Act Like a Scientist, If You Want to Be a Successful Entrepreneur

"Scroll your LinkedIn feed and you'll find endless motivational stories about entrepreneurs who made it with a combination of instinct and luck. As fascinating as this narrative can be, it might just hold true for a few outliers - actually it seems like entrepreneurial success might have one surprising ingredient: science", says podcast host David Wayne Callahan in introducing Alfonso Gambardella, the guest of the latest episode of Clarity in a Messy World, and his topic: Why Entrepreneurs Should Act like Scientists. Professor Gambardella is the Head of Bocconi Department of Management and Technology.

"One of the things that has really fascinated humankind is the ability to predict the future.", Professor Gambardella explains. "And if you think about it, science is probably the best method we know today for making predictions about the future. Now you may ask yourself what does this have to do with business and entrepreneurs? Well, one of the main features of business and entrepreneurs is that they commit time, resources, and money to get something in the future that they do not know of when they make this commitment. And how do they do so? Well, by making predictions."

Among the examples of entrepreneurs that used a scientific approach, Prof. Gambardella brings those of Laszlo Biro, the Hungarian journalist-turned-entrepreneur who invented and patented the ballpoint pen, and Marcel Bic, the French entrepreneur who bought the ballpoint pen patent from Biro and started an industrial scale production.

Clarity in a Messy World, hosted by David W. Callahan, is the Bocconi podcast that looks at the causes behind the most confounding issues of our time. You can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker, and YouTube.