The Creator's Code: The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs

The Creator's Code: The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs

Amy Wilkinson

Language: English

Pages: 240

ISBN: 1451666071

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Based on in-depth interviews with more than 200 leading entrepreneurs, a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business identifies the six essential disciplines needed to transform your ideas into real-world successes.

Each of us has the capacity to spot opportunities, invent products, and build businesses—even $100 million businesses.

How do some people turn ideas into enterprises that endure? Why do some people succeed when so many others fail? The Creator’s Code unlocks the six essential skills that turn small notions into big companies. This landmark book is based on 200 interviews with today’s leading entrepreneurs including the founders of LinkedIn, Chipotle, eBay, Under Armour, Tesla Motors, SpaceX, Spanx, Airbnb, PayPal, Jetblue, Gilt Groupe, Theranos, and Dropbox.

Over the course of five years, Amy Wilkinson conducted rigorous interviews and analyzed research across many different fields. From the creators of the companies ranging from Yelp to Chobani to Zipcar, she found that entrepreneurial success works in much the same way. Creators are not born with an innate ability to conceive and build $100 million enterprises. They work at it. They all share fundamental skills that can be learned, practiced, and passed on.

The Creator’s Code reveals six skills that make creators of all kinds of endeavors breakthrough. These skills aren’t rare gifts or slim chance talents. Entrepreneurship, Wilkinson demonstrates, is accessible to everyone.

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thong. “Well, that isn’t going to help with my cellulite. I still feel a bit insecure in these pants, wearing a thong,” she protested. What did other women do? Blakely said a sales associate at Neiman Marcus told her, “A lot of women are already cutting the feet out of their panty hose and using rubber bands to tie them down.” That was proof enough for Blakely. “I saw it for what it was,” she said. “An opportunity!” Blakely had never taken a business class or worked in fashion merchandising. Her

was a major factor in Unilever’s decision to award PHD most of its global communications planning work, according to Holden. “It’s almost like there is one mind, one unconscious mind, working that you can just tap into where you can get fresh thinking that didn’t exist before,” he said. Games hold out the promise of encouraging individuals to interact more effectively to take on responsibilities they otherwise might not assume and to generate fresh ideas. But, “it’s very hard to actually pull it

software that has the same kind of impact that public intellectual activity does but with the power of the commercial model behind it, which means that it can scale to reach millions, if not tens of millions of people.” Driven by building consumer technology businesses that scale, he focuses on building mutually beneficial relationships. “People used to think that you’re happy to be following me because I’m a ‘big person,’ ” Hoffman said, “but now it’s more about focusing on the health of the

in a Silicon Valley company and discovered that the most productive engineers often offered to help their colleagues. But he also found that some of the least productive engineers were equally generous. The difference came in how they gifted small goods. High achievers interacted constantly. Their ability to help colleagues earned them respect and social status, and their willingness to ask for favors helped them work more efficiently. The less productive engineers offered to help others but

not merely a function of an entrepreneurial mind or elite background or access to specific resources or training. The creators I interviewed repeatedly described behaviors that anyone can practice. While they differ across industry, these creators share common approaches and skills. Thus, conducting this research and disseminating its findings will place valuable insight in the hands of aspiring creators to strengthen their ability to turn an idea into an enterprise that can achieve massive

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