I'm sure there's a lot of us out there that want to start our own firm... Even though this is geared towards the tech crowd, it would be interesting to see how this "Entrepreneurial Potential Quiz" relates to us architects with aspirations and why architects are such awful business people:
latent entrepeneur...
i think mom being from norway helped...
dad working semi self employed may have
helped also...
can't wait to start my own business...someday
Yes. Please. Someone, anyone who's licensed, want to partner with me? Christ I can hardly stand it anymore, some of these people are so incompetent.....
After further review, I've decided that is a bullsh*t quiz. Just because my parents weren't immigrants and I've never been fired from anything that doesn't mean that I couldn't run my own company. In the "traits of entrepreneur" link, they profile a guy that pretty much sums it up for me:
'Another key reason for starting a firm: "I don't like working for anyone else," says Mr. Tabin, now 33. "I view myself as an entrepreneur because I have an urge to create, not to just fit in and have my career revolve around someone else's vision." '
Um, yeah! Stupid Wall Street Journal. Thanks for the link anyway, dml955i.
I agree this is pure bullsh!t. Of course, it is from the Wall Street Journal, and I imagine those guys define a successful entrepeneur as someone who's mainly out to make mega money. As we all know, there's no mega money in architecture. Anyone who starts an architectural practice mainly to make money almost guaranteed to fail or, at best, become a hack for some retail chain, governmnet agency, or developer.
Potential Enterpreneur. Funny, I'm not that jazzed about starting my own firm. I think it was the fact that my dad's started several businesses and that I'm a naturally competitive person that produced that result.
that quiz is really quite a bit about risk taking. You do not have to risk it all to run a successful business. In fact, if you do risk it all on a regular basis, your firm will not be a very nice place to work, you won't attract/keep good employees, and then you are done. I was 'latent', but I have run a very successful (what we produce and what we make in money) for many years.
but not completely... I answered rather conservatively on the risk-taking questions, but the competitiveness questions and a couple of the background questions got me the "potential enterpreneur" score.
potential entrepreneur...potential? shee-it, i did everything from selling kool-aid to raking leaves to mowing lawns to playing my bassoon door-to-door to make money when i was a kid. painted bathrooms at my mom's nightclub for $5 an hour (repainted them for free because i forgot to put down a dropcloth).
(btw, the bassoon thing was by far the most lucrative...i think people were trying to get me off their doorsteps by paying me $5 - $10 a pop instead of hearing me do "jingle bells" one more time)
maybe it's cause i never got fired...oh wait, my boss wants to talk to me...
funny though i haven't worked for anyone for several years. cuz i really can't stand working for someone else at all. don know if i am succesful or not, but am getting there...i think. maybe... am i being decisive enough?
"jean nouvel supposedly has gone bankrupt a couple times"
I've heard that Jean Nouvel doesn't own his firm. He sold it to investors. He is, in fact, now a hired hand. This is rumor, of course.
I don't think that this quiz is bullshit. If you think about like an architect (in a general, stereotypical sense I suppose), then yes it is bullshit. But if you look at it like an "entrepreneur," a venture captalist, for example, then it's probably more accurate than you think.
I've believed for a long time that architecture school -- among other very important things -- grooms students for exploitation in the job marketplace, to be good hired hands, first and foremost. We're trained to work ceaselesslly, to produce, produce, produce, to solve-problems and peform tasks handed down by studio profs (the educational stand-in for the boss). We are taught to believe that hard work (and a little talent) will get you everywhere you want to go.
But I believe succeeding (not just functioning) in the world of business also takes a particular shrewdness and ethical flexibility that is not instilled in architecture students. That's what this quiz is about: successful entrepreneurship. Not just treading water, but making a boatload of money. Making boatloads of money involves a keen understanding and embrace of the "cold logic of capitalism," and a willingness to heed its demands.
But I believe succeeding (not just functioning) in the world of business also takes a particular shrewdness and ethical flexibility that is not instilled in architecture students. That's what this quiz is about: successful entrepreneurship. Not just treading water, but making a boatload of money. Making boatloads of money involves a keen understanding and embrace of the "cold logic of capitalism," and a willingness to heed its demands.
Maybe it's my upbringing that I can't overcome but this is the part of being "entrepreneurial" that just doesn't sit well with me and is why even though I'm self-employed and my partner is a genius we're not even bringing home $50K apiece - we're functioning, but not succeeding - not by any standard defintions of business success.
Though there are great rewards in not being standard - I love my days every day, I love most of my clients, I love and feel proud of most of the work we do. Trade off is I cry over my checkbook every two weeks!
i want to take a strong stance that "successful entrepreneurship" does not require "ethical flexibility" -- these are not mutually exclusive concepts
high moral and ethical standards do not preclude business success -- although, they may make such success more challenging.
in my view, business (i.e. financial) success is not primarily about a willingness to compromise your values - rather, it's about creating conditions that permit you to charge a fair fee for your work; it's about arranging your operations to operate efficiently; it's about positioning your practice so you are attractive to the clients you want to attract.
none of these conditions necessitate a compromise of your ethics - however, there are times when your ethics will be challenged - that's when "character" comes into play
All true, quizzical. And as I think Public was pointing out, "success" according to WSJ means making "boatloads of money". (My own ethically sound business is supporting my family, barely, so on most terms that is "success" - but probably not according to WSJ.)
And to continue my interpretation of Public's thoughts, I agree that architecture school teaches us to consider our ethics in a way that probably business school and certainly the school of life do not. As architecture students we are constantly challenged to explain ourselves and justify our actions. Students are asked to dig deep into themselves to define "meaning" and "value" and are constantly asked "How does your work affect other people/built environment/the world?".
On the other hand, I have a former lawyer client who has stiffed us for a $10,000 fee, something I would never do. What does law school teach people vs. what architecture school does?
Let me just say for the record, that I'm not advocating this ethical flexibility (I sort of stole this from Grosse Point Blank, where Jon Cusack says that the army identified him as a candidate to be an assassin because of "a certain moral flexibility."). In fact, my post is result of my own recent sore reactions to some of the things I see going on around me here in New York. There are, as always, exceptions. But there are a whole lot people out there in business who take the platitudes evident in the entrepreneurial quiz as gospel.
Entrepreneur - yay - now who wants to come work for the guy with Irish grandparents, cant spell, had a DJ biz doing weddings in highschool as well as house portraits, whose parents are contractors who have fired me 6 times (yes, 6 times) as well as having been kicked out of Architecture school 1 time and fired from my first architecture job for thinking terrorists were out to get me ( slightly schizo)?
I should add I'm writing a biz plan for a swapmart at the moment as well as a design for a new type of dog leash. I dont know if its the entrepreneur in me or the schizo - but one thing is certain, you have to be crazy to go into the architecture business. As any businessman will tell, as my dear old Grandpa told me upon learning I was going to Architecture school, " Mark, why would you want to suck dick for a living"?
Evilplatypus: Entrepreneur here as well. I've been fired, um, about five times, I've been kicked out of one architecture school, and I dropped out of another.
"Platypus + Gin Associates" has a nice ring to it.
hired hand - have i already missed the boat? was i supposed to start many companies before the age of 20? should i have rolled the dice instead of working hard?
i would agree though, that architecture start-ups are rarely entreprenurial in nature. perhaps this is just a confirmation of architects making bad business people.
"We are all acquainted with too many big business men, bankers and merchants, who tell us: "Ah, but I am merely a man of affairs, I live entirely outside the art world, I am a Philistine." We protest and tell them: "All your energies are directed towards this magnificent end which is the forging of the tools of an epoch, and which is creating througout the whole world this accumulation of very beautiful things in which economic law reigns supreme, and mathematical exactness is joined to daring and imagination. That is what you do; that, to be exact, is Beauty."
Apr 20, 06 9:34 am ·
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wanna start your own firm?
I'm sure there's a lot of us out there that want to start our own firm... Even though this is geared towards the tech crowd, it would be interesting to see how this "Entrepreneurial Potential Quiz" relates to us architects with aspirations and why architects are such awful business people:
http://www.startupjournal.com/howto/soundadvice/20020327-mancuso-quiz.html
Post up your results!
I will go first: Hired hand :(
latent entrepeneur...
i think mom being from norway helped...
dad working semi self employed may have
helped also...
can't wait to start my own business...someday
i really think that's all crap...
i got hired hand.. talk to you in 5 years....
i am a latent entrepeneur who has his own firm.
latent...
And similar to e, I have my own firm...but I'm a solid hired hand.
Yes. Please. Someone, anyone who's licensed, want to partner with me? Christ I can hardly stand it anymore, some of these people are so incompetent.....
I'll go take the quiz and get back to you.
After further review, I've decided that is a bullsh*t quiz. Just because my parents weren't immigrants and I've never been fired from anything that doesn't mean that I couldn't run my own company. In the "traits of entrepreneur" link, they profile a guy that pretty much sums it up for me:
'Another key reason for starting a firm: "I don't like working for anyone else," says Mr. Tabin, now 33. "I view myself as an entrepreneur because I have an urge to create, not to just fit in and have my career revolve around someone else's vision." '
Um, yeah! Stupid Wall Street Journal. Thanks for the link anyway, dml955i.
Borderline Entrepeneur. Hmm.
I agree this is pure bullsh!t. Of course, it is from the Wall Street Journal, and I imagine those guys define a successful entrepeneur as someone who's mainly out to make mega money. As we all know, there's no mega money in architecture. Anyone who starts an architectural practice mainly to make money almost guaranteed to fail or, at best, become a hack for some retail chain, governmnet agency, or developer.
latent
Potential Enterpreneur. Funny, I'm not that jazzed about starting my own firm. I think it was the fact that my dad's started several businesses and that I'm a naturally competitive person that produced that result.
borderline...crazy maybe
that quiz is really quite a bit about risk taking. You do not have to risk it all to run a successful business. In fact, if you do risk it all on a regular basis, your firm will not be a very nice place to work, you won't attract/keep good employees, and then you are done. I was 'latent', but I have run a very successful (what we produce and what we make in money) for many years.
that test is a bunch of crap.
i started my own little office once, so i don't need a quiz. i learned that hired hand suits me fine. all that pesky billing and being billed...
Potential Entrepreneur, and if the wall street journal says so, it MUST be true.
but not completely... I answered rather conservatively on the risk-taking questions, but the competitiveness questions and a couple of the background questions got me the "potential enterpreneur" score.
blinkin hired hand. but it is the WSJ.
potential entrepreneur...potential? shee-it, i did everything from selling kool-aid to raking leaves to mowing lawns to playing my bassoon door-to-door to make money when i was a kid. painted bathrooms at my mom's nightclub for $5 an hour (repainted them for free because i forgot to put down a dropcloth).
(btw, the bassoon thing was by far the most lucrative...i think people were trying to get me off their doorsteps by paying me $5 - $10 a pop instead of hearing me do "jingle bells" one more time)
maybe it's cause i never got fired...oh wait, my boss wants to talk to me...
Potential Enterpreneur. I think I need to fullfill my potential soon.
hired hand. my dreams are coming true!
JUMP IN, JOIN THE FISH! IT IS WHAT EVEN fRAnk lloyd wirght might say a wild ride.
hired hand
I'm insulted.
hired hand - but still want to make the move
i talked my boss into taking the test, and lo an behold 'hired hand', and he is one of the best enterprenuers out there
Hired hand! Woo hoo!
That saves me some trouble.
This one is cuter
http://www.liraz.com/webquiz.htm
potential entrepeneur - .. I'm surprised !!
hired hand...ooooh yeah.
funny though i haven't worked for anyone for several years. cuz i really can't stand working for someone else at all. don know if i am succesful or not, but am getting there...i think. maybe... am i being decisive enough?
"jean nouvel supposedly has gone bankrupt a couple times"
I've heard that Jean Nouvel doesn't own his firm. He sold it to investors. He is, in fact, now a hired hand. This is rumor, of course.
I don't think that this quiz is bullshit. If you think about like an architect (in a general, stereotypical sense I suppose), then yes it is bullshit. But if you look at it like an "entrepreneur," a venture captalist, for example, then it's probably more accurate than you think.
I've believed for a long time that architecture school -- among other very important things -- grooms students for exploitation in the job marketplace, to be good hired hands, first and foremost. We're trained to work ceaselesslly, to produce, produce, produce, to solve-problems and peform tasks handed down by studio profs (the educational stand-in for the boss). We are taught to believe that hard work (and a little talent) will get you everywhere you want to go.
But I believe succeeding (not just functioning) in the world of business also takes a particular shrewdness and ethical flexibility that is not instilled in architecture students. That's what this quiz is about: successful entrepreneurship. Not just treading water, but making a boatload of money. Making boatloads of money involves a keen understanding and embrace of the "cold logic of capitalism," and a willingness to heed its demands.
what about Peter Cook ? .. he works (hired hand) for HOK, right ?
fine he has a top position.. but still technically he's still a hired hand.
Nevermore .. I got a score of 92 on your test ...
but I cheated all the way .. hahahaha
Public, re your post:
But I believe succeeding (not just functioning) in the world of business also takes a particular shrewdness and ethical flexibility that is not instilled in architecture students. That's what this quiz is about: successful entrepreneurship. Not just treading water, but making a boatload of money. Making boatloads of money involves a keen understanding and embrace of the "cold logic of capitalism," and a willingness to heed its demands.
Maybe it's my upbringing that I can't overcome but this is the part of being "entrepreneurial" that just doesn't sit well with me and is why even though I'm self-employed and my partner is a genius we're not even bringing home $50K apiece - we're functioning, but not succeeding - not by any standard defintions of business success.
Though there are great rewards in not being standard - I love my days every day, I love most of my clients, I love and feel proud of most of the work we do. Trade off is I cry over my checkbook every two weeks!
i want to take a strong stance that "successful entrepreneurship" does not require "ethical flexibility" -- these are not mutually exclusive concepts
high moral and ethical standards do not preclude business success -- although, they may make such success more challenging.
in my view, business (i.e. financial) success is not primarily about a willingness to compromise your values - rather, it's about creating conditions that permit you to charge a fair fee for your work; it's about arranging your operations to operate efficiently; it's about positioning your practice so you are attractive to the clients you want to attract.
none of these conditions necessitate a compromise of your ethics - however, there are times when your ethics will be challenged - that's when "character" comes into play
Ethical flexibility isn't ethical.
All true, quizzical. And as I think Public was pointing out, "success" according to WSJ means making "boatloads of money". (My own ethically sound business is supporting my family, barely, so on most terms that is "success" - but probably not according to WSJ.)
And to continue my interpretation of Public's thoughts, I agree that architecture school teaches us to consider our ethics in a way that probably business school and certainly the school of life do not. As architecture students we are constantly challenged to explain ourselves and justify our actions. Students are asked to dig deep into themselves to define "meaning" and "value" and are constantly asked "How does your work affect other people/built environment/the world?".
On the other hand, I have a former lawyer client who has stiffed us for a $10,000 fee, something I would never do. What does law school teach people vs. what architecture school does?
lb, thanks for the kind interpretation.
Let me just say for the record, that I'm not advocating this ethical flexibility (I sort of stole this from Grosse Point Blank, where Jon Cusack says that the army identified him as a candidate to be an assassin because of "a certain moral flexibility."). In fact, my post is result of my own recent sore reactions to some of the things I see going on around me here in New York. There are, as always, exceptions. But there are a whole lot people out there in business who take the platitudes evident in the entrepreneurial quiz as gospel.
Entrepreneur - yay - now who wants to come work for the guy with Irish grandparents, cant spell, had a DJ biz doing weddings in highschool as well as house portraits, whose parents are contractors who have fired me 6 times (yes, 6 times) as well as having been kicked out of Architecture school 1 time and fired from my first architecture job for thinking terrorists were out to get me ( slightly schizo)?
Now accepting aplications!!!!!
I should add I'm writing a biz plan for a swapmart at the moment as well as a design for a new type of dog leash. I dont know if its the entrepreneur in me or the schizo - but one thing is certain, you have to be crazy to go into the architecture business. As any businessman will tell, as my dear old Grandpa told me upon learning I was going to Architecture school, " Mark, why would you want to suck dick for a living"?
im a latex entrepenuer who has hired out his hand...
my wife and i got fired together. how many of you can say that?
Evilplatypus: Entrepreneur here as well. I've been fired, um, about five times, I've been kicked out of one architecture school, and I dropped out of another.
"Platypus + Gin Associates" has a nice ring to it.
hired hand - have i already missed the boat? was i supposed to start many companies before the age of 20? should i have rolled the dice instead of working hard?
i would agree though, that architecture start-ups are rarely entreprenurial in nature. perhaps this is just a confirmation of architects making bad business people.
"the problem with most architects is they have too much character..." -- Metamechanic.
Ya know, I tell our clients that all the time...
Latent
In the words of some Swiss guy:
"We are all acquainted with too many big business men, bankers and merchants, who tell us: "Ah, but I am merely a man of affairs, I live entirely outside the art world, I am a Philistine." We protest and tell them: "All your energies are directed towards this magnificent end which is the forging of the tools of an epoch, and which is creating througout the whole world this accumulation of very beautiful things in which economic law reigns supreme, and mathematical exactness is joined to daring and imagination. That is what you do; that, to be exact, is Beauty."
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