Two years ago, I attended a fundraising for a large student organization at Harvard. During the event, a number of students gave short testimonies about their experiences at school.

One theme that ran through each talk was that each student felt an immense pressure to follow-through on all the promise and expectations that come with being admitted to Harvard.  These students thought of Harvard as the pinnacle of education, and instead of embracing the opportunities to learn and take risks, all of these students felt paralyzed by fear.  More precisely, fear of failure.  Fear of screwing up what they had worked so hard to achieve by doing something foolish and adding an ugly blemish on their largely perfect records.

I think this fear pervades Harvard and many other elite institutions in the Northeast.  It’s a negative force against fostering a culture of risk-taking and entrepreneurship in Boston.  The worst part is that this fear gets worse  over time.  After leaving Harvard, joining Goldman Sachs, attending Harvard Business School, etc etc, it gets harder and harder to get off the track of conventional success and  try to do somethng very different and risky.

This is a challenge that certainly exists at places like Stanford as well.  But one thing that Stanford has going for it is the long list of alumni and other visible personalities in the Valley who have stories that push these students in the opposite direction. 

I know that these stories exist in Boston too, but for some reason, they aren’t front and center in the minds of  our most talented students.