Today, Barclays is publishing a fascinating insight into the entrepreneurial mindset. It emphasises the importance of failure in achieving success.
Today, Barclays is publishing a fascinating insight into the entrepreneurial mindset. Entitled If at First You Don’t Succeed, it emphasises the importance of failure in achieving success via a string of colourful anecdotes from Henry Ford’s first company not selling a single car to Walt Disney being rejected by 302 banks.
Worryingly for the West, the Canary Wharf bank announces that developing economies have the highest tolerance for failure worldwide. 51% of Middle Easterners and Asians surveyed said, for example, that the recent financial crisis provided them with opportunities, in comparison to 43% in the U.S. and Europe.
‘Entrepreneurs in fast-growing economies are used to dealing with constraints, high levels of bureaucracy and challenging business environments,’ the report says. ‘The experience makes them highly adept at overcoming obstacles and solving seemingly insurmountable problems, which will be important advantages as they compete head-to-head with entrepreneurs in developed markets.’
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Impressive as this may be, the path to economic hegemony is not entirely clear. Entrepreneurs in China and India demonstrate these attributes precisely because their operating environments are mired by scarce resources and bureaucracy: it’s not for nothing that it takes 29 days to launch a business in India compared to 6 days in the US and 13 in the UK. So, as ever, it’s personality vs process in the global battle for entrepreneurial supremacy.
In the next issue, we’ll be publishing an article on British entrepreneurs who’ve gone on from failure to business success.
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