BizBasics: "Entrepreneurship: (Not) Risky Business"

People often assume entrepreneurs are risk takers. But are they?

Professor Saras Sarasvathy challenges that assumption, explaining how the three types of uncertainty humans face, introduced by economist Frank Knight in 1921, are still relevant to entrepreneurial behavior today. She argues that instead of taking risks, entrepreneurs focus on what they can create.

The BizBasics video series, created by the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, is designed to explain basic business concepts and common business buzz words.

About the Expert

Saras D. Sarasvathy

Paul M. Hammaker Professor of Business Administration; Jamuna Raghavan Chair Professor in Entrepreneurship, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore

Named one of the Top 18 Entrepreneurship Professors by Fortune Small Business magazine, Sarasvathy is a leading scholar on the cognitive basis for high-performance entrepreneurship. Her work pioneered the logic of effectuation — a set of teachable and learnable principles used by expert entrepreneurs to build enduring ventures.

In addition to being author of the book Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise, Sarasvathy is also co-author of the textbook Effectual Entrepreneurship and the doctoral-level text Made, as Well as Found: Researching Entrepreneurship as a Science of the Artificial.

B.Com., University of Bombay, India; MSIA, Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University

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