No, it really isn't. It's about getting $Y out for every $X in where Y > X, and doing that in a sustainable and preferably an ethical manner.

Disruption is the exception, not the rule in entrepreneurship, and success is simply (Y/X) * volume processed * lifespan of project. Some would even say that success is the net cumulative effect on society but that's a lot harder to measure. You could for instance make this about jobs created or amount donated to charity or something like that but most people simply use the formula above or some variation on it.

an entrepreneur would only assume the rather significant risk if the likelihood of payout (as denoted by your clever equations)is high enough. in a capitalistic society such as ours with millions of established businesses that would entail either 1 of these two options.

1- Make the way things are done normally, better. (Fedex vs USPS)

2-Do a completely new different thing (Facebook.) Both options are disruptive, although at different levels.

And I think you're conflating competition with disruption.

Entrepreneurship and business go hand in hand, you can't have the one without the other. Someone that risks their personal fortune to open a hamburger stand by your definition is not an entrepreneur, by my definition he or she is. And that's before we look at the possible futures where that hamburger stand ends up as a chain of stores because he innovated on quality or was exceptional in service.

Disruption is not Fedex vs USPS, it's not Facebook competing with myspace for eyeballs. Disruption is AirBNB threatening the established interests in the hospitality industry, napster making record execs very worried and EasyJet causing increased blood pressure with all their fat cat competitors.

Disruption by definition can only come when a market is established, but it is definitely not a prerequisite for entrepreneurship or running a successful business.

There are endless possibilities out there to make a business and most of them are not disruptive at all. The disruptive ones are vastly more risky.

As far as I can tell from reading the summary of the study, it does not advocate that being married with children is a better or "the only right way" for founding a business. It just states observations. If you have evidence that the study is biased or made up, please tell us.

If in addition to these 60% that are married and have children and some more 10% that are married but without children I would not say it's pointless. It shows a tendency which we could try to search for a cause.

If you see the link the industries cited depends on individual who have good skills and some years of professional experience in the same industry to be managed, this probably means this kind of person just matches the above pattern for founders, meaning that if you define successful founders in the cited industries the same way the researchers did you find probably something not distant from what they found. Just that.

Well - for a start they act as counter to the argument I see in lots of places in the tech world - here too on occasion - that there is some special advantage to being a young entrepreneur. That doesn't appear to be true.

And for those who do value marriage and kids - it helps them see that this isn't a barrier to running a successful new business.

It's just data for goodness sake. It's not saying that you should marry and have kids. Indeed I suspect that it's largely a correlation to the age of the successful folk.

IMHO, the point was not to drive home the idea that entrepreneurs that want success should get married and have a child. The main point i got out of it, is that people that want to go into entreprenurship AND also would like to start a family don't have the be afraid that either one of those rules out the other.

It used to be so in 1980. It is not true anymore and has steadily fallen since, for numerous reasons. But this is a deep anchored belief in America. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18600304/ns/us_news-life/t/us-di...

"I think there is some truth to the fact that half of marriages end in divorce," Casey Copen, an associate service fellow with the National Survey of Family Growth, said. But, she said, "it’s just so dependent on the population you’re looking at."

For example, studies show couples with higher levels of education are less likely to divorce.

Burzumato put the likelihood of marriages now ending in divorce slightly lower, between 35 percent and 45 percent, but said "it might be in the 50s, it’s hard to tell."

"What we have found is that divorce rates are coming down," he said. "Cohabitation is on the rise. So those who do select marriage tend to be more committed."

The U.S. Census Bureau reported similar findings.

"As marriage rates have decreased and cohabitation has become more common, marriage has become more selective of adults who are better off socioeconomically and have more education, and divorce rates have leveled," a May 2011 report said.

You forgot the last paragraph. I mentioned sthg about reading further, didn't i ? man, you're on a obsessive streak :) following my comments one by one, thread by thread, down-voting all you can, eh ?

"The chance of a marriage ending in divorce varies depending on a number of factors, including education and race. But overall, experts told us and reports show the overall probability of marriages now ending in divorce falls between 40 percent and 50 percent."