The object of my research is entrepreneurial mentality: the way entrepreneurs define, pose and resolve their tasks, and the consequences these decisions and solutions bring about for them and their enterprises.

Here, a historical comparison comes to mind: this may be hard to believe in our day and age, but humanity's greatest trade avenue, the Silk Road, owed its existence solely to a misconception that, supposedly, there was no analogous sea route to transport goods from Asia to Europe (and in fact, there was).

Why is this comparison relevant? Many entrepreneurs think there is only one route to expanding their business. I beg to differ – there are many routes.

Advances in geography have allowed humanity to cast away a plethora of erroneous beliefs, which cannot, however, be said about the field of entrepreneurship – countless false assumptions still abound. Strange as it may seem, most of the surface area of the modern "Globe of Entrepreneurlandia" remains blank and uncharted as of yet.

Despite having a Master of Finance degree, I consider myself more of a researcher and explorer, even an artist in the world of entrepreneurship.

I believe this because I see a great deal of similarities between the artist and the entrepreneur.

In art, just like in entrepreneurship, you cannot separate the "Who" from the "What" when judging certain activities or actions.
In art, the painter wields brushes and paints, the writer turns to the magic of phrases and words, the musician evokes notes and chords. Similarly, entrepreneurs have before them a palette, a tome, a gamut of value perceptions – how customers perceive their products and services.

True artists, just like true entrepreneurs, are their own source of new ideas, conceptions and meanings. The very phenomenon of art and creativity is based on creating something novel and unique, something that has never existed before. Creativity is the bridge that connects these two worlds, the world of art and the world of entrepreneurship.

When an entrepreneur possesses unique abilities, like viewing an old problem from a new perspective and discovering the real source of a problem, such abilities elevate them to heights where they are on par with extraordinary artists.

he fact that many people fail to create anything fundamentally novel and original, and end up simply copying all there is to copy from each other, does not necessarily mean that all things in the world must be copied (in other words, stolen and plagiarized).
Every new feat of creation worthy of the name sets itself apart from all things past. Beethoven would never have been Beethoven had he only emulated Haydn and Mozart.

That is, indeed, the level of the artist, for the artist has the ability most people on the planet do not: the power to ignite and channel one's own imagination.

The power over one's imagination and the ability to create are nearly one and the same. An artist does not need to ask for permission in order to imagine all things imaginable and non-imaginable. An artist need not sacrifice imagination for measly crumbs of approval.

And this is precisely where I find similarity between entrepreneurs and artists.

In 2015, I founded the BUSINESS IQ research project in order to discover the true reason of such a high "business mortality rate" in entrepreneurship.

The question hounded me again and again: Why is it that only 3 or 4 out of 10 entrepreneurs make it to their 10th business anniversary? Sure enough, these numbers differ from country to country and from one field to another, but the overall trend remains notably pronounced.

That's when I resolved that the time had come to figure out the "dos and don'ts" of entrepreneurship. This intention turned into seven years of research into entrepreneurship as a separate vocation, similar to no other field...Except, perhaps, for the field of creativity and art.

I concluded the first part of my research in 2021, and its results served as the basis for my new book Business Incognita: Expanding the Bounds of Entrepreneurial Mentality, published by Alpina Pro at the end of 2022.