I didn’t know what an entrepreneur was until I was called one. I was fifteen years old and sitting in a teacher’s office at school. Rather than being reprimanded (perhaps the usual reason I would have been there), I was on a call with a local journalist – something the school had organized once they had found out that, since I was about fourteen, I’d been quietly running a business while still at school. The journalist asked me, ‘So how does it feel to be a young entrepreneur?’ and I panicked! What did that mean? Luckily, the teacher came to my rescue and scribbled on a bit of paper in front of me, ‘It just means a businessperson!’

The truth is, entrepreneurship is much more than ‘just’ anything. For me, the differences between an entrepreneur and a businessperson centre upon the thesis of the venture, the scale and the impact. From the incandescent light bulb to the smartphone, there is very little of our day-to-day lives that has not come about as the result of an entrepreneur with a great idea. Take the former CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, for example; he was employee number thirty at Microsoft, the first business manager hired by Bill Gates, and a ferociously capable entrepreneur in his own right. Microsoft was built on the idea that every home should have a computer, was scaled to become a global business to enable this, and went on to revolutionize practically every part of our lives as a result. Microsoft’s operating system was, in effect, the platform on which the early technology revolution was built.

Entrepreneurs are also navigators. They can find the tailwind, and a path through the headwind. Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, identified the tailwinds of reducing the costs of and increasing demand for internet connectivity, navigated the headwinds of regulations and corporate competitors, and built AOL – the company that truly disrupted internet connectivity during the 1990s. Today, the tailwinds are stronger than ever. Processing power, the capability of software, hardware and connectivity, are all increasing exponentially, enabling entrepreneurs to scale faster than ever before. Some of the greatest beneficiaries of this acceleration are the ‘big five’: Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft – in the decade from 2010 to 2020 they grew from a combined 196,000 employees to over 1.25 million. Just picking Amazon out of this pack, their valuation (as of March 2020) of approximately US$1 trillion is larger than the combined valuation of Walmart, Best Buy, Macys, Target, Costco, Gap, Home Depot, Starbucks, Foot Locker, Office Depot and JC Penney. Technology is allowing business to scale faster and larger than at any time in human history; it would previously have taken perhaps an entire generation for companies to achieve what some of these businesses have in just a decade. From the light bulb to the smartphone, from many of our most important medicines to some of our most loved and mundane everyday requirements, there is very little around us that does not have foundations in an entrepreneurial pursuit, a creative and forward-thinking individual who had the vision, tenacity and execution capability to make their ideas a reality.

In this chapter, we will meet some of the most interesting, impactful and inspiring entrepreneurs in the world. From technology to retail, medicine to engineering, these individuals have built and run multibillion-dollar businesses, become tremendously wealthy themselves, created tens of thousands of jobs, and made an impact on the world. Some are household names, others you may never have heard of, but all of them have achieved in a lifetime what most would see as impossible. When I spoke to some of the world’s leading entrepreneurs, I always wanted to begin the conversation with the fundamental question of what entrepreneurship actually is. All those I spoke to have been described in their careers as entrepreneurs, but my firm belief remains that the experience and nature of ‘what’ entrepreneurship is remains not just subjective, but highly variable based on industry and context. I have met entrepreneurs who built incredible businesses during recessions, where there was no other choice but to start something, and I have met others who had that quintessential ‘bolt of inspiration’ with an idea that they just couldn’t let go.

What does entrepreneurship mean to you?

Richard Branson: Entrepreneurship is about taking risks, pushing boundaries, and not being afraid to fail. I tend to go with my gut feeling and by personal experience. If I relied on accountants to make decisions, I most certainly would have never gone into the airline business, most certainly would not have gone into the space business, and I certainly wouldn’t have gone into most of the businesses that I’m in. In hindsight, it seems to have worked pretty well to my advantage!

Robin Li: I have a strong desire to do what I like to do. I believe that whether it’s innate, or it’s something that wells up later in life, the urge to entrepreneurship only bears fruit when you plant the seeds at the intersection of passion and ability – the overlap between the things that you love, and the things that you’re really good at.

James Dyson: Being an entrepreneur, an inventor, is about having ideas and having the doggedness to see them through. As an inventor your ideas should be based on creating a solution to a problem – a solution which focuses on function over form. When I started to develop the world’s first bagless vacuum cleaner, I knew my idea was solving a fundamental problem. Unsurprisingly, other major vacuum cleaner manufacturers did not agree. But I persevered, against the odds, developing the technology and manufacturing it under my own name. This is a trait all entrepreneurs need: the ability to remain committed to your idea and the drive to see it through to fruition.

Muhammad Yunus: An entrepreneur is an initiator, a planner, a result producer, a risk-taker, an organizer. He feels confident about his success. In conventional business an entrepreneur wants to make personal profit. In the conventional sense of business, profit measures his success. In social business, he wants to solve a human problem in a financially sustainable way, without taking personal profit out of it. He gets his investment money back when the business is successful, but doesn’t take any dividend after that point. Profit stays with the company to grow. I believe all human beings are entrepreneurs at the core. It is in our DNA.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw: Entrepreneurship is really about being self-employed, creating your own path, your own employment journey. It begins with an idea that you want to commercialize, and it’s about realizing that it’s going to be a pretty challenging process. Entrepreneurship doesn’t necessarily come to everyone as a thought, but you can seed it in people’s minds, and it becomes something that people can get very excited about! It’s not about being born an entrepreneur. I never thought I would run a business! I always call myself an accidental entrepreneur – I was actually passionate about pursuing a career in brewing. Circumstances often become the reason why people become entrepreneurs.

N. R. Narayana Murthy: Entrepreneurship is primarily about a person using their imagination, dreams, daring, sacrifice and passion to create jobs for society, wealth for oneself – and his or her colleagues – and prosperity for the nation. Entrepreneurship is about transforming the world.

Tory Burch: Entrepreneurship is about recognizing a void in the market and having the ability to build a business around it. I didn’t realize I was an entrepreneur until I had the concept for our company and started to develop it, but in retrospect I see that I was entrepreneurial in everything I did in my career leading up to that point. It is also about knowing your strengths and weaknesses and surrounding yourself with a stellar team.

Steve Case: At a broad level, entrepreneurship is about having a positive impact on the world. Entrepreneurs are a key avenue to ushering in change, innovation and impact; they challenge the status quo, figure out better ways to doing things – whether that’s a product or service, build teams around those ideas and really have a positive impact. Entrepreneurship is, of course, about businesses, but at its core are innovation and people.

Jerry Yang: For me entrepreneurship means finding a common, strong mission to build something that would have an impact, or change the world. While the goal of building a great product or company is very important, the journey of getting there is what I treasure the most. The most enjoyable part of my entrepreneurial journey is going through the ups and downs of building a team. There is nothing like having built a team that shares the same strong passion and beliefs, and mostly sharing that journey of success and failure together. For me, there is some natural risk-taking that I was born with, but so much of being an entrepreneur is also learned – through hard work and the team you are surrounded by.

Jack Welch: If you are an entrepreneur, you have a certain DNA, a certain spirit. As an entrepreneur, if you have an idea, you’ll go to the ends of the earth to make it succeed. You’ll find every day is a new journey, you’re up, you’re down, there’s a surprise every minute. I don’t think entrepreneurship is a profession like doctor or lawyer. I meet so many people on my travels and when I ask them what they want to be, they say, ‘entrepreneur’. Wait a minute, it’s not a profession. Entrepreneurship is something in your DNA. If you have an idea and the passion to make it win, you’re an entrepreneur. Not everyone has that DNA, and that’s OK!

Steve Ballmer: There are two kinds of entrepreneurship people talk about: starting something new, like a new company, or doing something new from inside something established. To me it comes down to the same thing regardless of setting – big company, small company, not for profit, for profit – you will see a pattern that will let you believe you are seeing something others aren’t seeing, and you will summon the energy, brain power and commitment to bring in others and make it into something. It is taking risk to do that, which is part of entrepreneurship, and there are plenty of ways of doing that without starting your own company.

Dennis Crowley: I don’t really like the term entrepreneur because I think to some it implies that you start businesses for the sake of starting businesses. My view is this: if there’s something you want to see in the world that doesn’t exist, go build that thing. If that means you have to build a company? So be it. I give a lot of talks, and always get introduced on stage as being an entrepreneur. One of the first slides I usually show is a quote from Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, that says: ‘Entrepreneur is just French for “has ideas, does them”.’ It’s actually not French for that, but I like Alexis’s interpretation.

José Neves: I think the entrepreneurial spirit was always in me. When I was eight, I was given a computer for Christmas. It came with no video games, just a programming manual. I started coding and found my first passion: creating software. In 1993, when I was nineteen, I started my first business. It was a ‘software house’, creating software for businesses and, being from the north of Portugal and a family with a history of shoemaking, fashion companies naturally became my clients. That’s when I found my second passion: fashion. Eventually, I became a shoe designer, a boutique owner, a tradeshow organizer, a bit of everything in fashion. I fell in love with the industry – I was swept away by its people, places, chaotic creativity. Fashion is all about craftsmanship, creativity and great design. It celebrates beauty in every form. But it’s not art. It’s supposed to be worn, but more than that, as you wear it, it changes the way you feel that day and helps you to project how you want the world to see you.

Gary Vaynerchuk: To be an entrepreneur, you need a love for process and to be comfortable with adversity. If you love process and you’re comfortable with adversity, and if you love the journey over the fruits and riches of that journey, then you have what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurship is on a pedestal; everyone wants to be one. Here’s the truth: it sucks. Entrepreneurship is hard and almost everyone loses. You genuinely have to like getting beaten up. You genuinely have to like conflict. You genuinely have to have an enormous amount of patience. This is what it takes to be an entrepreneur and not just play at it.

You often hear entrepreneurship referred to as something people are born with – the same hypothesis ascribed to great artists – and this was certainly a view I came across in my various conversations with successful entrepreneurs. In my experience, while there are certainly psychological characteristics that are common to a lot of entrepreneurs – self-efficacy, innovativeness, locus of control, need for achievement, openness, extroversion, agreeableness – there are also a wide range of external factors that perhaps play a more important role: the ‘serendipity’ of an idea, timing, market conditions, access to capital and – something not often discussed – exposure to entrepreneurship culturally. My father was a small-business entrepreneur, trading fabrics from his office in Manchester; from an early age, the world of business was demystified for me. Throughout the Indian diaspora, entrepreneurship is a deeply embedded part of culture, and growing up in an Indian household you see the mechanics of business from your earliest days. Perhaps this kind of exposure can equip you with some of the necessary tools to enter that world.

What is the role of entrepreneurs in an economy and society?

Richard Branson: It’s my strong belief that those with the power to help should be encouraged to do exactly that. It’s important for entrepreneurs to nurture talent, to provide advice and to provide investment where required. Increasingly, we are hearing more about how big business needs to play its role in society for the greater good. We all have a role to play and it makes business sense. In fact, consumers demand that business be responsible.

Robin Li: Entrepreneurs have been absolutely essential in the transformation of the world we live in. By creating new businesses and new markets, they’re real change agents in history. This is something that’s been happening for many hundreds of years. As an entrepreneur you have a certain perspective and real motivation to see what’s in store for the future. And in trying to anticipate the future, entrepreneurs are chief agents in bringing the future about. It’s really been the role of the entrepreneur to take the measure of what people will want in the future, and to change the way people think and behave. They are and will continue to be a vital force in defining the world of the future.

James Dyson: Transport, natural disasters, the distribution of resources, globalization – engineers and inventors have the traits and skill sets to solve the problems the world faces today, and therefore have the potential to impact the world and economy. The economy can be boosted by exporting tangible technology that is in global demand. This is in the hands of engineers.

Muhammad Yunus: Entrepreneurs are innovators. Those who see opportunities have one thing in common – when they see one, they grab it. These opportunities are seen by various types of entrepreneurs in various ways. Personal profit-seeking entrepreneurs see it as an opportunity to make profit for themselves. Some among them could not care less what negative impact their business would produce on the society. Some do care about negative impacts, and want to avoid such businesses. Some want to make money while providing a product or service which is useful to the society, and the planet. Social business entrepreneurs see the opportunity of solving problems of people which are now left to the governments to solve, or never considered to be solvable by anybody – unemployment, for example.

N. R. Narayana Murthy: Entrepreneurs make multiple contributions to society. Firstly, the power of an entrepreneur’s ideas adds value to their society. Their ideas may reduce the cost of something, reduce the cycle time of tasks, improve productivity, improve quality of life, and bring new and easier ways of seeking pleasure through leisure products like books, music and videos. Secondly, entrepreneurs create jobs. They use their ideas to create better and more highly paid jobs for their people. Therefore, they create prosperity for society. When you enhance a society’s prosperity you don’t just create jobs in your own company, industry or sector. You also create job opportunities in the secondary and tertiary sectors. I do not know of any society that has become more prosperous without the power of entrepreneurship. Thirdly, entrepreneurs serve as role models for society through their ability to dream, show courage, take risks, and transform the world around them.

Tony O. Elumelu: I believe that entrepreneurs, like other private sector operators, have an obligation to channel their acumen towards enhancing their social environments, as much as their financial statements. I run an Africapitalist organization, which means that my businesses create value for shareholders and society alike. Personally, I am pleased to see that global leaders now agree that entrepreneurship, not charity, is better able to create progressive, sustainable development that benefits the poor. This is why the United Nations has included the promotion of development-oriented policies that support entrepreneurship in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In many developing countries where competing priorities and limited resources can overwhelm government systems, the private sector is uniquely positioned to mobilize the capital assets that can realize lasting, positive social transformation. The relationship between corporation and community is symbiotic: by contributing to raising the standards of living around them, these entrepreneurs are also positioning their businesses to profit from increased disposable incomes, a healthier, better educated pool of potential employees, and numerous other benefits.

What are the key drivers for an entrepreneur?

Richard Branson: It’s a combination of passion, vision, creativity and a sense of adventure. I have said on many occasions the reason to start a new business should not be about making money! You need to have a passion for the project and want to make a difference.

Robin Li: I don’t think that those who set out to create companies with nothing in mind other than making money are apt to succeed. That’s not going to get you out of bed, eager to get to work. It has to come from a higher place. In my case, I knew that I had the ability, through these technologies that I understood well and could confidently implement, to make a real difference in the access ordinary people had to information. And I knew that connecting people to information in the easiest, most convenient way would make a tremendous difference in the world. It wasn’t an abstract desire to create. And money is just an afterthought. What drove me to it was this desire to make a difference in an area that badly needed it, and my recognition that I was the right person to step in and take on that challenge.

Muhammad Yunus: I use the word ‘entrepreneurship’ in the context of personal profit-driven business only. For social business I’ll use ‘social business entrepreneurship’. Both are entrepreneurship, but of different kinds, leading to different results. One is selfish entrepreneurship, another is selfless entrepreneurship. It is the selfless entrepreneurship which will lead the world to social, economic and environmental sustainability, and create a new civilization of balance between present residents of the world and all future generations.

Chip Wilson: Entrepreneurs get up in the morning and are driven, no matter what, because they know the future is waiting for their idea to be there. When wealth actually comes, you realize that it buys you time – you can hire an executive assistant to do your calendaring and tasks, you can then spend more of your time on the high-functioning elements of your role. The wealthier you become, you maybe look then at jets, chauffeurs, things like that, but ultimately, I need to free up every second of my time to accomplish everything I want to accomplish.

It’s fascinating contrasting the views of Muhammad Yunus with those of our other entrepreneurs. Yunus is a pioneer in the field that is now known as social enterprise. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for the creation of Grameen Bank, and for creating the engine that allowed millions to lift themselves out of poverty through access to finance. A for-profit business, with a strong social purpose. For many businesses, the traditional model was to make money, do good later, but increasingly now, businesses are realizing that these two paths – making money and doing good – are not separate. You cannot forgo your social, environmental, cultural and human responsibilities to pray at the altar of profit.

Naveen Jain: People measure success in different ways, but whether you look at Bill Gates or Mother Teresa, the thing they have in common is their ability to go out and make a positive impact on the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Success is not about how much money you have in the bank, but rather how many lives have you been able to impact positively. This whole concept of a social entrepreneur has done a disservice to society. To me, the term ‘social entrepreneur’ is akin to a consolation prize; it’s like saying: ‘Hey, you could have been a good entrepreneur so let’s give you a consolation prize.’ Entrepreneurship is social, we are all social entrepreneurs!

Steve Case: The act of taking an idea and making it available to everybody, with scale and impact, is a huge motivator for entrepreneurs. In my own journey, thirty years ago when we started AOL, only 3 per cent of people were online. We thought the world would be better if everyone was online, and we set out to do that. It took a decade before we got traction, but we were driven by the idea that living in a more digital and interconnected world would be a good thing for society. Our motivation was partly about building our business, but partly about building this new medium: the internet. That same kind of drive we had is what we see in entrepreneurs we get involved with. It’s not just about building a business, it’s also about having a real impact in the world.

will.i.am: I’ve never said, ‘Yeah man, we’re gonna’ be rich!’ – money has never been the ‘carrot’ for me. How do you keep driving forward and doing things? That’s what motivates me. I’m like, ‘Man, what’s next?’ What always frustrated the hell out of the Black Eyed Peas about me was that we would be at the Super Bowl, or would have just finished a three-night stadium tour, and I would say, ‘Right guys, what’s next?’ and everybody would be like, ‘Ahh, c’mon man, why not just relax?’ But I’d be like, ‘C’mon, we could do this, we could do that!’ My mind just never stopped thinking about what we could be doing next. If we climbed Mount Everest together and we were all at the top, tired, with blisters, dehydrated, I’m the guy who’s like, ‘Yo! Let’s build a freakin’ rocket launcher here so we can go to the moon! We’re close enough!’

Donna Karan: I’m driven to do what I haven’t done. I love a creative challenge, to learn a new craft, a new business, a new way of doing things. The inspiration is always there. Right now, I’m looking out the window at a tree that has white leaves and wondering what I can do with it. Creatively, nature always inspires me. But on a practical level, it’s about filling the void, coming up with something that answers the frustration of what’s missing, what would make life easier.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of my life now is teaching and I’m lucky enough to be part of visiting faculty at some of the world’s highest-rated business schools. Entrepreneurship has generated rock-star figures in business who have the wealth, the power and the reach of any celebrity or icon. So, it is perhaps inevitable that when you put ambitious students in a room to talk about entrepreneurship, they want to know how they can be those icons of the future. Each semester, I get asked what it takes to be a great entrepreneur, and where those ideas emerge from.

What are the characteristics of a great entrepreneur?

Robin Li: I think that only a very small handful of entrepreneurs are ‘born’ with all the requisite abilities they need to succeed. Most of us have many skills that we’ve needed to learn along the way. In an incredibly dynamic industry like the internet, you’re faced with the constant possibility that you, the disruptor, will quickly become the disrupted. You have to be ready to embrace change, and to be ready for it not just in terms of your business, but psychologically ready for the kind of change – excited by, and attracted to, change itself. I think an entrepreneur needs to have finely tuned sensitivity to what change is coming. You have to have almost a precognition of what’s around the next bend. But you need to balance this with an ability to shut out noise, to avoid distraction and to stay focused on what you’re doing.

James Dyson: Inventors shouldn’t be afraid to take risks. They should embrace failure and learn from their mistakes. I created 5,127 prototypes of the first Dyson bagless vacuum cleaner and only the last one was right! Not being afraid to fail is something I think all successful entrepreneurs have in common. When it comes to leadership, I always wanted to have a team that shared my drive, but also could disagree with me. That was the case when I started with just five people and it is still the case for the five thousand people we now have at Dyson.

Chip Wilson: You need to be there before anyone else. I see so many people open up businesses when the market is far too far along the curve. Let’s take snowboarding, for instance – maybe it starts out with three brands, and within five years you have five hundred competitors and the market eventually consolidates with three companies owning twenty brands each. If you can get in at the beginning, you can be part of the explosive growth journey. What we think of as true entrepreneurs are those who develop ideas that people haven’t seen before, but a lot of entrepreneurs can see where we are on the curve and can come in and go, ‘Oh, now everyone’s going to start going bankrupt because there is so much product, too many competitors and low prices. I’m going to buy up fifty brands, amalgamate them and create a super-brand.’ For entrepreneurs with cash, that’s a powerful way to do it, but you need a lot of money to make a success of that model. Ultimately, to be an entrepreneur you have to be able to be so driven on getting that idea, that concept you have, up and running, it’s just like you can’t breathe until you see it come to fruition.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw: Entrepreneurship is about very innovative ideas, it’s not about copying another successful business. When I think of true entrepreneurship, I think of pioneering spirit. It’s where you basically say, ‘Hey, I want to do something different, something new, something others have not thought of.’ It could be a new idea, a new way of doing things, or a combination of many things. Anyone who imitates or cut-and-pastes a business model is a businessman and not an entrepreneur. When I look at something that nobody has thought of, there’s a wow factor! When I started Biocon in India, in 1978 when nobody had thought of biotechnology, that was the wow factor. Every time I thought of new technologies or products, I got that same feeling – and that’s when I knew I had discovered something that nobody else had.

N. R. Narayana Murthy: The first attribute of an entrepreneur is courage. Great entrepreneurs have the courage to dream the impossible, to walk the untrodden paths, to go against the vast majority of naysayers and to make huge sacrifices in the hope that tomorrow will bring better days. The second attribute of an entrepreneur is optimism and hope. When you want to take risks and when you want to walk down the road less travelled or untravelled, you have to be positive and optimistic.

Tory Burch: It comes down to passion. People need to believe in your vision and have confidence in your ability to see it through. There are many great ideas that never materialize. You also have to be willing to embrace risk – calculated risks, because not every risk is worth taking. A great business is always innovating. An entrepreneurial environment is ever-changing and not everyone is suited to this. It’s about being flexible and staying calm enough to take it in your stride.

will.i.am: Great entrepreneurs have networks, they have the ability to bring the people together that will help them see their idea through and make it real. There are some people that are really gifted at their craft, for example the best guitarist in the world, or the best pianist in the world, or the best singer in the world, or the best graphic designer, the fastest runner. Just because you’re the best at those things doesn’t mean you know how to bring people together so that everyone else sees that. Then there’s people who network like really, really, really, really amazingly.

How do you separate your identity as an entrepreneur from who you are as an individual?

Sophia Amoruso: I’ve had multiple identity crises. I remember when I started going up on stage and people used to praise me for my candour. It’s like this: I was just too lazy to make things up, honestly. It actually disappoints me when people find candour a novelty. Why is it such a novelty for people to say what they think and how they feel? My question for everyone else is what the fuck is coming out of your mouth? Why am I wasting my time listening to all these people if being honest is the exception, not the rule?

I definitely drank my own Kool-Aid for a while, and I think I became difficult and out of touch. I was hanging out on superyachts in Cannes with billionaires and was considered a ‘peer’ to people at events like Jeffrey Katzenberg. I was on the Forbes 30 under 30, the Fortune 40 under 40, the Inc. 500, the Inc. 30 under 30 and Vanity Fair’s New Establishment List. I sat on panels with Brian Chesky and Ben Silverman and was somehow seen as a peer! Or perhaps I was the only girl they could get on stage. It was great to be the token girl at the time; there was nobody else. I became a caricature, and then someone came along and made a Netflix series about me which really made me a caricature! This was when the identity crisis really hit me. I was on the cover of Forbes in June 2016, my husband left me in July 2016, I fell in love not long after, and my company went bankrupt the day Trump was elected in November 2016. April 2017, a Netflix series about my life that was critically panned came out, and a few months later it was cancelled. A headline from Vanity Fair (that had invited me to their Oscars party a year ago) said: ‘The most problematic thing about GirlBoss is its source material.’ I mean, come on! I take responsibility for everything that happens in my life, but the scale at which it happened, and the ignorance of the people being paid to write headlines about me, was a total mindfuck.

What are the sources of entrepreneurial ideas?

Richard Branson: There are many things that can inspire an entrepreneurial idea – for example, if you receive poor customer service you may be inspired to create a better product or experience. Listen to friends and family – they often have great ideas and can offer invaluable advice. I always carry a small notebook to jot down thoughts, ideas and conversations I have with people when travelling or working. The idea to start an airline came when I was stranded in the Caribbean and decided to charter a flight out – I sold seats to the other stranded passengers to pay for the charter. Have an open mind as you never know when an opportunity or idea might present itself. In the next ten years, we will all head into unknown territory as we face a vast increase in our demand for energy, yet remain worryingly over-dependent on oil. If entrepreneurs go into the field of renewable energy for the right reasons, along the way they are likely to create some very exciting new technologies and successful new businesses.

Robin Li: Opportunities generally arise from landscape change. But entrepreneurial ideas can come from anywhere. They can come from recognizing where the pain points, the bottlenecks and the inefficiencies are. They can come from late-night conversations with friends, or from random eureka moments. But for me and for Baidu, one source of entrepreneurial ideas has been the need to serve the under-served population. Serving the under served is a real impetus for innovation. Making technology accessible to people who aren’t inherently tech-savvy, and who might be far from fluent with technologies that educated and wealthy urbanites now take for granted, isn’t about making simplified, dumbed-down versions. It actually poses technology challenges.

What do you feel are the characteristics of a successful enterprise?

Richard Branson: A great company needs to have an excellent product or service at its core; needs strong management to execute the plan and a good brand to give it the edge over its competitors. It also needs excellent people who really believe in what they’re doing. People are at the heart of all Virgin businesses. Often entrepreneurs can create a good product and a brand but need to bring in management to help expand and create a truly great company.

Robin Li: From my own experience, I think success comes from focus and persistence – in my case, focus on and persistence in technology. I’ve really done one thing for well over twenty years now. I’ve always believed that hard work and the ability to stick to it can overcome almost any differences in natural intellect among people. Success comes not from IQ but from values, passions, willingness to learn, motivation to improve, and dedication. Focus is not at all easy. There are countless temptations along the way, and often an entrepreneur will waver and be tempted to pivot to another opportunity. For Baidu, in our crucial years, we resisted the siren song of things like wireless value-added services and games, which many of our Chinese peers were seduced by. It may have meant good short-term revenues, but it took them off mission while we continued to stay very focused on search.

N. R. Narayana Murthy: The first attribute of a great business is longevity; that is why I have tremendous respect for companies that have been in business for a long time such as IBM, GE, Unilever and Philips. Commercial longevity is about successfully navigating through peaks and troughs. It’s about going through difficult periods, learning to take the inevitable disappointments and continually improve. Longevity is about dusting your knees when you fall down and continuing your journey. It is also the ability to make a difference to society on a sustained basis.

Tony O. Elumelu: I run my businesses according to the principles of Africapitalism, which calls for businesses to commit to development through investing in long-term ventures that increase economic prosperity as well as social wealth. This means that a successful business is one that creates value for its stakeholders but also makes a long-term, sustainable contribution to the communities that it supports and that support it.

Tony Elumelu’s answer here reveals an important difference in the approach to capitalism between nations. In so many fast-growing ‘global south’ economies, contrary to the narrative we often hear, there is a real commitment from businesses to engage in inclusive growth. Entrepreneurs from these nations aren’t necessarily social entrepreneurs in the impact-measured ‘double-bottom-line’ sense, but are socially minded and aware of their responsibilities to their people. Through my work with the charity In Place of War, I have met entrepreneurs and business owners from across the African continent who have immensely successful and socially engaged companies. In many cases, the realities of war, of social upheaval and of crisis are part of their and their families’ histories, so they cannot look away.

What are the most common mistakes entrepreneurs make?

Steve Case: At a macro level, people often don’t realize that while having an idea is important, executing that idea is more important. There’s a Thomas Edison quote I cite a lot which is that ‘vision without execution is hallucination’. Having a great idea is great, but you have to execute it. There is a tendency to think that the idea itself is a breakthrough, rather than the product, service or business built around the idea. You have to assemble the right team around you, and assemble the right partnerships so that you aren’t doing it alone. All too often, this ‘go-it-alone’ mentality prevails, while partnerships are increasingly important in markets such as health, financial services and education, all of which require a lot of collaborators to create meaningful impact. Entrepreneurs regularly don’t fully understand the competitive climate. Often we’ll hear people telling us how original their idea is, but our view is that if somebody else isn’t doing it, it probably means it isn’t a big idea! If something is a good idea, a lot of people will be doing it, and the real question is who will win.

Jerry Yang: Probably the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make is not planning enough for success. Often, when a company is starting out, they are in survival mode. They don’t think about what happens when they need to scale (or hyper-scale), or how incumbents might compete once the start-up is on the competitive radar. A misconception about entrepreneurship is that it’s a one-person show. But it is nearly impossible for the entrepreneur to do it all; there certainly needs to be a great team behind great entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship is an engine of change and progress. We owe much of the comfort of daily life to the success of entrepreneurs who have created millions of jobs and shifted the world forward in the process. From the internet to the automobile, from modern medicine to entertainment, entrepreneurs have been the risk-takers who have seen a better way. In the past quarter-century, entrepreneurs have also applied these same skills to tackling-some of the world’s most urgent and pressing problems through philanthropy, social-impact investment and by providing the risk capital needed to spur innovation in the social sector. For those fortunate few entrepreneurs who reach those upper echelons of success, giving back is almost a prerequisite. In the United States, for example, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett launched the Giving Pledge, a movement of entrepreneurs who have committed to giving away substantial portions of their wealth in their lifetimes.

What is the role of philanthropy in entrepreneurship?

Richard Branson: I’ve always regarded business as a powerful tool for delivering positive change in the world, so in my opinion entrepreneurship has a crucial role in addressing these global challenges and many others besides. Public funding and open-ended research are absolutely crucial for coming up with better ideas, novel technology and progressive policy, but it seems only the markets are capable of pouring resources into truly scaling things up; and those markets began with entrepreneurship. Prizes can be a real catalyst for moving an idea along, especially if it’s a novel but profoundly important area.

Robin Li: Naturally I support and encourage philanthropy on the part of entrepreneurs, and I’m very glad to see that engagement with broader social issues, giving generously to worthy causes, and working for a common good are now things very much expected of corporations. I would add that the best thing an entrepreneur or company can really do is to build in a real nobility of mission from the very outset. If you set out to do something where your company’s success also means bringing tangible benefit to society, that’s really the highest form of philanthropy.

Muhammad Yunus: Philanthropy helps address the problems of the people which otherwise remain unaddressed. It is a great concept because this is the only window through which people’s problems can be addressed, in a world where businesses are sharply focused on the selfish goal of making profit. But I see a big limitation in philanthropy. Philanthropic money can be used only once. Once it is used the money is gone, it does not come back to the donor. I solved this problem by creating the concept of social business. I make the objectives of philanthropy to be achieved by using the methodology of business, delinking it from the personal profit. This way we get the money back, and we use the same money over and over again and keep on achieving the goal endless times. Philanthropy suddenly becomes very powerful. With this I have brought entrepreneurship and sustainability to philanthropy.

N. R. Narayana Murthy: Entrepreneurship is about the transformation of our world through the power of ideas, and entrepreneurs use the power of their ideas to make this world a better place and, in the process, make money! For many entrepreneurs, they continue this transformational journey through their philanthropy. It is very natural for an entrepreneur to use part of his or her wealth for philanthropy, which, ultimately, is about transforming the world through the power of ideas! Such philanthropic journeys are generally led by social entrepreneurs.

Michael Otto: If we want to change things long term for the better, generous financial donations are not enough. This is why I get personally involved within the framework of my foundation’s activities as well as in a range of other socially-oriented projects. It is important to me to trigger and drive forward fundamental social, societal and environmental policy initiatives through my own personal involvement. For me, it’s not only about ‘doing good’: alongside the implementation of specific projects I also want to raise people’s awareness of particular topics, to seed and nurture ideas and generate momentum that others can then take up and develop further. In my view, projects only make social and societal sense if at some stage they can support and develop themselves.

To what extent are companies having to become communities?

Scott Farquhar: Companies have always been communities. Building a community and building a business go hand in hand, that’s my belief. Many employees used to check part of themselves at the door when they went to work, and leave part of themselves at home. It could have been because they felt discriminated against, or not accepted, but my view is this: companies that allow employees to bring their whole self to work are the ones that get the most out of their employees. It used to be that work and home were very separate; you left work, went home and didn’t really hear from work again till the next day. The lack of the communication systems that we have today left more room for church, for community and all those other things. At the time, people also, for much the same reason, didn’t do personal stuff at work. You didn’t go to work and update your Facebook page in the middle of the day! Today, work and personal life are bleeding into each other such that the distinction between the two has all but disappeared. If I told my employees they weren’t allowed to shop online during their lunchbreak, it would be as weird as telling them to not answer that work email because it’s the weekend.

What is the role of failure in the entrepreneurship journey?

Chip Wilson: My goal was to get to the age of fifty and have enough health, and economic success, to survive a downturn. I had a surf, skate, snowboard business for eighteen years which made no money and I wasn’t happy with that. I was continuing to take the risk, but it wasn’t returning, and eventually the wholesale business was collapsing, it was ceasing to be viable, and I sold it so I could start again. Everything about Lululemon would never have been possible without eighteen years of general failure with West Beach. We have to redefine what failure means. We have to detach it from ego and realize that it’s part of our education. My first eighteen years with West Beach were my eighteen-year MBA. Without that, I would not have been able to learn what I needed to, in order to become the world’s first fully vertical retail company that went direct to the consumer. There are so many failures and setbacks on the entrepreneurship journey; that’s just reality.

Dennis Crowley: Sometimes I don’t think people know what they’re signing up for when they become entrepreneurs. When you go to the airport and stop at a news-stand, it’s wall-to-wall cover stories about successful entrepreneurs, but nobody talks about the failures and very rarely do they talk about the very hard times. Nobody wants to admit that their company almost went out of business ten times. All the talks I give are about failure, how hard it is, how much this job kind of sucks and genuinely how tough it is. People often go into this world thinking it’s all roses, and it’s not. When people don’t talk about this stuff, they think they’re the only people to have ever experienced those challenges. The more people talk, the more everyone realizes these are journeys which are shared. Successful entrepreneurs have to speak out about the bad stuff, not just the good. Everyone has a unique path; I truly believe that. You cannot achieve success by replicating someone else’s journey, but nevertheless we’ve all had to fight battles and navigate the success-maze, and with that comes learnings which may help others jump ahead of the curve.

What would be your message to future entrepreneurs?

Robin Li: This is something I speak about quite often, and I always emphasize that entrepreneurs should focus on what they believe is worthwhile, exercising their own judgement without blindly following the crowd. Find that sweet spot at the intersection of what you do best and what you love to do the most, and your odds of success are immediately much higher. If you do what you excel in doing, you’ll be better than your competition. And if you focus on what you love to do, you’ll be doggedly persistent even when faced with strong competitors, reversals of fortune, and beguiling distractions.

James Dyson: Don’t aspire to be an entrepreneur. Aspire to create something that solves a problem. My message to young people with an idea is: build a prototype and test it. Test it again and again, making the changes, learning from failure. Don’t be afraid to go it alone. Sometimes you have to be brave and jump in at the deep end, but the rewards for creating disruptive technology that really works are truly amazing.

Muhammad Yunus: My message is not to those who are ‘interested in entrepreneurship’. They are only a small bunch anyway. My message is to all young people, even if they are not interested at the moment. Every one of them has the potential of turning into great entrepreneurs. My message is a simple question: should you start your life at the top or rather start it at the bottom? If you go for a job, you start at the bottom. There, you’ll be busy trying to satisfy your immediate boss, giving up your creative power to fit into a small role defined by your boss. For the rest of your life you’ll be dedicated to fulfilling the goals set by your boss, not by you. Have you ever thought of your goals? Why not start with your goals, make your life, and the world, your way. Be the leader, rather than a tiny follower. People will tell you that it is too risky. Don’t listen to them. Start by finding your own solutions. The fact that others have not created solutions for you, that’s an advantage. You get the chance to try your hand, come up with your ideas. Nobody can beat you on ideas. Try it. There are many like you waiting to join you. Take the first step. I can guarantee you, it is a lot of fun.

José Neves: Continue to innovate and create offers for your market that no one else can. Google is a huge source of inspiration. They’ve optimized the core business, which is advertising, but they do not give up on funding constant moonshots. One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned is about culture and values – the culture of a business exists from day one and it really comes from the founder and founding team. Once the company gets bigger, though, you need to verbalize and document the company culture so it is clear to everyone and becomes a mantra. Everything changes when you’ve hired around a hundred and fifty people, and we now have over three thousand. When we first launched, my job was about finding amazing boutiques, working with the developers to create a product or designing solutions, finding customers. My job now is really about leadership, culture, values and being the ambassador for our business and what we are trying to achieve, as well as of course managing investors. It’s a very different job to when I launched Farfetch, but I’m still loving it and am very grateful to the team.

Jamal Edwards: The biggest thing is self-belief. Self-belief is so important. Believe in yourself, try out your ideas. If you fail? Learn from that failure and move on. Don’t be harmed by it. Don’t let the success get to your head, and don’t let the failures get to your heart.

Steve Case: There are still a lot of problems and challenges in society that require fresh thinking, bold perspectives and innovation. The next wave of entrepreneurship could be the most interesting and impactful we’ve ever seen. There are now entrepreneurs who are focusing on things like how we stay healthy, how we eat, how we get around, how we manage energy, how we learn and many other critically important aspects of the lives of billions. My hope is that entrepreneurs are inspired to take on big challenges. In those challenges are opportunities, and those opportunities could build the next wave of iconic world-changing companies. My hope is that entrepreneurs set their sights high, to tackle big problems and challenges, and take that path of passion and perseverance to have significant impact.

Tony O. Elumelu: I think it is paramount for future entrepreneurs to build sustainable companies that will create value for their stakeholders over the long term. It is also important, however, for these companies to have a social impact. This isn’t the easiest path to success, to be sure, but it is responsible and it is my firm belief that this is the foundation upon which great legacies are built.

Jack Welch: Building a great team is what this business game is all about. The team with the best players working together wins. This great team will drive growth, and growth is like an elixir. It’s exciting, it creates more and more growth, and it’s a helluva lot of fun. Business is fun, it’s a game. You’re playing against others, and you want to win. Winning is good, losing is bad! Do you want to be in the winner’s locker room celebrating or in the loser’s with your head down and a towel around your neck? If you’re winning, you can give back – to your family, institutions of your choice, and your local communities. If you’re losing, your pockets are empty.

Naveen Jain: You have to dream so big that people think you’re crazy. If people don’t think you’re crazy, you’re not dreaming big enough. You can never be afraid of failing. As an entrepreneur, you never fail – you adapt and pivot. Ideas fail, people don’t. If you are smart enough to adapt and pivot, you realize that ideas are stepping stones.

will.i.am: You have to figure out who you are in the conversation. You have to know who you are at the table. Are you the idea guy? The notetaker? The make-it-happen guy? The follow-through guy? Or the bring-it-together person? In a proper thinking session, you have those personalities. The idea guy, the guru (who brings people together, not necessarily the same person as the idea guy), the notetaker (who takes everything down and collates it), the make-it-happen guy (who creates the action points, and understands what needs to be done) and the follow-through guy (who makes those actions happen). There’s also an ‘assembler’ who knows how to bring all these people together. Are you that person? Who are you? I’m an ideas person. I know exactly that’s who I am. I’m not a good follow-through guy, I sometimes overthink things too much and I can be overprotective of my ideas. As an ideas person and a facilitator you will want to get your idea out when you think it’s finished, and that’s often suffocating for your business because you don’t allow it to grow.

Kevin O’Leary: The first thing you need is to get your finances in order. I tell all my students the same thing. If anything’s been learned on the lessons of a decade of Shark Tank, and Dragon’s Den in England and Canada and Australia, the format’s the same in all the countries. These three elements are found in all successful pitches. First, you have to get in front of those sharks or dragons, and explain in ninety seconds or less what the opportunity is. If you can’t do that, you’re going to fail. Second, you have to explain why you’re the right person to execute the business plan. What do you know? What makes you unique? What has your experience been? Why are you the right person? A great idea with a bad execution is a horrible investment, so you have to prove to me you can actually execute. Lastly, and this is the one that I take personal pride in, if you don’t know your numbers, I will make sure you burn in hell in perpetuity. You have to know your numbers. If you’re going to get in front of me and talk about a business, you’d better know the breakeven analysis, the gross margin, size of the market, number of competitors. All of that stuff. I expect you to know that; that’s just a given. If you don’t, you’re going to fail.

Stewart Butterfield: First, you have to put the customer ahead of yourself. Second, I cannot overstate the importance of aligning and committing to a vision, and not constantly second-guessing yourself. There’s absolutely important feedback that comes from having your product in market, but it’s far too easy to be swayed by that and hesitate or change course. For a company like Slack, with our kind of growth, it feels a little bit like parkour. You’re moving very quickly, opportunistically trying to take advantage of things in your environment. In parkour that might be walls or railings, but for us it’s changes in the market or what our customers need. The consequences are similar: if you hesitate, you’re going to crash and probably hurt yourself. It’s better to be slightly off in a decision but moving full speed ahead than to let doubt stop you.

At the beginning of this chapter, I admitted that I didn’t know what an entrepreneur was until I was called one. Today, the most visible part of entrepreneurship has become a Hollywood caricature of itself – productized into books, seminars and consultancies led by entrepreneurship influencers who make more money from their social followings than from actual businesses. I think it’s important that we disconnect that from reality.

Across the world there are people who are driven to look for solutions to problems, who have a passion that turns into a business, who want to change the world, who have a drive to create or who have no choice but to start a business to make their way in life. Whether it’s the local store owner, or someone who founded a global business, entrepreneurs are everywhere and form the backbone to our economy. The thread that connects all of them, however, is the ability to turn an idea into a reality, and the tenacity to see that through, a characteristic Sir James Dyson described to me when he talked about how important it was that entrepreneurs had the traits of drive and commitment to see their ideas through to fruition.

In much the same way as its biological counterpart, entrepreneurial evolution is a story of the success of good ideas. Billions of iterations occur, and those that add value to the system of humanity flourish, becoming part of our culture with increasing rapidity. The Wright brothers made the first powered flight in 1903 over a distance of 120 feet – just sixty-six years later, two humans stood on the moon looking back at earth. In a similar feat, our species progressed in less than seventy years from the first basic digital computer in 1941 to having the total sum of human knowledge in a globally connected amorphous cloud of computers.

The early days of the internet era were some of the most exciting in entrepreneurship. Small groups of people created global businesses at a scale never before seen, and with that came learnings on entrepreneurship in a very extreme environment. Jerry Yang was the co-founder of Yahoo!, one of the first search engines, and the company made him one of the world’s first internet billionaires. As we’ve heard in this chapter, entrepreneurship for him was about finding a common, strong mission to build something that would change the world. And to do that you need a team that shares that passion and belief, the success and failure, together. Without exception, every one of the most successful entrepreneurs I’ve ever met is aligned with this view.

Our innate capability to generate ideas is potentially the most powerful faculty we have at our disposal. Entrepreneurs are simply the people who take a gamut of resources – capital, knowledge, tools, infrastructure – and transform their ideas into physical or virtual assets, which can then be absorbed into society and wider culture. Put in its most simple terms by Buddha, ‘We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.’

Biographies

Sophia Amoruso is an American businesswoman and the founder of Girlboss Media, a professional network for ambitious women. Her bestselling autobiography #GIRLBOSS was adapted into a scripted TV series for Netflix.

Steve Ballmer is a businessman and investor, and was the Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is also the current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.

Sir Richard Branson is a British entrepreneur, investor and author. He is the founder of Virgin, which controls more than 400 companies in various fields.

Tory Burch is an American fashion designer, businesswoman and philanthropist. She is Executive Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of the fashion label Tory Burch.

Stewart Butterfield is a Canadian entrepreneur and businessman. He is the co-founder of photo-sharing website Flickr and co-founder and CEO of Slack.

Steve Case is an American entrepreneur, investor and businessman. He is the former CEO and chairman of AOL and is known for his advocacy for immigration reform.

Dennis Crowley is an internet entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of Foursquare and Dodgeball, and founder of the semi-professional soccer team Kingston Stockade FC in New York.

Sir James Dyson CBE is an award-winning British inventor and entrepreneur, and the founder of Dyson. He is well known for his work on revolutionizing vacuum cleaners and has won many design awards for his appliances.

Jamal Edwards MBE is a British entrepreneur, model, bestselling author and the founder of the online music platform SB.TV and the London-based youth centre project, Jamal Edwards Delve.

Tony O. Elumelu is a Nigerian economist, entrepreneur and philanthropist, and Chairman of Heirs Holdings, United Bank for Africa, Transcorp and founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation.

Scott Farquhar is an Australian entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of enterprise software company Atlassian, whose clients include NASA, Tesla and SpaceX.

Naveen Jain is a business executive, entrepreneur and the founder and former CEO of InfoSpace, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Moon Express and founder and CEO of Viome.

Donna Karan is an American fashion designer and the founder of the Donna Karan New York and DKNY clothing labels. In 2007, she began her lifestyle brand, Urban Zen.

Robin Li is a Chinese software engineer and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of the search engine Baidu, the fifth most popular website in the world after Google, YouTube, Tmall and Facebook.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is an Indian entrepreneur. She is the Chairperson and Managing Director of the biotechnology company Biocon Limited and the former Chairperson of the Indian Institute of Management. In 2019, she was listed as sixty-fifth on the Forbes list of ‘Most Powerful Women in the World’.

N. R. Narayana Murthy is an Indian software entrepreneur and co-founder of tech giant Infosys. He has been named one of the twelve greatest entrepreneurs of our time by Fortune magazine.

José Neves is a Portuguese businessman and the founder of the global luxury fashion platform, Farfetch.

Kevin O’Leary is a businessman, author, politician and television personality. Since 2009, he has been a fixture on the business reality TV show Shark Tank.

Professor Michael Otto is a German entrepreneur. He is the head of the mail order company, Otto Group, which is second only to Amazon.com as a web retailer.

Gary Vaynerchuk is a Belarusian-American entrepreneur and bestselling author. He is the co-founder of Resy and Empathy Wines, Chairman of VaynerX and CEO of VaynerMedia.

Jack Welch (1935–2020) was an American business executive, chemical engineer and bestselling author. He was Chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001.

will.i.am is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, producer and actor. He is a member of the Black Eyed Peas and is also known for his appearances as a judge on The Voice.

Chip Wilson is a businessman and philanthropist, and the founder of Lululemon Athletica, widely credited as being behind the ‘athleisure’ trend.

Jerry Yang is an entrepreneur and computer programmer, co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc. and founder of AME Cloud Ventures.

Professor Muhammad Yunus is a social entrepreneur, banker and economist. He has been awarded many prizes for his work, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for founding the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and launching the revolutionary concepts of microcredit and microfinance.