Just an update:

I’m guessing this post is from 2009. As of March 10, 2010, Forbes Magazine considers Carlos Slim the richest man on the planet, just .5 billions up from Gates. Financial markets go up and down.

Emmanuel.

I´d put the definition of risk-taking differently : people like Gates are able to exactly calculate risk – what they finally “take” is a specific degree of uncertainty – not risk.
And obviously they manage uncertainty better than their fellows.

Cheers,
Kerstin

nice article! i think bill is a great Entrepreneur, he makes shit to gold :-)
we can learn a lot from those people.

Calculated risks, rather than just any risk, is what lets you achieve your goal faster.

You make bold moves to focus on the big wins, but you don’t mindlessly try stuff. You plan and figure out what would be the most effective way to do something that’ll give you most of the results (80-20 style), and take your risks there.

Looking at the phrase ready-fire-aim, you do indeed fire and just do it (hope me linking to an article I wrote isn’t spammy – just thought it’s relevant and helpful to the topic)… but that ‘ready’ stage is where you calculate the firing beforehand. It isn’t simply called fire-aim for a reason.

You have limited ammo, so you want to make it count. You can’t predict the future, but you can analyze your choices and focus on the 80-20 ones.

Mindless risks leads to wasted resources. Calculated risks leads to big wins.

Great reminder to take risks but to be selective and make them calculated,
Oleg