The Innovative Entrepreneur

Cognitively diverse project entrepreneurs are the ones most likely to succeed at making a ding in the universe. Project entrepreneurs are more effective because they are more likely to persevere at achieving their project and at undertaking new breakthrough innovations. Cyrus Field, Marconi, Walt Disney, Sam Walton, and Steve Jobs were project entrepreneurs. Innovative entrepreneurs are likely to either know less theory, or to take theory less seriously, which allows them to try what theory says is impossible. For instance, the physics of Marconi’s day said that his radio waves should go straight into space rather than curve with the earth to cross the Atlantic. Conversely, innovative entrepreneurs often have more tacit knowledge. Innovative entrepreneurs pursue serendipitous observations or slow hunches, often through trial-and-error experiments, and may benefit from cognitive diversity, such as dyslexia and Asperger’s syndrome. What inventors and entrepreneurs know is the subject matter of the epistemology of innovation.