Advice for Young Entrepreneurs

Here's another selection of motivational advice and quotes taken from Brains versus Capital by Guenter Faltin. The content of our free online training comes from Faltin's bestselling book "Brains versus Capital".

1. “Problems are a wonderful hook to develop ideas for their solution. For beginners: while most people are annoyed when it starts to rain, the entrepreneur says: now is the best time to sell umbrellas.
2. “In an information society capital is found in people’s brains, and only secondarily in the bank.”
3. “We have argued that the process of developing an entrepreneurial design is similar to composing a piece of music; it is a process in which you continue to hone, polish and refine until everything is in tune and every false note has been eliminated…..I’ve chosen the figure of the composer because successful entrepreneurs often don’t invent anything new, but rather take things that already exist and recombine them in a different way, that is, they assemble existing components to create something new.”
4. “Sometimes it’s necessary to make a radical break with familiar ideas. Until about 1890 all attempts to fly were based on observing birds in flight and devising constructions that imitated the flight of birds, that is, apparatuses with movable wings. The breakthrough for flying came about very differently, with fixed wings. It was fixed wing construction that succeeded in working with either pull (propellers) or later with push (jet engines).”
5. “The old question was, ‘What do I need to establish my company and organize it successfully?’ The new question is, ‘What new thing can I compose out of modules that already exist?’
6. “The principle is ‘Get big, but remain small.’ This is the advantage of making use of large, efficient units without having to establish and operate them yourself. Your company grows, but the core activity that you control remains small, and thus coherent and manageable.”
7. “You should choose a memorable name that is as simple as possible and not let yourself be dissuaded too quickly by statements like “That won’t work” or “There’s one like that already.”
8. “Today the belief that size and efficiency alone are sufficient has faded. Companies of a certain size are no longer agile enough for many processes. In contrast, attention is turning to small, flexible units. Today’s entrepreneur doesn’t need much more than a laptop and a cell phone.”
9. “Don’t give up your day job, your old occupation, until your own idea concept proves to be sound and sustainable. Wait for your concept to prove itself.”
10. “Never have the conditions for successfully implementing one’s own ideas been as favorable as they are today. Modern markets, contracted services, and the Internet make it possible for small companies and one-man/one-woman businesses to become viable market players with calculable financial outlays.”

If you feel motivated and you have an idea or project join the Youth Competition, the Tourism Competition, or the General Competition.