"Chance always favors the prepared mind," said Louis Pasteur. The Light and Dark sides of entrepreneurial inventing are intermixed on a daily basis. You must be prepared for a real roller coaster ride through life. If you crave an existence that is calm and mundane, don't be an inventor, especially an entrepreneurial inventor. Inventors are driven, not by a desire for fame and fortune but by a vision of their creation. One of the world's most famous inventors said it best: "The hope of wealth or the desire for fame will never make an inventor. . .you may give him wealth or take from him everything he has; and he will still go on inventing. He can no more help inventing than he can help thinking or breathing. Inventors are born, not made."
That last line is true about the person but not about the skills you must have or the ones you must learn to be a successful entrepreneurial inventor in the 1990s and beyond. If Alexander Graham Bell were alive and inventing today, he would say, "Inventors are born and made."
