Risk, Talent, and Why Some Become Entrepreneurs and Others Don't

Jared Diamond demonstrating how different talents matter in different environments, and showing that despite a world class education, he is no better suited to succeeding in some of those environments than others are in his.

In his best selling treatise "Guns, Germs, and Steel," Jared Diamond advances that the difference in evolution and "success" of human societies is based not on innate differences in capacity but in environmental factors that dictated how groups of early people met their basic needs, and in turn, how those conditions dictated the development of political organization, productive capacity, and more.

The essence of the argument is a total rejection of the notion that one group of people or another was natively smarter. Certain conditions led particularly societies to more quickly develop the capacity for production, politics, and war, and as those societies moved outward, they had advantages that allowed them to dominate others.

This matters because, if we accept this view of the evolution of human societies, what it suggests is that there is not a justifying innate reason that some societies are rich and some are poor. There is not a lack of capacity that preordained that those at the bottom of the ladder should be there. The flip side is that there is no special intellectual uniqueness that makes those societies that have succeeded (at least economically) more deserving of that success than those who have not.

I believe that this reality undermines any sort of deterministic perspective on global inequality, and implicates those with means to be obligated to those without. Perhaps even more as it relates to this blog, I think that this perspective has two big implications for how we think about global development and problem solving.

First, I think the way environment has impacted the success of societies as a whole is analogous to the way particular circumstances impact the way individuals are able to use their innate talents to be successful at whatever it is they happen to be successful at. That is, "Guns, Germs and Steel" is to societies what "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell is to individuals. The point is that in understanding why some succeed and others don't, the environment in which innate capacity is nurtured (or not) is as essential as that capacity itself in determining how it will manifest.

This point was reinforced for me a few days ago. I arrived in San Francisco only to have a sublet that I was supposed to live in for about 6 weeks fall through at the last minute. Suddenly without a home, I realized that I had literally dozens of people who I could stay with for a few days. My safety net was dense. This is one side of a larger network of resources which provide me the capital, connections, expertise, and other things essential to being a successful entrepreneur, social or otherwise.

These resources alone will not guarantee my success, but they fundamentally change the likelihood of that success, as well as significantly decreasing the risk involved with starting my own enterprise. These resources are by no means the norm, in fact they are the exception. As a sector that deeply prizes "risk taking," it's worth remembering that risk looks very different in different environments.

Second, I think that this argument reminds us of just how much opportunity there is to invest in the capacity of individuals and communities who, for whatever combination of reasons, have tended not to have access to the ingredients to let those capacities fully flourish.

Bill Clinton often says something to the effect that ‘around the world, talent and capacity are distributed in equal measure, but resources and opportunity are not.' I think that's dead-on, and I think that is the principle that animates those excited about investing in bottom of the pyramid enterprise.

As social entrepreneurs, I do believe we have an obligation to recognize the gifts around us, and to reinforce, in our actions and speech, that everyone has unique talents to be nurtured and given life.