FOREWORD III

This book is a deeply personal account that delivers on the title: Risk. There are lessons for everyone that are delivered in an engaging and insightful manner. The first lesson is that, in spite of changes in our circumstances, we all carry the history of previous generations. For the author’s parents, it starts with the shtetl and pogroms of middle Europe. Fear, poverty, and downward mobility were suffered by the attorneys and land owners who knew little about their future in the new country, but who knew they faced a bleak future in the old one.

As I have studied entrepreneurship over the last fifty years, I have concluded that entrepreneurship is about the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources you currently control. Two elements are important to opportunity: a desired future state that is different from the present and a belief that achievement of that state is possible.

For Michael’s forebears, the new land was not filled with milk and honey. It delivered discrimination, economic hardship, and only occasional triumph. Few émigrés in the 1920s rose to the top of society in the first generation, but they saw hope.

Michael’s life began in the middle of the Great Depression with all of the disappointments and enforced changes that impacted his family and so many others. The lesson learned was that things not only can get better, they can get much worse quickly.

Michael argues for risk taking as the driver of his life. Another reading of his story shows that he was always in search of opportunity. Often his perception of opportunity was not widely shared. Feeding the sharks was a unique opportunity, as were many of his investments. Often opportunity opened unexpectedly through chance encounters, dormant relationships, or pure chance.

Entrepreneurs often see risk differently than others. They believe they can control the risk, whether it is skiing, shark feeding, or investing. The successful ones bring experience and good judgment as to which risks are manageable and which are not. Some choose to live by the numbers and some by their judgment of people.

The biggest lesson as a reader is simple: seize opportunity! Whether it is feeding sharks or working with financial ones, no one succeeds by avoiding change. Don’t act impulsively and don’t lose control. Make calculations of both the upside and the downside. Work with meticulous preparation, detailed knowledge, avoidance of foolish risks, and the ability to remain calm, even in the face of acute peril.

Success belongs to those who underestimate the risk of change and value the options that change offers. Define what is rewarding to you, seek out the rewards, and calculate the odds. Nothing in life is certain.

Howard Stevenson

Sarofim-Rock Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration Emeritus, Harvard Business School

First Chair of Entrepreneurship Unit