Function of Entrepreneurism

The best entrepreneurs exist as societies true wealth and value creators. They balance the need for survival today, with the needs of tomorrow.

Entrepreneurism: Escaping the Cave

I think a lot, too much in fact. They say this is a characteristic of an entrepreneur, a knowledge hungry person who creates and innovates new ways of doing business, someone who always wants to learn, grow, and lead. I’d say the entrepreneur is the artist of the business world and I also believe that the artist is the highest type of man. Someone who strives for perfection and attains a noble amount of it should be considered an artist, whatever the discipline may be.
My motive herein is to shed light on the current situation in the business world - one must know where one stands before they can walk in the right direction. I want to use examples from the class to back up my thinking towards the business world. I have selected writings from Descartes, Plato, and Radhakrishnan. I will also be speaking from a Buddhist perspective towards life in general and be attempting to show with the sources stated above, that business can and should mature to ensure humanities healthy existence on this planet.
One thing that creates hardship for humanity is an illusion in life that seems to have captured the majority of people’s lives. The illusion is that of the self, believe there is no self. Descartes famously stated, “I think, therefore I am.” Here is where most people make that false assumption; they think that their mind is their essence, what makes them who they are. This is known as the ego, the illusory self that makes life a continual process of becoming, always striving and craving something that it does not have at the moment.
From here we go to Plato. As I understand it, the Allegory of the Cave is a way of explaining the progressive/upward growth of a human life. One starts out inevitably a little ignorant about the world and their place in it. An infant does not realize that he or she is not the center of the universe until life’s lessons have shown them otherwise. Plato talks about how the shadow watchers meddle in the affairs of what they can readily see. They watch and they gather information about the various objects, molding an ever-increasing understanding of how they think the world works. Those who know how to play the game of shadows takes the cake and the applaud from the others who too dwell on the shadows.
You can liken this life to anyone who seeks acceptance from others before respecting and believing in themselves. These people come in every shape and color. They can be wealthy, poor, good looking, etc. and they will always be asking for you to give them something without the favor being returned. They beg for life energy from others; they are like sponges. In life, people are either assets or liabilities, and while we should always be understanding of everyone and their situation, people as assets or liabilities simply means we may have to look deeper in order to understand the value that every human being brings to the table, if at first they are liabilities. One characteristic that the ego-inflicted person will always bring to the experience of others is that of time. Time is tricky, one of the trickiest and weirdest things one can think about. There is no such thing as time; therefore this is the illusion that people inflicted with egos are under.
I liken the form of the Good to enlightenment and, the purpose of business to the role of aiding the process of enlightenment or the journey toward the Good. There is a lot of talk and concern in most businesses, successful and not, about the bottom line. The bottom line is the amount of money made after all expenses are accounted for. This is what we call profit. But, there is something missing in most accounting methods, that is the cost to the world and humanity. Usually a business considers only its factual or immediate data when considering costs and expenses. This form of considering costs is holistically the same as the individual thinking in terms of immediate cost to oneself. The only difference between the two is that one is a business entity and the other a human entity.
The Buddha laid out for us a path to enlightenment. It begins with the Four Noble Truths, they are; existence is suffering, cause of suffering is craving, cessation of suffering is attainable, and lastly the Eightfold Path. One can follow the Eightfold Path as a means to right conduct in the business world. Because the world of the shadows described by Plato is played out perfectly in business, an unending world of false appearances and beliefs about profit and gain, not understanding the cave at the level of leadership will only make the cave deeper. It takes a moment of presence to set the world on the proper footing that can be lost so easily in the hustle of the 21st century.
This brings us to Radhakrishnan and his teaching on freedom. He reminds us that at the moment, brought to us by the multitude of past events, there are a number of choices available to the agent. He likens life to a game of cards, we are dealt a past-dependent hand and we have the option to play it as we wish. We can gain freedom through the teachings of the Buddha and his Eightfold Path.
Perhaps along the lines of Plato again, I see the world as containing multiple dimensions, cycles, or wavelengths. What I am attempting to explain is much beyond what I have done so far. But there are certain mental footholds that I can rely on from my past to guide my thinking. They include: everything is a wave, frequency or cycle, the truth of cause and effect, and the interconnectedness of all things. When one takes on a life philosophy of ‘life is short’ or ‘live it up’ they could be falling into a trap. Patience is a virtue that many people are having a hard time with these days. With all the means to instant gratification brought to us by a false sense of improvement through technology, people are in a sense becoming a slave to a master. It’s funny, sort of, but this is exactly the story of the Matrix. However much merit you think is contained within that film is up to you but I am a believer in the plausibility of the films imagination. In fact, a professor of philosophy from an Ivy League school proposed that such a scenario is possible. He states that technologically advanced civilizations, ones much more advanced than our own, could posses the capability to create a computer generated world detailed enough to fool our senses. In the Matrix, when Neo takes the red pill, he is in effect turning his head away from the shadows and towards the truth, just like in Plato’s Cave!
This takes us to technology and the developers of technology - organizations and businesses. If the business owners and managers are gripped by their egos, they will look for technology to speed up the process of becoming. They want more customers, more cash flow, more product, better marketing tools etc. The ego is never satisfied. They make decisions based on future projections, forgetting the power of the moment. They act for the sake of becoming something they currently are not because they believe in a future heaven but unknowingly create a present hell.
While working towards a goal is a noble thing for anyone to do, if the journey towards the goal is not enjoyable in itself, then there is no real progress. Technology is here to help us experience life in a more desirable way- to ease some of life’s hardships, not to numb them completely. Technology should help us make more efficient use of our resources, not allow us to consume them more rapidly. Right now we use our technology for the most part to continue to make the consumption loop bigger. A consumption loop is a term I just coined but is meant to describe the amount of energy and resources that are needed to reclaim a good once it is used, if it is reclaimed at all. Modern business will have to change this in order to add value to society and the globe as a whole. The ideal situation is a company that is completely self sufficient, or a home, or an individual etc. But his does not mean that interdependency is undesirable.
One thing that leads to bad decision-making is when managers and CEO’s think about the future and subjugate the present in order to attain a desired state some time down the road. Every now and then this strategy pays off and the rewards can be very gratifying. This sort of thinking often leads to poor ethical behavior because managers will look at the potential reward versus the current sacrifice. Usually the sacrifice is something immaterial, like the conscience of that person and everyone involved. They value the monetary, visually obvious, factual gain over the less visible, though more important, preservation and building of the form of the Good.
Our lives need meaning. Victor Frankl wrote a famous book called Man’s Search for Meaning and in it he essentially (or existentially) says that man must create his own meaning in life. A major part of our lives in composed of working. Those of us most satisfied with our jobs can say that our work provides meaning to our life, usually in the form of doing some Good. Again, my assertion is that business philosophies that keep this in mind and preserve its meaning above that of the bottom line ($ profit) they will gain wealth from sources they never thought possible. When companies can add value in the form of meaning, everyone wins, everyone in the company as well as society. Husbands and wives come home with a smile on their face and warmth in their hearts, which should have obvious benefits to society.
We all know that the Earth’s resources are being strained to the breaking point. Even if the situation is considerably less drastic than the media and scientists want us to believe, we can still do ourselves a favor by making our planet a more beautiful place to live. Most cities are usually dirty, the air is brown and unfit to breathe, and to change this we need to change our habits and re-examine our values. We have built a ship that is unfit to sail across the sea. In Buddhism there is a notion of crossing the river to the other side. The river is an analogy for life and the other side symbolizes enlightenment or nirvana. Buddhists also talk about vehicles for crossing the river; our vehicles are our values and beliefs.
How will modern business bring us out of this cave and allow us to cross the river to the other side? Today, we live in a capitalistic world. The question then is; how do we create businesses that are fit to thrive in such a materialistic world but also respect the dignity of all humans?
In a book entitled Entrepreneurism: A Philosophy and a Sensible Alternative for the Market Economy, the authors point out that there are two fundamental and distinctive human needs: creation and ownership. The two most opposite economic systems, capitalism and communism, only one is provided. They tell the reader that the solution or middle ground is entrepreneurism. They define entrepreneurism as a way of satifying both of these intrinsic human needs and doing so with respect to themselves and the society as a whole.
Sometimes small business is the best. In a small business everyone has the ability and information to understand the big picture of what the entity is trying to accomplish. In these situations creativity is much more easily cultivated from the employees. We need this kind of creative energy to flow in out economies. It will help us stay competitive and it will keep the right minds in charge. One owner’s solution to this was to keep his business small enough so that all partners (replacement of employee terminology and he made them all part-owners overnight) could grasp the company in imagination. He also instated salary rules that prohibited outrageous pay to top executives, allotted a percentage of profit to help sustain the company, and another portion to go towards community efforts like non-profits. The company is called Scott Bader Commonwealth and it is located in the UK.
Companies like these will, I believe, start to set the standard in the business world. The companies that have the vision and the courage to lead instead of follow will prevail. I hope to own such company as Commonwealth in the near future and if I am fortunate enough to do so I will always have the truths discovered through philosophy to guide my decisions.