Entrepreneurship Across Borders

          In the CBS article "Launching a Risky Project? Learn from Entrepreneurs in Africa" Kimberly Weisul summates insights from two stapes of the Wharton School of Business that draw connections between the challenges of business climates across markets. Namely, from U.S. business enterprise to African entrepreneurial ventures. The seven principle takeaways James Thompson and Ian MacMillan put forward are certainly valuable compliments to any number of insights to be found in the Management and Business aisles of your local Barnes and Noble. That being said, as much as we intrinsically search for means to simplify our ventures and make the road ahead more predictable by transplanting the ideas and experiences of others onto our own ventures I feel that we run the risk of drawing conclusions from non causally associated observations. Furthermore, such quick and easy suggestions for entrepreneurial literacy understate the importance of intrinsic skill, market placement and demand for the product, etc.
          Full disclosure, I am writing this after only reading the CBS article. I have not read Thompson or MacMillon's full explorations of these issues but can't help but feel these seven key takeaways oscillate between being blatantly obvious to being wild oversimplifications that sound about right but after a moment of reflection leave a lot of room for question (like many management and entrepreneurship "ten best, five key, my greatest insights etc.")
          For example: "Decide what level of success counts as success or failure." Is it not completely obvious that one must establish metrics for success? Wouldn't any reasonable entrepreneur have notions on what would ultimately merit the success of their venture merely from deciding to undertake the venture? Even a completely nonsensical idea destined for commercial failure (rocket powered kitten mittens) would come almost inseparably bundled to a metric of success (selling some number of rocket powered kitten mittens at a profit to cover operating and manufacturing costs). On the other hand are the head-nod triggering simple statements that do wild injustice to the actual nature of the issue at hand. "Preplan a realistic exit strategy", for example. That sounds perfectly reasonable. Until you begin to mull over the literally countless confounding variables and uncertainties littered across the landscape of your venture in its early stages. Perhaps some start ups have contractually binding agreements in place that guarantee their operating position in the near future, but what of the many more startups which have almost no way of knowing what lies ahead and how or if they will be able to abandon ship if the time came? By consuming these deceivingly simple anecdotes entrepreneurs could be fooled into underestimating challenges or, worse off, waste significant time trying to pair their specific scope to these sweeping, nondescript metrics. An entrepreneur must be focused, learn by doing, and never underestimate the challenges ahead.
          I don't mean any disrespect; these are two very honorable members of the Wharton community. My principle objection to the way the article is presented is that these insights substantiate the assertion that corporate managers at Goldman Sachs have a lot to learn from a small business owner in any of the over fifty countries of Africa. I'm not saying there are not things to be learned from and between the two groups. But there are infinite contextual factors that would need to be discussed to clarify what these lessons are and how to make these lessons meaningful and tailored. It cannot simply be prescribed in seven easily digestible tidbits.