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Home » Risk Management: Chris Davenport at TEDxMileHigh (Full Transcript)

Risk Management: Chris Davenport at TEDxMileHigh (Full Transcript)

Chris Davenport

Chris Davenport – TRANSCRIPT

Welcome everybody. It’s great to be here. How many of you guys think these extreme skiers are crazy? Most of you, the stuff you see in movies, right? Yeah, it certainly looks that way. I’m going to do my best today to dispel that myth. When I heard that the theme of this talk was risk versus reward, I was really excited, because I live in a world that is pretty much defined by risk and reward. In fact, I would say it defines my life, my profession. I’m out there doing dangerous things all the time.

Some time ago, as I started getting older, maybe ten years ago, I started thinking more about how to manage risk. We all want to get to a ripe old age in life, and be skiing with our grandchildren, and make it through. I started taking a bit of an analytical approach to what I do as a skier, so that I can hopefully make it through. So I’m going to talk a little bit about mastering the art of risk management as we deal with the mountains, and I’m going to use a trip that I did, that I guided on Mount Everest last year, just about a year ago, to sort of frame the structure for this conversation.

So what is risk? We all know the word. You probably use it, you know what a risky thing is, but really, what is the definition of risk? For me it’s an action or an activity that has the potential to go wrong. It can be so many different things. It could be a ski run, a mountain climb, it could be a business deal, an investment, a relationship. There’s so many different things that can be risky.