创业导师：创业需要一点妄想

    您是否曾说服学生放弃他们的观点？

    我认为自己在MBA课程中的责任主要是教导学生。如果我认为他们在推行糟糕创意的过程中能够学到些东西，我就不会进行干涉。因为许多我认为很糟糕的创意最终可能会产生一些很棒的成果。创业必然要经历失败，所以学生们在探索一个创意为什么糟糕的过程中同样能学到很多东西。

    我并不会过于严厉地要求人们放弃自己的想法。如果我认为有些东西是非常愚蠢的，或者存在明显的缺陷，我会加以干预。我会在学生们即将开始创办公司之前介入。我会让他们向我保证，他们会为自己设定一个最终期限。我会在期满的时候检查他们是否取得了进展，是否实现了关键的目标。

    您从学生那里听到的最糟糕的创意是什么？

    2009届毕业班的詹姆斯•雷哈特成立了thredUP。但他最初的想法是让25岁左右赶时髦的男性通过邮寄包裹的形式交换衬衣。我对他说：‘詹姆斯，说实话，这个星球上可能只有10,000个人想这么干。’而在开发这个糟糕创意的过程中，他很快了解到，有小孩子的家庭对于服装交换有巨大的需求。于是，他的创意便开始朝着好的方面迅速发展。目前，他已经从顶尖公司获得了2,000万至3,000万美元资金。所以对我来说，有些事情也是始料未及的。

    随着创业学的持续发展和变化，学生需要培养哪些技能？

    我们谈到过推销。推销始终是创业不可或缺的一部分，而这方面我们做得不算很好。

    此外，我认为在硅谷，人们有一种非常微妙的产品感，而一位优秀的创业者必须拥有一双慧眼，找出优秀的产品。所以，我认为今天的学生需要了解设计思维，具备设计师的眼力，去了解一款优秀的产品。（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓       

    Do you ever try to talk your students out of ideas?

    I view my responsibility in the MBA program as mostly to teach them. And if I think they're going to learn something from working on a bad idea for a little while, I'm okay with that because a lot of ideas I think are bad can pivot into something very, very good. Entrepreneurship is all about failure, so there's a great deal they can learn from discovering why a bad idea is a bad idea.

    I'm not too heavy handed in terms of steering people away from ideas. If I think something is just silly or has some obvious flaws, I will intervene. The place where I weigh in is when they are about to come out and launch their startups. At that point, I make them promise me that they will set a deadline for themselves where I check in with them and ask if they've made progress and hit those milestones.

    What is the worst idea you've heard from a student?

    In the 2009 graduating class, James Reinhart started thredUP. But the original idea was to have 25-year-old hipster males swap shirts by putting one in a bag and sending it. I told him, 'James, really, maybe there's 10,000 people on the planet who want to do that.' But in the process of developing that bad idea, he quickly learned that families of small children have an amazing need to swap clothing. And that eventually exploded in a good way. He has raised $20 to $30 million from top firms. So sometimes I can see it. Sometimes I can't.

    As entrepreneurship continues to change and evolve, what skills will students need to develop?

    We talked about the sales thing a couple of times. It's always been in entrepreneurship, and we've never done a great job in teaching it.

    I also think that in Silicon Valley people have a really refined sense of product, and a great entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a great product. So I would say today's students need to understand design thinking and acquire a designer's sensibility to understand a great product.