How strongly should venture capitalists around the world get behind climate change agreements?
Entrepreneurship, as we study it, is defined by my colleague Howard Stevenson as "the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources you currently control." In short, managers manage assets, entrepreneurs manage opportunity. And instead of taking risk, they manage it. Further, opportunity arises out of a change in something called "context," namely the competitive environment, whether it is due to legal, social, regulatory, or other kinds of change. For example, the rise of hackers changed the "context" in which information was communicated, providing an opportunity for entrepreneurs to create an Internet security industry. Let's apply this thinking to the recently reinitiated global conversation about climate change. If one subscribes to precepts of entrepreneurial management, there should be a pot of gold at the end of a climate change agreement rainbow, regardless of how one feels about global warming or its causes.
This article was provided with permission from Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.