Lists of lessons for entrepreneurs are common, but Stewart Thornhill, a professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, has come up ith one that is probably more provocative – and memorable – than others you have seen. More helpful, too.
Prof. Thornhill teaches entrepreneurship, strategy and leadership, and tried to combine those three fields into lessons that are generally not discussed but are all the more important because of that omission.
An article he wrote in the Ivey Business Journal was titled “Ten Dirty Little Secrets of Entrepreneurs,” but he acknowledged that despite the eye-catching headline, it’s not so much that they are secrets as they are things left unsaid. They aren’t “little,” either. They are big traps to watch for:
1. People are lazy
Whenever possible, individuals will seek to accomplish whatever needs to be done with as little effort as possible. For entrepreneurs, this is important in two ways. First, the most effective innovations assume people are lazy, and they help them be that way. “Don’t assume anything other than laziness in your customers,” Prof. Thornhill said in a recent interview.
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