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My name is Jaroslavs Kaplans.
I am an entrepreneur, researcher and expert who helps companies become stronger and entrepreneurs become more successful.
Hello!
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The Silk Road in a painting by orientalist Eugène Flandin
The object of my research is entrepreneurial mindset - how entrepreneurs formulate their tasks, find solutions for them, and to what consequences such solutions then lead both the entrepreneurs themselves and their organizations.
Here I can think of a historical analogy - we find it hard to believe today - but the greatest trade highway of mankind, the Silk Road, had the right to exist only because of the false assumption that there was no other sea route for the movement of goods from Asia to Europe (and in fact there was).
This delusion gave the Silk Road 15 centuries of competitive advantage. The analogy here is that many entrepreneurs think that there is no other way to develop their business - and I am sure that there are, in fact, many ways. The development of geography has allowed mankind to get rid of many erroneous beliefs, which we cannot yet say about the field of entrepreneurship, in which there are countless false assumptions today. Strange as it may seem, on the modern globe called "entrepreneurship", most of the surface is still white and unexplored.
Despite my Master's degree in Finance, I consider myself more of a researcher and even an "artist" of the entrepreneurial world. I think so because I see many similarities between an artist and an entrepreneur. In entrepreneurship, just as in art, it is impossible to separate the concepts of "Who does" from "What he does".
But unlike art, where an artist creates with brushes and colors, a writer gets magic from words and phrases, and a musician calls on chords and sounds, an entrepreneur has his own "palette" - the whole range of how consumers perceive his products and services. A true artist, just like a true entrepreneur, is himself a source of new ideas, new thoughts and new meanings. The very phenomenon of creativity is the creation of something unprecedented, extraordinary and unique - something that has never existed before. Creativity is the bridge that unites these two different worlds - the world of art and the world of entrepreneurship. The entrepreneur's unique ability to look at an old problem from a new angle and recognize the real source of the problem puts him on a level with outstanding artists.
Here I can think of a historical analogy - we find it hard to believe today - but the greatest trade highway of mankind, the Silk Road, had the right to exist only because of the false assumption that there was no other sea route for the movement of goods from Asia to Europe (and in fact there was).
This delusion gave the Silk Road 15 centuries of competitive advantage. The analogy here is that many entrepreneurs think that there is no other way to develop their business - and I am sure that there are, in fact, many ways. The development of geography has allowed mankind to get rid of many erroneous beliefs, which we cannot yet say about the field of entrepreneurship, in which there are countless false assumptions today. Strange as it may seem, on the modern globe called "entrepreneurship", most of the surface is still white and unexplored.
Despite my Master's degree in Finance, I consider myself more of a researcher and even an "artist" of the entrepreneurial world. I think so because I see many similarities between an artist and an entrepreneur. In entrepreneurship, just as in art, it is impossible to separate the concepts of "Who does" from "What he does".
But unlike art, where an artist creates with brushes and colors, a writer gets magic from words and phrases, and a musician calls on chords and sounds, an entrepreneur has his own "palette" - the whole range of how consumers perceive his products and services. A true artist, just like a true entrepreneur, is himself a source of new ideas, new thoughts and new meanings. The very phenomenon of creativity is the creation of something unprecedented, extraordinary and unique - something that has never existed before. Creativity is the bridge that unites these two different worlds - the world of art and the world of entrepreneurship. The entrepreneur's unique ability to look at an old problem from a new angle and recognize the real source of the problem puts him on a level with outstanding artists.
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...research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has though...
Albert Szent-Györgyi, the American biochemist who first isolated vitamin C, believed that "Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought". For the business world, this can be considered a very non-trivial competitive advantage. You have to agree: thinking what no one else has thought is a good start for any success story (no matter what business consultants tell us).
And the fact that many people cannot create anything fundamentally original and just copy everything from each other does not mean that everything in the world should be "copied" (or stolen). Every next truly creative act draws a boundary between itself and everything that came before. Beethoven wouldn't be Beethoven if he only repeated what Haydn and Mozart did.
That is the level of an artist: after all, an artist has what most people on this planet do not have – control over their own imagination.
Control over one's own imagination and the ability to create are almost the same thing. An artist doesn't need approval from someone else to be able to imagine anything he wants. He does not need to sacrifice his imagination for a tiny crumb of approval from others.
That's where I see the similarities between entrepreneurs and artists.
And the fact that many people cannot create anything fundamentally original and just copy everything from each other does not mean that everything in the world should be "copied" (or stolen). Every next truly creative act draws a boundary between itself and everything that came before. Beethoven wouldn't be Beethoven if he only repeated what Haydn and Mozart did.
That is the level of an artist: after all, an artist has what most people on this planet do not have – control over their own imagination.
Control over one's own imagination and the ability to create are almost the same thing. An artist doesn't need approval from someone else to be able to imagine anything he wants. He does not need to sacrifice his imagination for a tiny crumb of approval from others.
That's where I see the similarities between entrepreneurs and artists.
In 2015, I founded the BUSINESS INTELLECT IQ research project to find the real reason for the high "mortality" rate in entrepreneurship. I was wondering why only 3 or 4 entrepreneurs out of 10 live to see their tenth anniversary. These figures, of course, vary from country to country, from industry to industry, but in general the trend is characteristic. And that's when I firmly decided to figure out exactly what "should" and "shouldn't" be done in entrepreneurship. This intention turned into a seven-year study of entrepreneurship as a separate profession, very different from all others... except, perhaps, for one area of activity - creativity and art.
I completed the first part of the research in 2021, and at the end of 2022, based on the work done, I published a new book titled "Business Incognita: How to Expand the Boundaries of Entrepreneurial Thinking," released by Alpina Pro Publishing.
Albert Einstein wrote: "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. One must get above the problem by rising to the next level".
I completed the first part of the research in 2021, and at the end of 2022, based on the work done, I published a new book titled "Business Incognita: How to Expand the Boundaries of Entrepreneurial Thinking," released by Alpina Pro Publishing.
Albert Einstein wrote: "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. One must get above the problem by rising to the next level".
Jaroslavs Kaplans
project author
Well, let's go together to the place where effective solutions exist for entrepreneurial problems.
