What makes a successful enterprise and separates the winners from the losers? Gary Hoover, former entrepreneur-in-residence at the McCombs School of Business, identified eight keys to building a successful enterprise that are valid in both good times and bad. Hoover based his keys on his more than 35 years of career experience, including time spent at three Fortune 500 companies and four of his own start-ups (Bookstop and Hoover’s Online were his creations). Hoover calls himself a business junkie. He started subscribing to Fortune magazine when he was 12 years old and has a personal business library of more than 40,000 books.

This 12-minute video is part of an eight-part series. You can see the rest of the videos in the series here.

#1 Curiosity

People who build great enterprises must have a sense of curiosity. Hoover believes new technologies and better ways of doing things are discovered by looking at things a different way. You can’t continue looking at something that same way everyone else does and come up with something new. All discovery starts with exploration. Travel, observe, talk to people. Look at other industries.

Remember the old saying “The early bird to get the worm”? It's not true. Hoover says you don’t have to be first in the market to be successful. What really matters is who does it best, not who does it first. There were at least 30 other online booksellers before Amazon. But Amazon did it best.