Exception to the Rules A new book doesn't bend to old business adages.

Anthony Iaquinto and Stephen Spinelli Jr. stampede a sizable herd of entrepreneurship's sacred cows in Never Bet the Farm (Jossey-Bass, $19.95). They declare there is no one entrepreneurial personality and say that entrepreneurs are people just like everybody else.

They ascribe a much larger role than most experts do to luck--both good and bad--in the way entrepreneurial ventures turn out. Perhaps their most controversial suggestion is that entrepreneurs operate at times in "the gray"--an area between established rules and unethical behavior. As examples, they provide cases of retailers jousting with regulators and startups using smoke and mirrors to appear larger than they are.

You can't write off these two or their book as irrelevant iconoclasts. Spinelli is director of the Babson College Center for Entrepreneurshipand co-founder of Jiffy Lube. Iaquinto is a serial entrepreneur and an academic. In this trend-bucker, they've cultivated a different and useful view of the entrepreneurial business garden.