Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Wrapping up his famous Stanford (2005) commencement address, the late Steve Jobs, the iconic creative entrepreneur wishes the new batch of graduates ‘Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish’ With over 22 million views on YouTube to date, Steve’s speech is hugely popular and has been widely talked about by a number of authors, inspirational speakers, etc.

Quite a few people must have puzzled over the final wish he bids to the audience and googled it like I did when I listened to the speech in the first place. Quite a few must have felt as ashamed as I did when they found out what it meant and wondered why they couldn’t figure it out first. I know some of our readers who aren’t familiar with Steve’s speech are now getting curiouser and curiouser! Trust me it’s worth the wait.

In his enlightening address on connecting dots, love & loss and death, Steve asks you to be hungry for new knowledge and not be complacent and decide that you know enough. In other words, his advice is to keep learning. Elsewhere in the speech, he advises you to ‘follow your heart’. It goes without saying that these two should go hand in hand. Asking you to stay foolish, Steve encourages you to take creative risks by following your heart. It all boils down to one key factor: always follow your heart or intuition and take responsibility for your own life.

Granted, it’s simply conventional wisdom. But, very few people seem to take Steve’s advice to heart and act on it. My prime intention here is to show you how Steve’s luminous cleverness can be applied to an entrepreneurial career.

I remember a famous quote from King Lear –“Nothing will come of nothing.” Nowhere does this Shakespearean quote ring truer than in an entrepreneurial career. Indeed, unless you’re willing to risk being perceived as foolish or stupid or mad, you won’t ever be able to make up your mind to make a bold bet. Although you harbour an entrepreneurial ambition, if your risk appetite is zilch, the odds of your making it into the entrepreneurial world are extremely low. You’ll be little more than an ambitious dreamer.

As a matter of fact, whether they’re ebullient, scintillating extroverts like Richard Branson (Virgin Group) or shy, soft-spoken introverts like Azim Premji (Wipro), the most successful entrepreneurs are those who are eager to learn new things and who have risked failure at some critical point of their entrepreneurial career.

Besides that, if you’re not receptive to fresh knowledge or insights that may sometimes question, contradict or simply invalidate your existing beliefs, values, habits and practices, the chances are pretty slim that you’ll become a successful entrepreneur, either.

What I mean here is not that you have to be a feather to every wind to succeed as an entrepreneur; in fact, it’s perfect recipe for disaster not just in entrepreneurship but in life in general as well. What I mean here is that you should keep an open mind and where it’s called for, you should act on your new-found knowledge. Don’t forget the old adage: to know and not to use is not to know.

Even if you don’t cherish entrepreneurial ambitions, you can follow Steve’s advice in the corporate world too. But, you have to keep in mind the culture of your organization and established values, norms and practices.

In theory, taking creative risks is absolutely vital to learning, developing a successful career and creating value whether you’re working for a business enterprise or for a non-profit organization. But, how your organization defines ‘creative risks’ and its tolerance threshold for mistakes are the critical factors you should take into account. Ignoring them could lead you to make serious missteps in your career or even get fired if the worst comes to the worst.

To be a round peg in a square hole is certain to afford you an edge over the others; but, the decision to be a non-conformist should be a well thought-out one as it entails its own risks. It’s well-advised to avoid being a non-conformist if you want to do it just for the sake of your ego rather than for your ideology. That’s why I’ve cited the two factors above and counsels you to exercise caution.

As I wrap up my preachy article, I’m tempted to quote the narrative of Apple’s 1997 commercial for the crazy ones. “Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”