表达的意见 企业家 贡献者是他们自己的.

全食超市, 谁的500家门店雇佣了超过91人,000人, made waves in 2017 when Amazon acquired the company for $13.70亿年. 工作场所消息传递引擎 松弛 was acquired by Salesforce recently for a whopping $27.70亿年. 和 YouTube, 互联网上第三受欢迎的网站, has over 5 billion videos on its platform watched every single day. 

这些是什么? 业务 成功的故事都有共同之处? 他们的 首席执行官们 — leaders at the forefront of their industries — have degrees in the 文科.

YouTube的首席执行官 Susan Wojcicki’s original plan after 研究 history and literature at Harvard was to pursue a PhD and go into academia. A piqued interest in technology one summer led her to add a computer science elective in her senior year.

In 1998, she rented out her garage to two dudes named 拉里•佩奇 and Sergey Brin, who during that time built the search engine that would become 谷歌. 沃西基后来成为谷歌第一号员工. 16, eventually persuaded the 发现ers to acquire YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion — an acquisition lauded as one of the best buys of the 21st century — and eight years later was tapped for the 首席执行官 role.

对于文学澳门合法赌场官网的学生来说，这是一个不寻常的转折. 但这真的是吗?? Liberal arts thinkers have used their smarts to get to the top of the 业务 food chain more often than you might think:

• 前 Avon 首席执行官 和rea Jung has a degree in 英语 from Princeton;

• Chipotle 发现er and former 首席执行官 Steve Ells studied art history at the University of Colorado; 

• 前 美国运通 首席执行官 Kenneth Chenault was a history major before becoming the third African American 首席执行官 of a Fortune 500 company.

This topic of career reinvention is a personal one for me. What I do now as a content marketing consultant couldn’t be further from what I studied in school; with not one but two degrees in classical French Horn, I was an aspiring orchestra 音乐ian with big dreams — and very little 业务 acumen at first.

多年来，我一直低头看着我的 音乐 school experience as a waste of money and opportunity. 但是随着时间的推移, I’ve come to realize that the skills I honed — creative thinking, tenacity and performing under pressure — have become some of my greatest 企业家ial weapons. 

如果你是一个思想家或表演者， 创业 也许很适合你. Here are three ways to leverage your liberal or fine arts background and get a running start.

充分研究你的价值主张

Product development requires rigorous testing and a willingness to work through your logic all the way down to the bone. 如果你学过古典文学, 你知道这门琐事——语法, logic and rhetoric — was taught first to pupils of the past because its fluency ensured the comprehension of all other studies.

松弛 首席执行官 Stewart Butterfield credits his passion for working through argument to his college degree in philosophy. 根据这位连续创业者的说法， 研究 the great thinkers taught him to write well and showed him how to effectively run and lead meetings.

此外, 研究 来自安德鲁·W. Mellon 发现ation debunked the notion that 研究 the arts or humanities is a career death wish. Although a 文科 degree might not have you earning the same amount as engineers in your twenties, graduates achieve economic mobility more often than mainstream advice would have you believe.

What you will have in your twenties is a propensity for good ideas. Your value proposition is like a term paper or thesis, except that it’s more fun because it will potentially make you money. 很多钱. Be relentless with revisions and frequently test your value proposition in the market.

寻找新机会

市场和技术在不断变化, 随着这些构造板块的移动, new opportunities open up that have sudden and massive unmet demand. Before 全食超市 首席执行官 John Mackey co-发现ed the health food giant in 1980, he and his girlfriend had a standalone grocery store, SaferWay, that was a market on the first floor and a restaurant on the second to capture multiple emerging markets. 

When you act fast and are first to market, you’ll get a head start on capturing market share. Liberal arts graduates are fantastic at these kinds of positioning puzzles; if you have a complex problem or need to blend together multiple industries, consider getting a 文科 brain on it to generate winning ideas. 你以后会感谢自己的.

引导创意以获得竞争优势

Sally Hogshead，《 纽约时报 畅销书 Fascinate: How To Make Your Brand Impossible To Resist, 指出的那样 “不同比更好”.” Being the best usually requires extensive 研究, many product iterations over many years and huge expenses. 

Instead of trying to become the best, be different instead. 你需要一些创造性思维来找到自己的路, so here are a few tips to jumpstart your left brain:

• 抓住当下的想法. Set up a way to quickly jot down the strikes of lightning that pop into your head throughout the day. Voice memos or a separate page in a note taking app on your phone are great options.

• 练习寻找不间断的心流澳门赌场玩法官网. I’m still haunted by that 2016 study on worker behavior that 发现 employees are distracted an average of once every 40 seconds. To develop your focusing muscles, make your environment more conducive to concentration.

• 阅读行业外的新闻. 了解你的节奏很重要, but observing other industries can give you insights you won’t find within your own echo chamber.