In team sports, conventional wisdom says you can’t coach attitude.
     In his latest book, entrepreneurship guru Jim Fiet applies a similar constant to the creation of new business ventures.  He finds that while you can’t teach luck, you can compensate for its absence. His research suggests entrepreneurs can overcome bad luck by (1) searching systematically for venture ideas with wealth creating potential and (2) commercializing them with a forgiving business model.

     Fiet, the Brown-Forman chair in entrepreneurship at the UofL College of Business, has a history of tweaking entrepreneurial traditions. As the developer of “Systematic Search,” a calculated process for filtering guesswork and chance from entrepreneurial efforts, Fiet showed there was a viable alternative to the traditional chaotic gamble previously believed necessary for any new venture start-up, including the small percentage that ultimately prove successful.
     Due out in September, “Prescriptive Entrepreneurship” ($130, Edward Elgar Publishing) reinforces that notion by providing a detailed protocol for testing the potential of new business ideas before they launch.  In effect, Fiet says focused use of appropriate information channels provides entrepreneurs a path to success that can be duplicated.
     “The goal was not to show what entrepreneurs do, but what they can do better,” he says. “We identified a track to improving the odds of success.”
     In his preface, Fiet acknowledges the significant contributions to the research by Pankaj Patel, a doctoral candidate in the college’s entrepreneurship PhD program.  Earlier this year, for their cutting-edge research on venture capitalists’ decision-making processes, Patel and fellow doctoral student Rodney D’Souza were presented the 2008 Office of Advocacy Best Doctoral Paper award at the U.S. Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) annual meeting. At the same meeting, Fiet and Patel were also recognized for developing the best empirical paper.
     Fiet says he plans to use the new book this fall as the text for an honors class he will teach at the college.