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Entrepreneurs Create the Future • 13
Figure 1.0 Zach’s Star
Zach’s Star of Success ©
Success
Success
Copyright Andrew Zacharakis
preneurial career or a more traditional Fortune 500 career, or indeed
any profession, we believe that the five points of success define the key
attributes that people need to develop or possess in order to succeed. The
star progresses clockwise, starting with “knowledge.”
Knowledge
To be successful, people need knowledge. As the late Herbert Simon, Nobel
Prize winner from Carnegie Mellon University noted, it takes 10 years
and 50,000 chunks of knowledge to become expert in an area. Experts,
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according to Simon, recognize patterns that can be transformed from
one situation to another. Their unique ability to combine these patterns
in creative ways gives them an advantage in whichever domain they par-
ticipate. For example, the expert chess player identifies patterns based
upon the current board setup and knows what moves to make next. Like-
wise, expert entrepreneurs see patterns in the environment and identify
combinations that allow them to enter and successfully compete within
a marketplace.
16 H. A. Simon, “What We Know about the Creative Process,” in Frontiers in Creative
and Innovative Management, ed. R. Kuhn, Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing,
1985, 3–20.