Why Risk It?

Like making your own gunpowder?

Gurstelle: I’m not an expert in how to take financial or emotional risks. I’m an expert on taking risks with technology by making things that go bang. So that’s where I concentrate. I tell you how to make gunpowder. And in the final chapter, I show you how to make a propane flamethrower. You pull a rope, you open a valve, and a great gout of orange flame shoots up 12 feet. And you’re in control of that . . . . That’s a marvelous, marvelous thing.

The implication in Absinthe is that you think society has become too risk averse, is that right?

Gurstelle: I think that intellectual curiosity is a very important thing . . . . It’s something we should encourage. But instead, I think we’re making it harder for curious people to exercise their curiosity.

In my world—the Backyard Ballistics world—it shows up as laws and regulations, usually in the name of safety or national security, that will make it hard for you to get the supplies you need to build that rocket. It’s getting more difficult to find the chemicals that will let you do practical, meaningful experimentation at home.

I’m not a huge Libertarian, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want everybody and their brother to go out and buy powerful oxidizers [to magnify burning reactions]. But it shouldn’t be impossible, either. There’s a thin line between being safety conscious and smothering creativity.

What should businesspeople know about risk taking?

Gurstelle: There are studies showing that managers who take more risks are more successful. In Absinthe, I cite a Canadian study that found that managers who took the most risks advanced furthest and made the most money. If you could form a corporate environment where risk taking was truly valued, instead of given lip service, I think your company would do better in the long term that its risk-averse competitors. But that means you’d not only have to allow people to try interesting things, but also allow them to fail.

Where is Minnesota on the risk-affinity scale?

Gurstelle: Minnesota is a good risk-taking state—or at least it was. We named our airport after Charles Lindbergh, a risk-taking icon. We have 3M, a company that always has been all about taking chances on new products. And Control Data? It no longer exists, but everything went there. They spun off company after company. Years ago, half the people I knew who owned a company came out of Control Data. I always thought that was a really cool organization.