By Grace Lee, Logic Solutions, Inc.; Treasurer, MIT Enterprise Forum, Great Lakes Chapter

In his recent book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that besides intelligence and some common traits, extremely successful people’s families, birthplaces, and even their birth dates have a profound effect on their successes.

One of interesting commonality is the birth date of some of extremely successful technology companies’ executives: Eric Schmidt (Google): April 27, 1955, Bill Joy (Sun Microsystems): November 8, 1954, Scott McNealy (Sun Microsystems): November 13, 1954, Steve Jobs (Apple): February 24, 1955, Paul Allen (Microsoft): January 21, 1953. All of them were teenagers when the computer age started to take off.

So what does this mean to the rest of us, the struggling entrepreneurs or entrepreneur want-to-be’s? Since we were born either way before or after 1954 and 1955, did we miss the golden opportunity to be successful?

Malcolm Gladwel’sl argument only reinforces one of the most important elements of entrepreneurship: Chaos Creates Opportunity. If there is no disruption to the equilibrium, big companies will rule the business world and there is no opportunity for new comers: Sony, IBM, AT&T, and Sears will dominate the world. There will be no Google, no Apple, no eBay, and no Amazon.

However, with the innovation in computer technology, our lives were disrupted and we had a new way of gathering, recording, analyzing, and transferring information. The disruption created a whole new frontier: faster and better technology, different types of jobs and skill requirements, and a new life style.

Just like Dickens said: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…It was the season of light, it was the season of darkness…It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…” Although the economic conditions have been very tough in Michigan and things may look bleak, it has created a mandate for us to explore opportunities in different areas such as alternative energy, life science, etc. And the entrepreneurs will not be fighting alone. Many government agencies, organizations and people are all ready and willing to explore the opportunities with the entrepreneurs.

On January 21, 2010, the Annual Collaboration of Entrepreneurship (ACE) will celebrate its 10th anniversary. In the past 10 years, we experienced many disruptions of life: from the Dot Com boom to the Dot Com bust, the phenomenon of Social Networks , and we have all witnessed the success of the comeback kid, Steve Jobs. Our lives may be disrupted but we would not have it any other way.

So, please come join the ACE team and for more information visit at http://www.ace-event.org/home.aspx.