The smart and the idiot celebrates and encourages entrepreneurs.

We welcome failure as an opportunity to learn what works, do our homework and double our effort. We never panic. We pay attention. We are here now.

The name of the blog comes from a much referenced Vanity Fair article by Michael Lewis.

How on earth do monks, of all people, wind up as Greece’s best shot at a Harvard Business School case study?

After about two hours I work up the nerve to ask him. To my surprise he takes me seriously. He points to a sign he has tacked up on one of his cabinets, and translates it from the Greek: the smart person accepts. the idiot insists.

He got it, he says, on one of his business trips to the Ministry of Tourism. “This is the secret of success for anywhere in the world, not just the monastery,” he says, and then goes on to describe pretty much word for word the first rule of improvisational comedy, or for that matter any successful collaborative enterprise. Take whatever is thrown at you and build upon it. “Yes … and” rather than “No … but.” “The idiot is bound by his pride,” he says. “It always has to be his way. This is also true of the person who is deceptive or doing things wrong: he always tries to justify himself. A person who is bright in regard to his spiritual life is humble. He accepts what others tell him—criticism, ideas—and he works with them.”

My name is Marco, I am an entrepreneur in the financial industry, a graphic artist and a lover of the urban landscape. You can tweet me @helobiae