Reading Reflection- Week 2

Chapter 1 reading reflection

1. Something that stood out to me the most are all the external factors that effect entrepreneur's development. Before reading this I had mostly just thought about the internal personal traits one needed in order to be a successful entrepreneur. You must be a leader, someone who is independent, and someone who is driven to complete tasks. I never thought about societal factors that could negatively impact your start up such as environmental factors, financial factors, and economic, cultural, or political displacement. The author greatly detailed how these external factors will influence the development of entrepreneurship.


2. One part that was confusing was the fact that the author said no gazelles end up surviving. Just the page before that, the author described gazelles as "leaders in innovation." He defines a gazelle as "a business establishment with at least 20 percent sales growth every year. The author described all the great and successful attributes of gazelles and then on the next page talks about how they most likely will fail. To me, this did not make sense and sort of startled me.


3. One question I would ask the author based on Chapter 1 would be: how did you come up with the 10 myths about entrepreneurs? I would ask this because I think many of them could be debated and that there are probably many more than 10 so why are these the most important and are they a result of personal experience?
A second question I would ask the author based on chapter 1 would be: why did you include the blurb about "the best business schools for entrepreneurship"? To me it seemed a bit random and unrelated to the rest of the chapter. The author did not discussing studying entrepreneurship at all in this chapter so it didn't seem to fit with the rest of the information presented.


4. I disagree with Myth 1: Entrepreneurs Are Doers, Not Thinkers. I think instead that entrepreneurs can be seen as doers and thinkers interchangeably. They are not one or the other because in order to be successful, their thoughts must be consistent with their actions. If one does not think, they will not do.