Contrarians

"In almost every nation on every continent, presidents and prime ministers have the word entrepreneurship on their lips, usually in the same breath as job creation.
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The main reason is that you are swimming against the market’s existing current, going against the grain. All entrepreneurs do that. If that were not the case, it would not be entrepreneurship.  ... This adverse process is the norm for entrepreneurship, not the exception. It is a contrarian process that repeats itself in one form or another countless times a day all around the world. Its ubiquity underlies a key question at the heart of this book: how do people with contrarian ideas succeed in creating and capturing value that is extraordinary? And, is it somehow possible that more of us are capable of this than we think?
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Thus, I see entrepreneurship as the contrarian perception, creation, and capture of extraordinary value. To create and capture that extraordinary value, you must see or sense value in things that many other people see as worthless, impossible, or stupid.
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“All significant breakthroughs have looked crazy the day before they became breakthroughs.”
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Many people from all around the world see hidden value in situations where others do not
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But, ultimately, recipes for entrepreneurs are oxymoronic because of the nature of entrepreneurship itself. The phenomenon of entrepreneurship is about contradicting our expectations, and so codification of the right or better or best way to be an entrepreneur will always possess an intrinsically elusive quality. The instant that we think we have it, the entrepreneur’s job is to prove us wrong. The potentially extraordinary value resides precisely in showing how violating (or simply ignoring) the common prescriptions can work, sometimes, amazingly well.
Indeed, in addition to the impressive amounts of money involved, one of our fascinations with entrepreneurs lies precisely in their defiance of our expectations and our subsequent surprise. The entrepreneurial record is writ full of entrepreneurs who should succeed but don’t; those who shouldn’t succeed, but do; those who almost crashed and burned, only to barely survive and to take off; and those who were taking off, only to suddenly lose altitude and fall. Entrepreneurs’ defiance of our expectations is so prevalent that it always has a surprising quality—if it weren’t a surprise, typically greeted by a great deal of skepticism in the early stages, someone would be doing it already."

Li isto e lembrei-me logo de "Cereja do Fundão chega a França pela mão de emigrante" e do comentário do Paulo Vaz:

"Tudo para dar certo: Produto com autenticidade, rede de 1 milhão de portugueses, exportação para mercados geograficamente próximos e com algum poder de compra."

Agora olhamos e fazemos coro com o Paulo... mas ninguém tinha pensado nisto antes.

Trechos retirados de "How Entrepreneurs Defy Expectations - The buzz of entrepreneurship is all around us these days."