"... Almost four in ten would-be entrepreneurs are too scared of failure to do anything about their business idea ..."
I'm not sure this is phrased correctly. Firstly I'm an antipodean and also a keen observer of American style entrepreneurship. I wouldn't characterise UK Entrepreneurs as "scared" or "fearful". ( I'm not sure if the article is specifically tech orientated) I can give several examples to kill this straight away
- tbl (though to be fair, tbl is not specifically "business oriented")
to name but a few. What do they have in common? Well firstly they all hail from the UK, second they are anything but scared entrepreneurs and thirdly they are mostly working outside the UK. My theory is that it's the reserved, risk adverse, steady-as-she-goes business culture that rewards a conservative approach to making money and punishes those who try to make a go and fail. Startups are risky. The chance of failure is high. But get enough startups working, tweak the parameters to help them along you increase the chance of success.
The situation in Australia, a descendant of UK business culture has a similiar myopic view of how startup culture works. It's a familiar pattern in Australia (and from anecdotal observation in the UK) where great ideas flourish in the abundance only to be killed by culture unable to capitalise for whatever reason. Be it lack of foresight, marketing, courage or as the article suggests inability to suspend, "the fear of failure".
So in short it's the culture, not the individual that is fearful. Place the individual into a culture that fosters, encourages and supports entrepreneurial activity (namely US startup hubs) and see what happens.
I'm not sure this is phrased correctly. Firstly I'm an antipodean and also a keen observer of American style entrepreneurship. I wouldn't characterise UK Entrepreneurs as "scared" or "fearful". ( I'm not sure if the article is specifically tech orientated) I can give several examples to kill this straight away
- tbl (though to be fair, tbl is not specifically "business oriented")
- pg
- Cal Henderson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Henderson
- James Dyson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dyson
to name but a few. What do they have in common? Well firstly they all hail from the UK, second they are anything but scared entrepreneurs and thirdly they are mostly working outside the UK. My theory is that it's the reserved, risk adverse, steady-as-she-goes business culture that rewards a conservative approach to making money and punishes those who try to make a go and fail. Startups are risky. The chance of failure is high. But get enough startups working, tweak the parameters to help them along you increase the chance of success.
The situation in Australia, a descendant of UK business culture has a similiar myopic view of how startup culture works. It's a familiar pattern in Australia (and from anecdotal observation in the UK) where great ideas flourish in the abundance only to be killed by culture unable to capitalise for whatever reason. Be it lack of foresight, marketing, courage or as the article suggests inability to suspend, "the fear of failure".
So in short it's the culture, not the individual that is fearful. Place the individual into a culture that fosters, encourages and supports entrepreneurial activity (namely US startup hubs) and see what happens.