Are CEO's and Entrepreneur's the same?

[lockmat]

I'm not sure which is a better question, the one posed in the Topic Title or this one: Do CEO's and Entrepreneur's have the same business mindset?

The thought comes from what, to me, is a very surprising result from a poll at Chief Executive Magazine (chiefexecutive.net)

The questions is:

As technology rapidly changes, how do you find yourself reacting to the possibility adopting new technologies?

Out of 321 responses, of which we're not guaranteed any are Executives, but at the slightest they are pursuing or of that ilk, only 3% say they are a risk taker while 97% say they are risk-averse.

Of course, this is particularly relative to the question asked. However, it still deals with the unknown, that which CEO's and Entrepreneur's deal with on a daily basis, I would presume. Their task is to keep the company moving forward and upward, and most would think that to do this both positions would require a great deal of risk taking. At least that's what I thought; especially in this technology crazed world where everyone is saying to "keep up" with it.

What do y'all think? Does anyone know an entrepreneur or CEO, would you consider their personal life to be reflective of their business life?

I found this wiki topic insightful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion

poll: http://chiefexecutive.net/

[TheNiche]

I'm not sure which is a better question, the one posed in the Topic Title or this one: Do CEO's and Entrepreneur's have the same business mindset?

The thought comes from what, to me, is a very surprising result from a poll at Chief Executive Magazine (chiefexecutive.net)

The questions is:

As technology rapidly changes, how do you find yourself reacting to the possibility adopting new technologies?

Out of 321 responses, of which we're not guaranteed any are Executives, but at the slightest they are pursuing or of that ilk, only 3% say they are a risk taker while 97% say they are risk-averse.

Of course, this is particularly relative to the question asked. However, it still deals with the unknown, that which CEO's and Entrepreneur's deal with on a daily basis, I would presume. Their task is to keep the company moving forward and upward, and most would think that to do this both positions would require a great deal of risk taking. At least that's what I thought; especially in this technology crazed world where everyone is saying to "keep up" with it.

What do y'all think? Does anyone know an entrepreneur or CEO, would you consider their personal life to be reflective of their business life?

I found this wiki topic insightful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion

poll: http://chiefexecutive.net/

When you articulate the title, CEO, you probably have a concept in mind of an executive as being someone that works for a large publicly-traded company and that answers to a board of directors. Are those people entrepreuers? It varies a fair bit, but I would argue that once a company has become so successful as that, the real challenge is just to protect and defend the business model, to scale it up, and to appropriately manage those risks inherent to the business model. Such companies may create new divisions to branch out into related product lines if there are synergies, and those divisions will have entrepreneurial managers that report to the CEO.

Smaller businesses are often still struggling to gain a foothold in their niche, and those must have entrepreneurial CEOs. Such executives with good taste won't describe themselves as a CEO, but that's what they are and it is what they do.

The best answer is probably that the idea should guide the person. The best answer is not always the answer that is embraced, however.

[editor]

CEO's tend to be business school graduates hired by companies after they're already successful. Entrepreneurs are all sorts of people who are the ones who start the businesses that the professional CEOs take over later.

There was an interesting story on BBC's World Of Business a few years back about how "business" suddenly became a vocation. It used to be that people did things -- carpenter, architect, teacher, entrepreneur, brewer, maid, etc... Then in the late 1970's, suddenly there were "business schools" where people could learn to run businesses, and for the first time in history we had an entire class of people in charge of companies who would never understand how all the bits and pieces worked.

It's the reason someone can run Pepsi one day, and then run General Electric the next. Two entirely different companies. But somehow the business world convinced itself that "businessmen" are as interchangeable as a cog.

In part, this is because the process of running a large business has been abstracted from actually operating a business. It's also the reason that back in the 80's, the first thing that a new CEO would do when he came into a new company is to start firing workers. It's what they were taught to do in business school. The second thing school taught them to do is raise prices. So you ended up with all these companies going through the same cycles as the CEOs from the same little group of business schools bounced from company to company.

The one good thing that came out of our current recession is that it invalidated a lot of the business school textbooks. Things these schools have been teaching for years suddenly no longer work, and the theories that they thought were building a nation ended up broken. Unfortunately, it will take a decade for people to come up with robust new business theories and crank out another generation of people with "business" degrees.

After listening to the piece, every time I hear of a "business" degree, I half giggle. Stripped down, the whole concept seems absurd.

My advice: Never hire an MBA who got his degree before 2011. Everything he learned is wrong.

[TheNiche]

CEO's tend to be business school graduates hired by companies after they're already successful. Entrepreneurs are all sorts of people who are the ones who start the businesses that the professional CEOs take over later.

There was an interesting story on BBC's World Of Business a few years back about how "business" suddenly became a vocation. It used to be that people did things -- carpenter, architect, teacher, entrepreneur, brewer, maid, etc... Then in the late 1970's, suddenly there were "business schools" where people could learn to run businesses, and for the first time in history we had an entire class of people in charge of companies who would never understand how all the bits and pieces worked.

It's the reason someone can run Pepsi one day, and then run General Electric the next. Two entirely different companies. But somehow the business world convinced itself that "businessmen" are as interchangeable as a cog.

In part, this is because the process of running a large business has been abstracted from actually operating a business. It's also the reason that back in the 80's, the first thing that a new CEO would do when he came into a new company is to start firing workers. It's what they were taught to do in business school. The second thing school taught them to do is raise prices. So you ended up with all these companies going through the same cycles as the CEOs from the same little group of business schools bounced from company to company.

The one good thing that came out of our current recession is that it invalidated a lot of the business school textbooks. Things these schools have been teaching for years suddenly no longer work, and the theories that they thought were building a nation ended up broken. Unfortunately, it will take a decade for people to come up with robust new business theories and crank out another generation of people with "business" degrees.

After listening to the piece, every time I hear of a "business" degree, I half giggle. Stripped down, the whole concept seems absurd.

My advice: Never hire an MBA who got his degree before 2011. Everything he learned is wrong.

Business school teaches a skill set necessary to be a viable entry-level employee in many administrative and sales functions. It is not the only requisite skill set. Business school will not qualify a graduate to do any particular job, and it certainly does not qualify them to hold the kind of position that you're talking about. Experience is the best education. I don't think that anyone would dispute that.

(Btw, I half giggle at people who preach negativity at others based on what they learned from the media. Journalism is such a crock. So-called journalists have been ruining our country for decades. When you strip it down and consider how they make their money, the whole concept seems absurd. Where hiring practices are concerned, I would advise that nobody should ever give any consideration to anybody that has been involved with "journalism". Nope. Certainly not where employability is concerned.)