‘Entrepreneurs are made, not born’

Morse is a successful serial entrepreneur, the managing director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center and a world-renowned lecturer on entrepreneurship.

What are three of the most critical success factors for a business start-ups and innovation?

“The most important ingredient is to be ambitious. Entrepreneurs must set high targets for themselves and their companies. The next step is to have some excellent technology, which can be developed to provide sustainable competitive advantage. But technology and ambition aren’t enough. New ventures must provide a valuable solution to an important painful customer need. The products of start-ups must be aspirin for the headaches of customers who can afford to pay.”

What does it take to be a first-class entrepreneur?

“If there are three roles of an entrepreneur, he or she must create like a god, command like a king and work like a slave.”

In your lectures you stress that it’s essential to stay focused. Why is this so important for successful entrepreneurship? People often say that good entrepreneurs are those who listen to signals from the market and adapt their strategies accordingly?

“For me, there’s no contradiction between staying focused and listening to customers and the marketplace. A football player knows where the goal is, but he bobs and weaves on the way to the goal and moves from side to side along the way to achieve the end objective. The same is true for entrepreneurs, who will need to make many adjustments and passes before scoring. At the same time the best entrepreneurs focus only on getting a goal in the match they’re playing and not on considering other matches when the going gets tough. For example, focusing on one vertical market to the exclusion of all others is a very powerful way to align the company and its employees around satisfying a single set of customer needs. It has the potential to shorten the sales cycle and bring about other products that can be sold to the same clients.”

Many people believe that if they have a groundbreaking idea or product, the selling process isn’t important, because the product will sell itself. But you believe the selling process is fundamental even for so-called revolutionary products. Why?

“Because the single most important reason for a company to exist is to serve its customers. People buy solutions to problems. The buying and selling process is rational for customers.”

A group of people in the Netherlands is deterred from starting a business, because common sense dictates that an entrepreneurial spirit is inborn. They believe that they don’t have ‘it’ in them. Do you believe this view has some merit?

“Entrepreneurs are made, not born. I believe that the environment in which people grow up is an important influence, but it’s never too late to expose people to the spirit of entrepreneurship. And to infect them with the entrepreneurial virus. The virus takes hold at different times in people’s lives. Even the most bureaucratic and unimaginative people can become entrepreneurial when they have to. The greatest surge in innovation around Boston happened after 400,000 people lost their jobs, when the workstation industry was defeated by increasingly powerful PCs from Silicon Valley. A negative explanation of the importance of the environment also supports my case. Some of the best entrepreneurs in Boston and Silicon Valley are French engineers who would never have considered taking the entrepreneurial path at home. But they did so almost immediately once they were in the right nurturing environment.”

Where does this lack of an entrepreneurial spirit in the Netherlands come from?

“I worry that the next generation has had it too easy and hasn’t had high enough expectations set for them by their parents, their high school teachers, their peers and themselves. Perhaps the economy has the ‘oil curse’ due to the Groningen gas fields. I don’t know. But I don’t see the same high levels of workaholic ‘can do’ attitudes in my classrooms here, which I see in other parts of the world. Especially among women entrepreneurs. By contrast, a third of the CEOs attending my workshops in Beirut, Damascus and Karachi are women. These brave women have bright futures, due to their strong technical training and high ambition for themselves, their companies and their families.”

The Harvard economist Michel Porter said that for the Netherlands to become one of the most innovative European economies it must strengthen the relationship between academia and the private sector. However, many Dutch academics resist contacts with the business community because they fear the loss of objectivity. Yet in countries like USA where academia and industry have a more intimate relationship, there are more Nobel Prize winners.

“I think that Michel Porter is correct, both with his cluster theory and with his beliefs that there are many potential synergies between industry and academia. I also believe that there are more Nobel prizes and accomplishments in those areas where the universities have to compete rather than being isolated and receiving government grants irrespective of performance. I actually believe ivory towers can inhibit or even be destructive for innovation. The best universities that I’ve seen around the world are those that are forced to compete for students, faculty and funding. They also tend to be the universities with the highest tuition fees. Students are much more focused when they pay for their classes. I like the system where faculty have to do fundraising to support portions of their research. Because selling their research keeps them sharp and on the leading edge.”

Do you have an aspirin to cure this problem for Dutch society?

“Our team (Delft Centre for Entrepreneurship, DCE) and the YesDelft! people are working to make the walls of the university more porous. We’ve invited successful entrepreneurs into the classroom. We’re simulating the real world with classroom exercises such as elevator pitches and business plans. Thanks to this framework, you can feel the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation in the air. And we’re getting great students from Leiden and Rotterdam involved now, too. It’s too soon to be sure, but I’m confident we’re moving the needle and infecting some of the best students with the entrepreneurial virus.”

Professor Kenneth P. Morse has been a part-time professor of entrepreneurship at the TU’s Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management since January 2007. Morse is a successful serial entrepreneur, the managing director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center and a world-renowned lecturer on entrepreneurship.

What are three of the most critical success factors for a business start-ups and innovation?

“The most important ingredient is to be ambitious. Entrepreneurs must set high targets for themselves and their companies. The next step is to have some excellent technology, which can be developed to provide sustainable competitive advantage. But technology and ambition aren’t enough. New ventures must provide a valuable solution to an important painful customer need. The products of start-ups must be aspirin for the headaches of customers who can afford to pay.”

What does it take to be a first-class entrepreneur?

“If there are three roles of an entrepreneur, he or she must create like a god, command like a king and work like a slave.”

In your lectures you stress that it’s essential to stay focused. Why is this so important for successful entrepreneurship? People often say that good entrepreneurs are those who listen to signals from the market and adapt their strategies accordingly?

“For me, there’s no contradiction between staying focused and listening to customers and the marketplace. A football player knows where the goal is, but he bobs and weaves on the way to the goal and moves from side to side along the way to achieve the end objective. The same is true for entrepreneurs, who will need to make many adjustments and passes before scoring. At the same time the best entrepreneurs focus only on getting a goal in the match they’re playing and not on considering other matches when the going gets tough. For example, focusing on one vertical market to the exclusion of all others is a very powerful way to align the company and its employees around satisfying a single set of customer needs. It has the potential to shorten the sales cycle and bring about other products that can be sold to the same clients.”

Many people believe that if they have a groundbreaking idea or product, the selling process isn’t important, because the product will sell itself. But you believe the selling process is fundamental even for so-called revolutionary products. Why?

“Because the single most important reason for a company to exist is to serve its customers. People buy solutions to problems. The buying and selling process is rational for customers.”

A group of people in the Netherlands is deterred from starting a business, because common sense dictates that an entrepreneurial spirit is inborn. They believe that they don’t have ‘it’ in them. Do you believe this view has some merit?

“Entrepreneurs are made, not born. I believe that the environment in which people grow up is an important influence, but it’s never too late to expose people to the spirit of entrepreneurship. And to infect them with the entrepreneurial virus. The virus takes hold at different times in people’s lives. Even the most bureaucratic and unimaginative people can become entrepreneurial when they have to. The greatest surge in innovation around Boston happened after 400,000 people lost their jobs, when the workstation industry was defeated by increasingly powerful PCs from Silicon Valley. A negative explanation of the importance of the environment also supports my case. Some of the best entrepreneurs in Boston and Silicon Valley are French engineers who would never have considered taking the entrepreneurial path at home. But they did so almost immediately once they were in the right nurturing environment.”

Where does this lack of an entrepreneurial spirit in the Netherlands come from?

“I worry that the next generation has had it too easy and hasn’t had high enough expectations set for them by their parents, their high school teachers, their peers and themselves. Perhaps the economy has the ‘oil curse’ due to the Groningen gas fields. I don’t know. But I don’t see the same high levels of workaholic ‘can do’ attitudes in my classrooms here, which I see in other parts of the world. Especially among women entrepreneurs. By contrast, a third of the CEOs attending my workshops in Beirut, Damascus and Karachi are women. These brave women have bright futures, due to their strong technical training and high ambition for themselves, their companies and their families.”

The Harvard economist Michel Porter said that for the Netherlands to become one of the most innovative European economies it must strengthen the relationship between academia and the private sector. However, many Dutch academics resist contacts with the business community because they fear the loss of objectivity. Yet in countries like USA where academia and industry have a more intimate relationship, there are more Nobel Prize winners.

“I think that Michel Porter is correct, both with his cluster theory and with his beliefs that there are many potential synergies between industry and academia. I also believe that there are more Nobel prizes and accomplishments in those areas where the universities have to compete rather than being isolated and receiving government grants irrespective of performance. I actually believe ivory towers can inhibit or even be destructive for innovation. The best universities that I’ve seen around the world are those that are forced to compete for students, faculty and funding. They also tend to be the universities with the highest tuition fees. Students are much more focused when they pay for their classes. I like the system where faculty have to do fundraising to support portions of their research. Because selling their research keeps them sharp and on the leading edge.”

Do you have an aspirin to cure this problem for Dutch society?

“Our team (Delft Centre for Entrepreneurship, DCE) and the YesDelft! people are working to make the walls of the university more porous. We’ve invited successful entrepreneurs into the classroom. We’re simulating the real world with classroom exercises such as elevator pitches and business plans. Thanks to this framework, you can feel the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation in the air. And we’re getting great students from Leiden and Rotterdam involved now, too. It’s too soon to be sure, but I’m confident we’re moving the needle and infecting some of the best students with the entrepreneurial virus.”