Improving Children's Literacy
Billionaire author J.K. Rowling shared her insights into the entrepreneurial process in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that was televised yesterday. The author of the Harry Potter series of children’s novels, Rowling has achieved a level of financial success few authors can even imagine. Oprah Winfrey shared a video clip of the June 2008 commencement address to the graduating seniors of Harvard University in which Rowling spoke of the benefits of failure, which includes stripping away the inessential from her life:
My greatest fear had been realized and I was still alive…Rock bottom came to be a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life…it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all…. Failure is not spoken of enough but it is so important, it leads to greater success. People who are terrified of failing don’t try anything; they live in a straitjacket of their own making.
Rowling is as articulate in defining the risk-taking appetite required of success, as she is in creating characters for her children’s novels.