J.K. Rowling: A Different Kind of Entrepreneur

If you have not yet done so, run right over to Harvard's website and read the text of J.K. Rowling's commencement address given last week. Speaking on the benefits of failure and the importance of imagination, she has adopted much of the start-up creed as her own.

On failure: "Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. …. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

On the link between imagination and innovation: "Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. ..we do not need magic to change the world…we have the power to imagine better."

Well worth a read in full.