MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Entrepreneurship Is a Craft and Here's Why That's Important

In my 20-plus years as an entrepreneur and seven years as an entrepreneurship educator, I have explored whether starting successful companies should be thought of as a science or an art. If entrepreneurship is a science, then I could easily teach my students that if they perform actions X and Y, they will get a result of Z. If it is an art, then it can be described no more precisely than as an ambiguous creative process that only a chosen few can pursue as a profitable career.

While I find many elements of entrepreneurship that draw from empirical processes, I also find many others that require creativity. In looking for a mental model that encompasses both requirements in a cohesive model for how to most successfully approach the startup process, I started thinking about potters.

About the Author

Bill Aulet is the managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and a professor of the practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is the author of Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup (Wiley, 2013) and the just-released companion, Disciplined Entrepreneurship Workbook (Wiley, 2017). Special thanks to Nick Meyer, Entrepreneur in Residence at the Martin Trust Center, who first broached this idea.

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