Be, Know, Do, and Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship seeks to enhance an organization, product, service, or idea through exceptional leadership. Entrepreneurship is a way of thinking, reasoning, and acting that is opportunity obsessed, holistic in approach, and leadership balanced for the purpose of value creation and capture. All of the methods of thinking, reasoning and acting for being an entrepreneur require leadership. In the Army, leaders must have three qualities: Be, Know, and Do. One must be the driving force behind a culture of a positive attitudes and good, solid values. One must know the craft and have the ability to critically think and adapt to the changing environment/market. Finally, one must act upon the knowledge and value system that is trying to be emplaced; the organization/business must be established within said value system.

Like leaders in the Army, entrepreneurs must be willing to take risks for greater rewards. In the TED Talks series, Kander describes an issue where those with MBAs must verse kindergartners in the building of a marshmallow tower. She claims the kindergartners regularly won because they “tinkered” and adapted to build the structure quickly to the best of their ability. The MBAs, however, spent 90% of their time planning and measuring only to fail. Similarly to the MBAs, Owen spends a great deal of time building the perfect business model without ever “tinkering” or adapting while his business was in operation.