NYC residential real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran

Barbara Corcoran, founder of iconic New York City residential real estate agency The Corcoran Group followed management guru Jim Collins at the 9th World Business Forum today (we covered Mr Collins’ talk here).

Ms Corcoran has a sparking style, equal parts stand-up funny and pragmatic business insight. She shared her top eight  lessons learned from a lifetime of entrepreneurship in New York City.

Ms Corcoran actually announced a top ten list but very gracefully rounded down to eight lessons, as her time didn’t allow a presentation of the full list. That she was able to turn an out-of-time event into a charming and funny amending of the objective is probably testament to the value of her second principle!

1. I am great at failure.
2. Perception creates reality.
3. Expand before you’re ready.
4. Everybody wants what eveybody wants and nobody wants what nobody wants.
5. There really are only two kinds of people in the workforce: expanders and containers.
6. Fun is good for business (its the most under-utilized tool in business today).
7. You have the right to be there.
8. You need a bully to beat a bully.

Reflecting on Ms Corcoran’s lessons, I have to say that the Allegravita way is largely in alignment with her guidance: we’ve had our share of failure to drive us to our successes; our agency axioms quote Andy Warhol’s great insight, “reality is what you can get away with”; and we are apt to expand (into sectors, markets and technologies) before we’re ready.

Thanks to the World Business Forum 2012 team which which kindly invited me to represent Allegravita and attend the conference as their guest.

Please consider all our blogged stories from the World Business Forum 2012:

Management guru Jim Collins, on “return on luck”
NYC property mogul Barbara Corcoran on her top-8 lessons learned from her career as an entrepreneur
MIT psychologist professor Sherry Turkle on the danger presented to society by being always-connected
Interbrand CEO Jez Frampton on what makes a great brand
Nissan SVP Andy Palmer on the importance of melding engineering with marketing and communications
Legendary GE CEO Jack Welch’s choicest quotes from the conference
Harvard Business School’s Prof. Michael Porter on ‘Shared Value’ for-profit CSR
Inspirational entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson’s choicest quotes from the conference