. We have identified habits, techniques and tools successful entrepreneurs employ that aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators can emulate to improve their own odds. These proven approaches provide a definitive answer to the oft-asked question whether or not entrepreneurship can be taught. While a semester studying entrepreneurship with me may not turn you into the next Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma or Richard Branson, your chances of success will definitely be better than when you started.

We’ll come back to these frameworks, along with insights into the mindset of entrepreneurs. But first, a quick detour into the land of innovation.

Innovation versus Entrepreneurship
We often conflate innovation and entrepreneurship, but while they are related, they differ in several key elements. My definitions are straightforward:

  • Innovation is developing something new and better, with the potential to drive significant value for customers, partners and your organization. Innovations include concepts, processes, products and services.
  • Entrepreneurship is all about putting innovation to work. It is taking those insights and making them real by assembling resources, building products and generating revenues.

Innovation and entrepreneurship go hand in hand. First, we develop innovative insights, then we deploy our entrepreneurial skills to create maximum impact and generate value.

The Innovation Conundrum
As business leaders, we seek growth and competitive advantage. Innovation is a key lever to help us get there. Unfortunately, I often hear executives frame it this way: “We need more innovation across the organization. And, of course, failure is not an option.”
…whatever the size of your organization, developing a more productive relationship with failure will open up a path to greater innovation and growth, more engaged employees and teams, and greater success in the long run.
In The Other ‘F’ Word, my co-author John and I developed a seven-stage “Failure Value Cycle” based on our research and interviews with hundreds of CEOs and other leaders. The Failure Value Cycle helps leaders and teams minimize the effects of failure, gain essential insights (into products, customers, operations, etc.) when failures do happen and limit the likelihood of repeating the same failures.
Failure-savvy leaders…

  1. Respect the fact that failure happens a lot, especially for those who innovate
  2. Rehearse for those failures that may create existential threats
  3. Recognize failures early, including with specialized metrics and systems
  4. React quickly and take ownership when failures happen to quickly limit damage
  5. Reflect thoughtfully on what happened and why to extract valuable insights
  6. Rebound with a decisive plan once the failure is well understood
  7. Remember those failures with stories, relics, systems and culture to avoid repeats
There is a conflict inherent in that statement. The more innovation these leaders want, the more they need to understand that failure is likely part of the journey. In some instances, failure may actually provide the specific insights needed to attain the sought-after innovation.

My basic innovation equation looks like this:

  • if you want to innovate, you need to try new things;
  • when you try new things, some of them will work and some of them won’t;
  • the more innovation you want, the more “new things” or risk you need to incorporate; so…
  • the more innovation you want, the more failure you must also be willing to assume.

Successful entrepreneurs understand this. They know that many of the ventures they launch will fail. Venture capitalists understand this as well. That’s why VCs create portfolios comprised of many startups knowing that, while some of their ventures will fail, those that succeed will (hopefully) deliver returns that more than make up for other losses.

The Other ‘F’ Word
I didn’t start out to write a book about failure. But understanding the role that failure plays in the innovation and value creation process became an important motivation for the Amazon bestselling book I wrote with my UC Berkeley colleague, John Danner: The Other ‘F’ Word: How Smart Leaders, Teams, and Entrepreneurs Put Failure to Work (Wiley, 2015).

The overarching message of our book is that, whatever the size of your organization, developing a more productive relationship with failure will open up a path to greater innovation and growth, more engaged employees and teams, and greater success in the long run.

If the observation regarding more engaged employees and teams seems counterintuitive, it evolves from work we did with The Great Place to Work Institute. It works something like this: If the occasional failure in the workplace, especially while undertaking new initiatives, is not punished by a loss of status or job, then trust is created between boss and employees and between co-workers. This leads to improved team dynamics and more engaged employees. It results in employees who feel empowered to solve problems and innovate within whatever guidance you provide.

…when it comes to innovating in your product lines, business models, customer relationships and marketing strategies, if you’re not failing some of the time then you are probably playing it too safe.
This does not mean you need to like failing. None of us like to fail. But it means you and your organization benefit when you create a more productive relationship with failure.

Being a failure-savvy leader does not mean you accept failure in every part of your organization. There are clearly places it is unacceptable to fail. These “no-fail zones” include areas where Six Sigma should reign, such as the production line of a pharmaceuticals company or the control room of a nuclear power plant.

But when it comes to innovating in your product lines, business models, customer relationships and marketing strategies, if you’re not failing some of the time then you are probably playing it too safe.

The “3 Sets” of Successful Entrepreneurs
Every year I meet with dozens of groups who seek to better understand why so much innovation, company formation and value creation takes place in Silicon Valley. Part of the answer is found in the highly evolved entrepreneurial ecosystem that exists in Silicon Valley, and part of the answer is found with the talented entrepreneurs themselves.
I refer to these capabilities as “The 3 Sets of Successful Entrepreneurs: Skillset, Toolset and Mindset.” In my entrepreneurship curriculum at UC Berkeley, we put these “sets” to work, adding new tools and skills every week as my student teams launch new ventures in real time.

The Toolset represents the “what,” frameworks and models that entrepreneurs and teams utilize to frame and execute their activities and steps. Tools include frameworks for customer personas, customer discovery and development, the customer lifecycle, competitive positioning and different structures for business models. The Skillset represents the “how,” putting the tools to work through processes, methodologies and techniques. This includes how to look at markets and customers, rapid prototyping, market segmentation, launching into tightly defined beachhead markets, growth hacking, creating a great customer experience and storytelling and pitching your venture.

And then there is the Mindset of the entrepreneur…

The Top 10 Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs
For more than a decade, I have maintained a list of the top 10 traits that define the mindset of successful entrepreneurs: How they think, how they are wired, where they set priorities. Here it is:

  1. Bias to action: Every strategy and plan is merely a set of hypotheses until put into action, and that’s what good entrepreneurs do. Markets change quickly, customer preferences evolve, technology and products have accelerated lifecycles and competitors are nimble and fast.
  2. Experiment, experiment, experiment: The best way to test assumptions is to run lots of experiments. Prototype and receive feedback on different versions of your product and pricing. Compare channels and partners. Test ads and offers. Track metrics for all of these.
  3. Welcome and create change: Entrepreneurs thrive on change. Change, in technology, platforms and infrastructure, trends, demographics, laws and regulations, creates opportunities. Incumbents who don’t respond effectively to change quickly find themselves flanked by fast-moving competitors.
  4. Optimistic: Entrepreneurs expect positive outcomes, even though we know 80% of startups fail. We expect our startup will beat the odds and succeed, one way or another. Plus, we are leaders and team builders, and who wants to follow a pessimist?
  5. Resourceful: Most startups begin with an idea, a vision and very little else. Typically missing from this equation are capital, products and customers. Entrepreneurs find a way to attract all of these and more, building great companies from humble starts.
  1. Intensely curious: In addition to running experiments all the time, entrepreneurs consume huge amounts of information and look for patterns in their sector and elsewhere. We read voraciously, our inboxes are filled with newsfeeds and we attend many events and ask lots of questions.
  2. Understand and manage risk: One common concept of entrepreneurs is that we are risk-takers. While that is true on some levels, the best entrepreneurs are really experts at managing risk, figuring out how to de-risk ventures at every phase. We run experiments to see what works and what doesn’t. We raise capital in stages, risking less capital in early rounds. We are disciplined in how we go to market, succeeding in small beachhead markets before expanding our efforts.
  3. Failure-savvy: Successful entrepreneurs try to fail in ways that provide insights into markets, problems, products and customers—and that don’t kill the company. We know that today’s failure is a lesson for tomorrow.
  4. Know our customer: Entrepreneurs talk to customers every day and know them intimately. We understand our customers’ experiences and the customer lifecycle. When someone says, “I don’t talk to customers, I have people for that,” they are clearly not an entrepreneur.
  5. Ask for forgiveness, not permission: Entrepreneurs constantly try new things and aren’t afraid to break a few rules. We enter markets in unconventional ways (see Uber). We drive changes in industries, channels, customer habits, regulations and laws. Surprisingly, this approach can also be effective inside large enterprises when corporate entrepreneurs know how to manage risk and manage their stakeholders.

Do you see yourself in some of these? I hope so. Go out and break some rules!

Mark Coopersmith is a best-selling author, entrepreneur, Fortune 500 executive and educator. A Faculty Director and Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, he teaches entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership to current and future leaders at UC Berkeley, and to executives globally. He has launched and built Silicon Valley startups (his ecommerce startup is now owned by Google), built and led global businesses for Sony and Newell Rubbermaid, and is a frequent keynote speaker. His recent book, The Other ‘F’ Word, helps leaders turn failure from a regret into a resource to drive innovation and growth.

Coopersmith’s entrepreneurial students have launched more than 100 ventures.

www.MarkCoopersmith.com
www.TheOtherFWordBook.com

Mark Coopersmith is a best-selling author, entrepreneur, Fortune 500 executive and educator. A Faculty Director and Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, he teaches entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership to current and future leaders at UC Berkeley, and to executives globally. He has launched and built Silicon Valley startups (his ecommerce startup is now owned by Google), built and led global businesses for Sony and Newell Rubbermaid, and is a frequent keynote speaker. His recent book, The Other ‘F’ Word, helps leaders turn failure from a regret into a resource to drive innovation and growth.

Coopersmith’s entrepreneurial students have launched more than 100 ventures.

www.MarkCoopersmith.com
www.TheOtherFWordBook.com