13A Reading Reflection 1

I read about the Wright Brothers by David McCullough.

What surprised me the most was the whole venture. I would have thought that they would have been engineers that were somehow involved in something related to some type of travel. I would not have thought they were entrepreneurs that had different business ventures and had to continually go back to the drawing board and redesign and test and continually overcome obstacles to get successful flight design.

What about the entrepreneur surprised me the most was the persistence and almost lack of fear of failure. In their business ventures and in the design of their first plane. With the amount of failure, you would have thought that they knew they were going to accomplish flight and it kept them motivated to keep going.

What about the entrepreneur I least admired was nothing. They seemed to have lived very good lives with good values and family values. They didn’t even behave poorly when situations would have warranted it such as when other inventors or news was dishonest about their venture. 

The entrepreneurs encountered nothing but adversity and failure until that first successful flight. Their other businesses had success like their bicycle business and printing business, but the flight machine was long and difficult process full of failures and small successes.

The competencies that I noticed that the entrepreneurs exhibited were that they were technical and determined. They had great observation skills to observe and copy flight from birds and they had great coping and team work skills. The brothers worked together on a regular basis and even shared a bank account.  

There were no parts of the reading that were confusing to me. I thought the author made the book easy to read and comprehend.   

If I were able to ask two questions from the entrepreneur, they would be first, what kept you going as if you knew you would eventually build the flying machine. The second would be what do you think the biggest contribution was that made you a creator and entrepreneur. I believe the answer to the second would be their father. He seemed to instill a strong sense of confidence and values in his children.

I think the entrepreneur’s opinion of hard work is the same as mine. The brothers kept their lives simple where they were able to change their lives based on the venture they were focused on which most of us don’t do. The brothers were willing to move to other states just for better wind and soil to test their flight machine.