The archetype of an entrepreneur is the storyteller. This article argues that success in entrepreneurship comes from an ability to tap into the shared stories that are common to all human beings. According to the Carl Jung, these stories are held in the collective unconscious as archetypes. The collective unconscious is the root of all successful stories, and successful entrepreneurs tap into these stories.
In a Cambridge University thesis, Daniel Dippold proposes a framework for identifying successful entrepreneurs. Dippold analyses the relative influence of logical, creative, and analogical thinking for success in entrepreneurship. Through a machine learning analysis, Dippold discovered that successful entrepreneurs are 25% more likely to be exceptional logical thinkers, 200% more likely to be exceptional creative thinkers and 460% more likely to be exceptional analogical thinkers. The reason analogical thinking has such an outsized impact on successful entrepreneurship is because analogical thinking correlates with an ability to align with archetypes common to all human beings.
According to Jung, an archetype is a shared representation present in the human psyche. These archetypes can be conceptualized as organs of the human psyche – they operate on a subconscious level but are common to all human beings. Through his study of myth and religion, Jung discovered patterns and symbolic imagery that continually appear amongst humans; from isolated tribes in the amazon to western cathedrals and the dreams of schizophrenic patients: the same symbols appear. These symbols speak to a nebulous concept that Jung described as the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is made up of archetypes. Archetypes are a shared set of paradigms that shape how humans think and operate. Successful entrepreneurs are those that align with these organs of the human psyche, successful entrepreneurs are those that can access the archetypes.
An entrepreneur is someone who builds a successful enterprise. A successful enterprise is one which sells something at a profit. In building a new enterprise, entrepreneurs create something out of nothing. This requires operating in the domain of the unknown, the unseen, the nebulous. Archetypes occupy the very same domain. Archetypes are pre-personal, a part of the fabric of human thought. Creating something new requires aligning with this substructure of human thinking – for how can you sell something to someone if it isn’t something they already find important? So, when one endeavours to create something new, there must be alignment with these archetypes, because it is these archetypes that are the driving force behind human decision making and it is only humans that dictate whether a new enterprise is successful.
But how does one gain knowledge of these archetypes? The archetypes reveal themselves in a domain that resides outside cognition, they reveal themselves in the realm of emotions. Because emotions are as nebulous as the collective unconscious: what we feel cannot be described with objective signs, instead feelings are captured in the symbolism of poetry, music, and all art. And just as successful art is that which resonates with people en masse, so too is successful entrepreneurship that which resonates with people en masse. And the root of this resonance is not something that is created, rather it is something which is discovered, uncovered, or aligned: and thinking analogically is about thinking in stories; and archetypes are simply stories that are common to all human beings.
Thus, the reason analogical thinking has such an outsized contribution to success in entrepreneurship is because analogical thinking represents an ability to go beyond thinking into the domain of the collective unconscious. And the collective unconscious is not a realm of thinking, but a realm of feeling. So, what is the Archetype of an Entrepreneur? The archetype of an entrepreneur is one who understands human needs, one who recognises explicitly that which exists implicitly in the collective unconscious. For when entrepreneurs create something new, they merely uncover a desire that was already present. Successful entrepreneurship is defined by successfully tapping into an archetype. And since archetypes are simply shared stories, the archetype of an entrepreneur is that of a successful storyteller.