Managing risk

"Doing business involves taking decisions and concluding deals and every deal is a calculated risk. No decisions are possible without exposing oneself to a certain element of risk…"
"All business decisions and deals are normally made after doing considerable home work and the risk becomes directly proportional to the unknown and the validity or accuracy of the knowledge that was acquired before taking decisions."
"In gambling, however, decisions are taken without any valid knowledge and information and that is how risk taking is quite different from gambling."
"Anyone who takes an initiative or pursues an opportunity is taking some sort of risk. But successful people do not see risk as simple risk. They always look at the potential risks as the opportunity for innovation, potential gain and for bettering their performance or even for achieving something remarkable in life which they aspire to. Brilliant people or achievers of extraordinary performance are seen to be pursuing some objective or pursuing some plan or even following a path which others may consider to be sheer madness."
"Some knowledge cannot be obtained at the time of taking decisions but many a time, after decisions are taken and actions emanate from them, new knowledge surfaces and corrective actions or a change in the course of earlier decisions becomes possible and the ill-effects of the original decisions are, thus, minimised or counterbalanced in a significant way…"
"The most important lesson that needs to be learnt in risk management is to take decisions based on valid data and not on opinion. Even if there is an expert opinion or advice, the same must be established using valid data."
(Rajat Kanti Baisya in 'Winning Strategies for Business,' p. 153, Sage)