I don’t know many people that would classify Dave McClure as a failure. Most of us would happily aspire to his level of “success.” What’s telling to me is that most successful entrepreneurs have this same level of self criticism. They’re never satisfied. They always want more. 

This really makes me wonder if a companies inability to innovate really has to do with size or if it isn’t partly due to the age of it’s leadership. 

While both groups of test subjects scored in the exact same percentile for cold decision making, when it came to hot processes, the results couldn’t be more different. The managers were conservative. It was a betting game, and their wagers were low. But entrepreneurs showed a significant inclination for the big bet. Which, for a group of 51 year-olds, was pretty unusual.

“As we get older,” says Sahakian, “we loose our predilection for risk—this is very well established. But entrepreneurs don’t go this route. They make risky decisions like they were still 17-27 years old.”

In today’s world, where most every businessman needs a bit of the entrepreneurial spirit to thrive (some would say to survive), this raises the question of whether we can train the brain to be less risk adverse in the face of hot decisions.

Entrepreneurs, are by their very nature, idea people. The hardest thing for any startup is focus and deciding what not to do. This is doubly true of the founders. 

Here’s my first of many (or at least several) guest posts on Memeburn. 

Memeburn is a great blog that if you’re interested in emerging markets and social media, you should be reading.