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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,
                                                                          16
                 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.
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