Husband, father, son, brother, friend, entrepreneur, urbanist, and wilderness lover.
I’ve been a slack runner this year, and that just ended. These guys have gotten me off my butt and back out on the trails.
Earlier this month, the Bleacher Report featured the accomplishments of Atlanta brothers Kyle and Brent Pease, the Kyle Pease Foundation, and the Walking with Kpeasey campaign.
Kyle and Brent are competing in the Wisconsin Iron Man on September 9. Cheer them on, and then come run with them on one of their Atlanta races this fall.
A friend forwarded me this great article from Jesse Lipson at Forbes, applying Taleb’s concept of antifragility to business. The author encourages entrepreneurs to cultivate a work environment where people will “embrace volatility,” “fail frequently in small ways,” and “build back even stronger.”
“So in Antifragile,” writes Lipson,
Taleb suggests we stop trying to predict the future and focus on protecting against something that we can more easily measure: fragility. Something is fragile if it breaks with small changes in the environment: a wine glass shatters if you drop it; it’s fragile. If an object or system can withstand large changes, it’s resilient. A system is antifragile if it actually thrives on chaos, growing stronger when the unexpected occurs.
It’s like weightlifting: Your company is antifragile when it’s composed of more muscle than bone. Yes, bones can recover from a break, but often in a weakened state. A muscle is strengthened by damage. Weightlifters build muscle by pushing it past the limit. A stressed muscle is riven with tiny tears and, as the muscle repairs itself, it actually rebuilds stronger and bigger than before.
This morning, I forwarded the article along to some other entrepreneurs, and one responded thusly (I paraphrase):
Thinking about this, we should never have 100% client satisfaction. We should be doing little experiments all the time, and experiencing little failures here and there, with the result being that a small percentage of clients isn’t happy. If we don’t do that, none of our clients will ever be ecstatic.
I love that observation, even as someone who makes a living monitoring customer satisfaction. If 100% of our clients will recommend us, then we’re never failing to meet expectations, and that suggests we’re not taking enough small risks to keep driving our business forward in an enduring (and antifragile) way.
A couple weeks ago, Ben Casselman of the WSJ presented some trends about entrepreneurship in the United States. Nowadays, he writes,
Companies add jobs more slowly, even in good times. Investors put less money into new ventures. And, more broadly, Americans start fewer businesses and are less inclined to change jobs or move for new opportunities.
The changes reflect broader, more permanent shifts, including an aging population and the new dominance of large corporations in many industries. They also may help explain the increasingly sluggish economic recoveries after the past three recessions, experts said.
Stephen Bainbridge added some thoughts as to why entrepreneurship is declining. He writes, “First, the dearth of US citizens pursuing careers in science and engineering. Second, the impact of law and regulation.” A lot of folks seem to be echoing his first point. I don’t buy it, and will share more about why at the end of this post. But, I completely agree about the second point. Bainbridge elaborates:
When you add up the growing costs of regulation and the growing risk of litigation, there’s no wonder smaller firms and start ups struggle. Only big firms can achieve the sort of economies of scale that make such costs bearable.
Regulation and litigation are absolutely stifling the growth of new businesses, and completely favoring large, established corporations. I’ve written some about that (here and here and here and here), and many other people have as well. Even so, all the bellyaching doesn’t seem to be altering the growth trajectory of litigation and regulation.
Here are a few more reasons why I believe entrepreneurship is on the decline:
Geoffrey Graham 