The Power of Creation

As the year and the semester draw to a close, the intro to entrepreneurship class that gave me so much material and inspiration is drawing to a close, so I want to sum it up a little bit.  If I had to pick one thing that I learned this semester from this class, it’s something best said by Shia LaBoef, “Just DO i t!”

I know that sometimes we’re not confident enough to go ahead and put our idea out there, and that’s ok!  When that happens, our action needs to be working on ourselves, our business plan, or our concept itself until it is ready.  If we want anyt­hing to happen, then we need to do something, and that’s the trick.

               We’ve learned this semester about finding the right partners, starting the finance, being ethical in your business practices, and so many other things, and in all of those there is always room to improve.  We can work on ourselves as people and as entrepreneurs or we can work on our business to improve profit margins, smooth out processes within the business, improve customer relations or any number of things, but we have to be always moving.

               Reading from the Doctrine and Covenants in section 58, verse 27, the Lord counsel’s that, “men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will,” and that’s beautiful to me.  It doesn’t say “always preach to your neighbors” or, “always go serve food at a soup kitchen” but simply be “anxiously engaged in a good cause”. Don’t get me wrong, that good cause could easily be a soup kitchen, but it could also be the act of creating a business that follows your values and ideals. 

               Last week we talked about creativity, and several times we’ve seen that the root of entrepreneurship is creation.  Make something out of nothing.  Build something from the ground up.  Find new ways to do old things. Many religions consider the power of creation to be the epitome of the Lord’s strength, and this is the crux and that is what it means to me to be an entrepreneur. I want to leave my mark on the world, and I want to build something that reflects who I am.  I want to build a business that puts people first and provides a great product for the price and that will make peoples’ lives better. My business will bring people into its culture and mold the world into a better place. That’s what entrepreneurship is to me.

Just Do You

This week I read some stories about a few entrepreneurs in this article.  One of them opened a pizza shop in Spain because he didn’t want to work for others, one went back to work after her youngest child started school and jumped right into her own business, and one started a business that he blundered through and then worked for a few other companies before trying again and getting it right.  The point is, there is no correct path, so you just do you, ok?

               There are some basic rules that an entrepreneur should follow and attributes that one should have as well, but once that ground work is done, it’s up to you.  The article explains some research from Teresa M. Amabile’s “How to Kill Creativity” on true creativity, where she discusses the three components of creativity: expertise, motivation, and creative thinking skills. (Image from this site) This basically just means the ‘know-how,’ the drive, and the x-factor that make you see things differently than others.  These three things give someone the ability to innovate and improve things in creative ways that others might not, and that’s where the creative ideas come from that start businesses.

               “These entrepreneurs recognized that having an idea was just the first step” the article said, and I want to focus on the idea of that.  We all have hundreds of ideas every day, and I have in mind at least twenty different businesses that I would love to start and that I would be absolutely ecstatic to work at, but I can’t start them all and I don’t, quite frankly.  Why?  Because the rest includes a solid business plan, the technical skills and ability to make it work, the people to push it forward, and the right market entry strategy.  This graphic from entrepreneurship coach, Willo O’Brian’s article indicates ‘the sweet spot’ where we can find entrepreneurial success between what we’re good at, what pays, and what we love.  This article explains similarly that entrepreneurship falls between personal satisfaction, societal needs, and economic feasibilities.  In the end, we all have ideas, and we all have passions.  How we get to one that works and where we find ourselves along the way is a whole different situation, and one that is honestly impossible to chart, so why not just do you?

Uncle Ben Was Right

              Many people attribute the quote “with great power comes great responsibility” to Spiderman, but it comes from his uncle, Uncle Ben.  Some people credit this quote to the French author Voltaire, and this site references a similar quote in the 1793 French National Convention.  Regardless of the origin of the quote, it rings true.  

               This week I was really able to feel this as I listened to a lecture by Larry Brilliant, executive director of Google.org.  He spoke of how there are entrepreneurs today that are very different from the ones that were around when he was young.  He says today there are men and women who make lot of money while they are very young, and while they are still very young they turn and dedicate themselves to helping solve the world’s problems.  He personally helped in the effort to eliminate smallpox, and he says that the same joint effort of capable people will solve today’s problems whether they be disease, hunger, or poverty.

               An article from the Harvard Business Review in December of 2002 by Charles Handy entitled Whats a Business For? discusses the need for business to solve the world’s problems in a slightly different way. He claims that scandals and dishonesty in the business world threaten to destroy the very capitalism upon which the businesses are built. People trust big businesses less and less all the time, and stock-market driven businesses and executives are always seeking for the quick profit, often sacrificing long-term growth potential. Handy claims that one way to solve this is to remove the dictatorships and oligarchies from business in favor of a more democratic method.  Offering people a salary isn’t enough in a world of ideas and patents.  If businesses switched to offering more percentage of profit-based incomes rather than fixed annual salaries, Handy implies that world conditions would improve.

               As each of us in our own right become rising stars, we need to consider what is our business for?  How will we use our influence?  How do we want to be remembered?  Handy encourages business to create cultures and not just profits, but what culture do we want to create in our businesses, and in turn, what kind of culture do we want in our world?  You want to know why these questions are important?  It’s because Uncle Ben was right.