How Entrepreneur Approaches High Risk Decision Making - Dan Street - Video 1
Transcript
- Eric: How have you applied your experience walking on a college basketball team to measuring risk and reward in your career?
- Dan: There are a couple of things that happen when you take a risk that is likely not gonna work out. There is the letting go of your ego around the situacion which is tough to do but there's another part wich is learning to be focused on the process not the outcome; and so, I think in everything that I have done where I have failed or not been as successful as I have wanted to be, it's just more driven home to me that the answer is not in what the actual outcome is, whether or not I'm a star basketball player because I'm never going to be, but more around, did I enjoy the process and was the process something that I really got a lot of? and so in that example basketball, I found out that I wasn't that good and the process was not what I wanted to do. And in others examples like music or entrepreneurship. I found out that is what I wanted, I liked the process.
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jizQ728nI9M
The Cultural Entrepreneur - Taking a Risk and Getting it Right - Video 2
Transcript
I'm an arts administrador and this is my inter Korben. Korben is an artist, Korben and I have something in common, we share a drive to create, we feel compelled to take risks, we make a lot of mistakes but we have grit and we persevere to build culture in the city. Some people call us cultural entrepreneurs this is our city Indianapolis. Yesterday's leaders built a strong and beautiful downtown core. In fact, we have a great revilitation story. But there's another side to indianapolis. This slide tells the story of the broken neighborhoods that surround the downtown core. Every dot on this map is an abandoned property and every dot has an effect on public safety, on education, on social justice, on our tax base, and yes, the cultural health of our city. So, I lead the Harrison Center for the arts and using the principles of cultural entrepreneurship we strengthen the fabric of these neighborhoods located in a sixty five thousand square foot historic church building. We push the energy of the arts outside our four walls, engaging neighbors in the urban core, not just an arts center were somewhat of a cultural development corporation. We look into the community. We see a problem and we come up with a distinctively cultural solution.
Very much a neighborhood endeavor we started ten years ago with a grassroots business plan. It was a hey and a hook. hey! Let's open a gallery and let's designers it to attract emerging patrons regular people that lie art but are intimidated by the art scene, and the hook? Lest open every extra room in the building and charge a hundred bucks regardless of size shape or smell and them of them do smell. So, every room became a studio, the little choir rehearsal room, the old boiler room and many more, and with price that low emerging artist quickly filled the studios admittedly a slightly quirky buch but all very talented and passionate. And scores of emerging patrons came, every age, race, and education level and with multiple venues eventually four galleries and studios serving 36 artists. We were never boring and never stuffy. Surprises were around every corner, site specific installations and performances, making multiple connections and invoking all the senses.
Our openings had become the craft of community and I was feeling pretty good, but then, my artists started coming to me and saying they needed to leave Indianapolis, they needed to move to large cities where there were real art patrons not those emerging patrons Joanna's been talking about. I didn't know what to do, I knew that many were buying their first piece of art at our openings and I knew that her sales were growing but it wasn't enough. It was clear. Indianapolis needed a new generation of art patrons.
Our community wanted answers and in order to keep our talented artists, I knew I needed to act fast. About the same time our neighborhood had a crisis. Three newly abandoned buildings adjacent to the Harrison Center. Using the principles of cultural entrepreneurship we saw this community need as an opportunity to honor the art and education legacy of that site and so, we decided to start a school not just any school but a high school designed to grow art patrons. So, what is an art patron? an art patron is that well-rounded citizen who is naturally engaged in the arts. There are doctors and moms, our artists, our teachers, our volunteers, our voters are philanthropist in our community leaders, there what every city needs to be, and so we crafted the curriculum around an art history timeline and we intentionally designed the school to be diverse racially and socioeconomically.
In ninth grade we started with the study of ancient Africa and Asia and tenth was Greece and Rome and eleventh grade was the Middle ages and the Renaissance, and twelfth grade was the Age of Exploration up to modern times. We also required four years of latin, English math and science. The idea was that students would not learns facts in isolation but they'd see how art and science developed in tandem and how political movements and cultural movements go hand in hand. It was a classical liberal arts education meets best practices informed by brain research and led by exceptional educators. I’m not one of those. We acquired the historic property and we started in 2006 with 99 freshmen, and in 2010 we graduated our inaugural class pictured here. The energy invested into those students was wonderful because it produced results of hundred percent of these kids going on to college, and not only that, but we were listed on news weeks magazines America’s best schools list, quite a surprise for us. Too many accomplishments set to read here but all very astounding.
So, with all these young, all these talented students across the street and if they really were gonna be the Nuart parade students that we would need to grow a new generation and to be the leaders of our cities, we wanted to begin more programs to help them, and so, we decided to start an internship program for high school and college students. So, this is called the edge, the cultural entrepreneur educational initiative. A cultural entrepreneur sees a need, takes a risk, leverages resources, and invests energy and networks to build culture in the city. Here are some examples of the projects. One intern came to me and said he wanted to build giant puppets, he said, “Indianapolis needs a spectacle of wonder”. I remember him taking the puppets downtown and people streaming out of their office buildings, and sure the media came but the best thing that happened that day, it made people really happy to live In indianapolis. This intern was passionate about food art and so we decided that if gamers could have Gen Con why couldn't foodies have food Con and so we created an unconventional food convention and she ran it and 2.000 people came, it’s now in his third year.
Joy was 16 when she was put in charge of running a full day music and art festival. 12 bands tow sages continuous music all day long. It was a success for the community 7,000 people came and was success for her personally because it gave her a great scholarship to college.
Elizabeth had two projects. She was one of our inaugural students and worked with us for quite a while. She planned a place-based gallery exhibit celebrating neighborhoods and she planned a neighborhood resource fair. The impact of her project was so great that other interns took it, and grew it, and eventually it became the city gallery in these urban living center which opened in 2011. Here's the city gallery today. It’s become a key resource for connecting people to culture community a place and Indianapolis.
Being a cultural entrepreneur seems pretty sweet right but it comes with a lot of bumps and bruises. Susanna fell many times when getting this first levitation photo right? But we teach our interns, “it’s okay to fall”, “it’s okay to make mistakes”. This is how we learn. Here are my three takeaways from starting the high school:
- Assess your wrists. The high school was successful because it was fundable, it was sustainable, and it was something the community would be passionate about. My three tests for a good project.
- It's okay to be scared. I spent a year in and a half scared to the core of my being. Trust me, learn to work through fear!
- Don't give up. The high school opened its doors not because we were smarter than anyone else in this room. The high school opened because someone had an idea and didn't give up.
Our grassroots projects have been very successful and it's just me and bunch of little kids running around but, when I look into this room and I think about what can we do together, I know it could be something amazing but, where do we start? First, find your place. Second, inspire someone and then, together, let’s create a movement of cultural entrepreneurs who are rebuilding the fabric of their neighborhood in our city. Thank you!
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt5_mdW6vTw
Risk Taking and Decision Making - What is a Decision? - Video 3
Trasncript
What is a decision? And what unifies all those things that we call decisions? and I want to put a phrase on the table here for us to think about and it’s this: “all decisions are investment decisions, all decisions are investment decisions”. We tend to think about that concept of investment as being about “the allocation of that scarce resource that is money” and money is definitely one of the big scarce resources that we allocate, but money is not the only scarce that we allocate in the decision making process. The great scarce resource that of course we all have exactly the same amount of is time. Sometimes measured in hours, minutes, and seconds. Sometimes in our degree of attention, passion, dedication to something, our degree of comfort, our health, our wellness. Sometimes even our very life other scarce resources that we may be putting on the line investing into an opportunity, and there's one big scarce resource that I want you all to think about right now. Particularly when we are making decisions in an organization, particularly where the subject of innovation is concerned and that scarce resource is reputation, standing, respect, well, I believe in Asia is called “face”. We don't measure this scarce resource in terms of pounds and euros and dollars but we certainly have a sense of it, we certainly have a sense of what it might be like to gain more of it or what it might be like to lose it. All decisions are investment decisions. An economist definition of a decision is “the allocation of scarce resources under conditions of uncertainty” and we will come back to those separate concepts in a moment, but I would like to think about risks now. Some of you many have identified some risk that you have taken, maybe taking that employment opportunity, that promotion was a big risk because you didn't know whether it was going to work out, maybe it is a physical risk like jumping out of on airplane or a bungee jump. What unifies all these “particular risks”, well, when we think about standing here in our comfort zone and looking at this risk or opportunity what usually unifies risk and why we define them as risk is that they represent a greater potential for loss, for downside. Jumping out of the airplane, potential loss of life. Going for that promotion, potential loss of face or reputation but we had to be craze to do anything where the only possibility, the only outcome was a downside. What must also unify all the risks that we would potentially take is a greater potential for gain, for upside. All decisions are investment decisions. All risks are kinds of decisions with a greater potential for loss than staying here in the comfort zone and a greater potential for gain.
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvOQaYrCS9Y
Risk Taking for Entrepreneurs (Interview) - Video 4
Transcript
- First of all David, thank you very much for coming here and for your presentation. First question maybe is: “what do you think about this type of event which is surely not very typical? I don't know if you ever participate in an event like this.
- Well, thank you for the invitation as well. You are right, I speak a lots of conferences around the world and I was last week in Iran, and I’m next week in South Africa but nothing quite like the Italia risk forum partly because of the lovely location, partly because of the very interesting people but I think really the speakers make it because it was so unusual to have that combination of somebody talking about neuroscience, and somebody talking about making pasta, and somebody talking about changing his lifestyle choices along with the more traditional approaches to risk and I think what that does is highlights the fact that risk management is a life skill. It’s not just for business. It's not just technical. It’s important for raising our children, for planning our careers, for thinking about our life goals and how we achieve them. It's also something I have been doing recently important outside the organization at the level of society and the national level. So, everywhere we are faced with uncertainties that matter but you know, the risk approach, risk-based thinking helps us to deal with them and I think this was a very unique gathering of risk specialists.
- It was in line with your message of total risk management. Now maybe having here a person, international like you are, do you have some suggestion to our entrepreneurs here in Italy? What do you think could be a good suggestion to give to our companies here in Italy?
- Thank you! I think clearly entrepreneurship is about taking risk and you have to take the right risks safely. So, if you take too much risk, then you crash the company you lose everything. Yes exactly not one wine, one glass too many. If you take too much risk everything is lost. If you take not enough risk, we play it safe, then you can’t be truly entrepreneurial innovative creative, so the question is, how much risk is right? And for that we need to know there things: One is: “how much risk can I take? Do I want to take? Can I cope with?” Risk capacity. The second is “how much risk have I got? You know, your risk exposure and then the third is you know “how much risk is appropriate for each situation? which is your risk assessment. So, I think risk-based thinking for entrepreneurs is really important but, to take this idea that risk is positive as well as negative. So, of course we are aware of the things that could go wrong but we must also think about the positive things that would help us to achieve our goals, to increase value, to be more competitive, more innovative as a result of taking risk. So, I would say to Italian entrepreneurs, “take more risk, but make sure you're taking the right risks” and to do that with your eyes open thinking about the risk and being intentional and always having a focus on the goal. For me risk-taking is like sailing a boat. Some people think it is like taking a train that you have a rail which is the plan and we are going to follow the plan, and we stop at the stations, and we end at the goal but for me, it is like sailing a boat; you set off and the wind blows and the tide and waves come and your blown off course and you have to keep changing direction, but always with an eye on the goal and I think that having a risk-based approach to understand where we are being driven off course but always seeing the goal is really important. So, I think risk-based thinking is the only way to be a true entrepreneur.
- Again, thank you very much for everything and I hope we see each other next year at the Italian risk forum. Thank you very much!
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0fxmi9TJ9E
Taking Risk Creates an Opportunity for Business Growth - Video 5
Transcript
As a small business owner you have probably strived to avoid risk in your business. This is commonly understandable because it is human nature to be risk averse. Although this might benefit you when a lion is around, not taking risk in business will hurt you grow in long-term. As a small business owner sitting in your desk, this probably opposes everything you have learned passed five from your parents to other business owners but stands stocked in your older ways will hurt you and your businesses growth. So, open your mind up to the risk, look at successful businesses businesses and you will see it takes calculated risk to grow and succeed.
Now, there are many different types of risk in business including strategic, financial, operational, internal or external, but it helps to think about risk as being an opportunity in your business, but it does not mean putting your house at risk, this means things like revising new products, trying new marketing strategies or hiring unproven employees. Now, understanding this concept of risk being beneficial and turning it into growth take big steps and won’t happen overnight. Take small risks and try new things. Don’t expect everything to be helpful but one of them will improve your business and at some point out way the risk taking. This is calculated risk. Consider probable outcomes and take risk that make grow your business overtime. This idea of having risk and taking opportunities is a long-term plan. One thing won’t change your business overnight, but not taking risk will cause your business to slowly decline overtime. So, mixed it up, go along the way and take some risk.
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp0bPtr4dLE
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