ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests why it is helpful to learn to take risk and reviews typical attitudes to risk and their implications. It describes some common risk behaviours in decision-making and considers the challenges of learning from failure. To marketing people not yet familiar with risk management, it is easy to assume that its focus is predominantly one of risk avoidance rather than risk optimization. One of the reason practical reasons for considering human factors at the outset is that they are relevant to the way people apply the risk assessment tools and techniques that the chapter reviews. An essential point about risk attitude is that it is a perception of reality, not reality itself: Risks are not concrete entities like computers or motor vehicles, which can be studied largely without subjective bias. A person's normal attitude to risk can be affected by circumstance to produce a reaction quite out of keeping with their characteristic behaviour.
