Malcolm Gladwell’s advice for entrepreneurs: Be “disagreeable”

Author and New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell said the most influential entrepreneurs responsible for vast transformational changes in technology share an important trait: They have the courage to be independent — and even disagreeable.

Gladwell spoke in parables about the types of traits that are common among entrepreneurs.

“It’s not enough simply to have great ideas … You also need to be the kind of person that can tune out the naysayers because there will inevitably be naysayers when it comes to transformation,” Gladwell said last month at the marketing and tech conference “Inbound,” hosted in Boston by inbound marketing software company HubSpot.

Consider Malcolm McLean, who revolutionized the shipping and trade industry in the mid-1950s by coming up with the idea of the shipping container, Gladwell said.

McLean also had the creativity necessary to think about a concept that would transform an entire industry — another trait that’s common among entrepreneurs.

“In successful attempts of transformation you’ll see an act of re-framing the problem that makes the solution possible; erasing existing boundaries and starting from scratch,” Gladwell said.

“(Entrepreneurs) have the imagination to understand how to change the world,” he continued.

Lastly, the most successful entrepreneurs are the ones who embody a sense of urgency that motivates them to quickly and radically deploy their ideas, Gladwell said, referring to Steve Jobs.

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