In his research on entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship economist Peter Kilby made reference to entrepreneurs as Heffalumps (using the name given to an imaginary elephant in the Winnie the Pooh children book series). Sociologist Paul H Wilken also referred to the entrepreneur as a Heffalump analogous of a separate independent species. Wilken said “The entrepreneurial Heffalump is a variegated sort of animal, which appears in different habitats and in different forms. It also appears to have undergone some evolutionary changes or mutations…
The term Heffalump is designed to capture the essence of what an entrepreneur actually is. This analogy is useful particularly from a natural history stand point. Naturalist would argue the Heffalump’s fortunes depend on two key things: (1) their adaptation (2) to their local environment. Hence, Wilken stating “…appears in different habitats and in different forms”. The same evolutionary rules would apply to the Heffalump, the Monte Carlo gambler* and other ‘species’. The Heffalump is constantly reacting to environmental circumstances and vicissitudes. They will change, indeed they must change and evolve as the environment in which they hunt changes, or they die. It’s no different than a predator such as the Saber Toothed Tiger (Smilodon) trying to make a living (or to be more apt – a killing) in North America after the Woolly Mammoth had been hunted to extinction. Again, this no different than an investment banker in North America trying to a make a living, or a killing, post credit crunch. One essential quality often over looked when trying to pin down why some entrepreneurs are better than others is failing to recognise entrepreneurship is the fact that humans are predator (by nature) and therefore the predators biological design and its environment will combine to greatly affect the probability of success. This is easily remedied by doing away with the Heffalump analogy (without a ‘predatory apatite’ he would have become extinct anyway). What would have replaced him is the Entrepredator.
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*Imagine a player who walks through an entrance and into a Monte Carlo casino. On entering the casino entrance he sits at the table closest to the doorway. Inside are a thousand of tables, each one representing different game, with different odds and different rules. The one closest to the entrance happens to be the Poker table. He takes his seat and watches as the deck being shuffled. After receiving only two cards he feels a sense of confidence growing. There are five cards laid face down in front of all the players at the table called a flop. In this game hearts, clubs, spades, and diamonds, have no numeric value neither do Jacks, Queens and Kings. Aces can be either high or low and jokers are wild. The pecking order that determines winners and losers are royal flushes, straight flushes, four of kind, three of a kind and so forth.
Our player takes stock of the hand he has been dealt gets up and leaves the table. In this world he is permitted to leave the casino or take the cards dealt to him and join any another game. He begins flittering between tables studying the various games in play and comparing their rules on winning with the cards he was dealt at the Poker table. He arrives at Black Jack table – and observes a game very different from Poker. It’s played with up to six decks as compared with pokers one, the jack, queen, and king count as ten. An Ace can be either 1 or 11. Each player at this table plays his hand independently against the dealer not each other as in Poker. Winning and losing has nothing to do with flushes or bluffing. The winner of Black Jack is the one whose hand is closest to 21 (twenty-one is another name for the game of Black Jack). Our itinerant player, having realised he had an Ace and 10 sits at the Black Jack table lays his cards down and wins. The move from one game to another improved his odds of from odds against (at Poker table) to odds-on (at Black Jack table). Same hand different game.
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