Crazy is a Compliment: The Power of Zigging When Everyone Else Zags

Crazy is a look backwards, tracing the course of Rottenberg’s own development and the history of Endeavor, the organization that she co-founded and leads. Endeavor selects, mentors and supports exceptional entrepreneurs in countries where the entrepreneurial ecosystems need to be built up in order to generate economic growth. It is a look backwards, as well, at the group of nearly 1,000 Endeavor entrepreneurs, representing a constellation of businesses that today generate $6.5B in annual revenues.

What makes Crazy important is not so much that it provides another set of insights for those seeking entrepreneurial success as that it paints a picture of entrepreneurial success as one expression of a broader ethos. Crazy unpacks the ways of operating that make the entrepreneurial ethos work, whether building a company from the ground up, building from within an organization, or building one's own life. Rottenberg makes the case that the largest challenges are inner challenges: both the emotional challenges of overcoming fear, shame and doubt and the intellectual challenges of overcoming the ingrained concepts that can pull one away from the long journey of building almost anything great (e.g., “betting the farm” rather than “derisking risk”; overemphasis on having a big, breakthrough idea).

Rottenberg exemplifies the lessons she shares. Rottenberg’s idea and Endeavor’s idea is entrepreneurship itself and entrepreneurs flourish in ecosystems. Crazy teaches us that ecosystems can be built and that the work of building can largely be done by others if the right work gets done to inspire them, link them and can create a structure in which that work can happen. Crazy charts Rottenberg’s progress from a messy beginning to what I consider to be one of the world’s most elegant organizations.