Why Do Entrepreneurs Innovate Better Than Managers?

My father was an executive in a Fortune 5 corporation.

His most telling advice about managing was that the easiest answer for a manager was "no." His explanation was that as a manager charged with running a 4+billion (1960's) dollar operation, his first responsibility was to NOTlose the company's money; therefore risk avoidance was paramount. His advice for me when I was working in a company developing new processes to manage quality, was to explain to the managers how the process (or products, no difference) would LOWER the risks and enhance the manageability of the process. Thus, I would be communicating to the concerns of the managers.

Entrepreneurs on the other hand, he explained, are willing to take the risks to develop a new way to do something (or better, something to create an entirely new market or niche.) Thus, they judge the reward/risk ratio, rather than the other way around, and need to be communicated to in the engineer/developer style they need to be assured that theirs is the right path.

In time, each specialty needs the other. As the project becomes a product, and accrues the necessary infrastructure for support (not only technical) the entrepreneur needs to have managers used to ferreting out those risky aspects of running a mature business; capable of assuring the owners (not just the stockholders, but the process owners also) that their investment isn't in vain.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/UVsmqTFnqO8/story01.htm

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