Entrepreneurship Development– But where are the Potential Entrepreneurs?

 

The underlying metaphor of so much of our thinking, though we rarely think of it as a metaphor, is our much celebrated idea of ‘the individual’ and, in business especially, ‘the self-made man or woman.’ But even a genius has to be sufficiently steeped in the culture that makes his or her invention possible. We will never understand the world of business, or for that matter any other human world, unless we begin with human interrelations and how people fit into cultures, organizations, and institutions.

One business hero of particular interest, especially in light of current corporate uncertainty, is the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur, according to the familiar John Wayne imagery (John Wayne was a legendary American cowboy hero of numerous epic Western films), is the lone frontiersman who single-handedly sets up an industry or perhaps establishes a whole new world. The myth is part and parcel of a much older American myth, the myth of individualism, the myth of the solitary hero. The entrepreneur simply brings John Wayne up-to-date and puts him firmly at the centre of the business world.

Loosely put, the world of business is made possible through an established set of practices, in which implicit rules, tacit knowledge, and collective values, needs, and understandings are the principal structure. It is not the individual motives and attributes or individual personalities that make the world of business. It may be true that behind every successful business is some entrepreneur, that is, one of those relatively rare individuals who is both creative and business-minded, who is willing to take considerable risks and work single-mindedly to turn a dream into a marketable reality. But corporations, once formed, do not operate on the same risk-prone, creative principles that motivated the originator of the business, and the corporate world could not possibly function if, as we so often hear, everyone were to aspire to be an entrepreneur.

Who is an entrepreneur and what is entrepreneurship? We probably think that the answer is obvious, but like the buzz-words and other fads being doled out in the quest for ‘intellectualisation of the domain of management,’ expressions like strategy, business-model and entrepreneurship are all pliant. Managers describe entrepreneurship with such terms as innovative, flexible, dynamic, risk taking, creative, and growth oriented. The popular press, on the other hand, often defines the term as starting and operating new ventures. For some, it refers to venture capital-backed start-ups and their kin; for others, to any small business. For some, corporate-entrepreneurship is a rallying cry while others consider it as an oxymoron.  Some people think of entrepreneurship as a specific stage in an organization’s life cycle (i.e., start-up), a specific role for an individual (i.e., founder), or a constellation of personality attributes (e.g., predisposition for risk taking; preference for independence). People have different perceptions of an entrepreneur - an Inventor or discoverer or innovator or an upstart in business clamouring and struggling for survival of his start-up and dreaming for growth through scaling-up and scoping-up to a successful and stable enterprise or simply selling off the start-up at a premium.

The continuing corporate obsession with the almost mythological character called the entrepreneur is both unrealistic and, if taken seriously, counterproductive. Most people are not entrepreneurial. Cheapening the word by taking any initiative or innovation as entrepreneurship only fogs our understanding about what this phenomenon really is. Entrepreneurship is itself a social practice, and it consists, in part, of appreciating marginal or neglected aspects of more general social practices.

The history of the word “entrepreneurship” is fascinating. Without getting into those details and controversies, whether entrepreneurship is an inborn personality-trait or a learned behaviour, let us focus on the definition formulated by Professor Howard Stevenson, the Godfather of entrepreneurship studies. For Stevenson, entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled. Entrepreneurship is thus a distinctive approach to managing.

To simplify this understanding, it is useful to view managerial behaviour in terms of extremes. At one extreme is what might be called the promoter type of manager, who feels confident of his or her ability to seize opportunity. This manager expects surprises and expects not only to adjust to change but also to capitalise on it and make things happen. At the other extreme is the trustee type, who feels threatened by change and the unknown and whose inclination is to rely on the status quo. To the trustee type, predictability fosters effective management of existing resources while unpredictability endangers them. Most people, of course, fall somewhere between the extremes. But it’s safe to say that as managers move closer to the promoter end of the scale they become more entrepreneurial, and as they move toward the trustee end of the scale they become less so (or, perhaps, more administrative).

Relentless focus with a sense of urgency in pursuit of a break, the opportunity may entail:

1. Pioneering a truly innovative product;
2. Devising a new business model;
3. Creating a better or cheaper version of an existing product; or
4. Targeting an existing product to new sets of customers.

These opportunity types are not mutually exclusive. For example, a new venture might employ a new business model for an innovative product. Likewise, the list above is not the collectively exhaustive set of opportunities available to organizations.

Many profit improvement opportunities are not novel, and thus are not entrepreneurial, for example, raising the price of a product or, hiring more field-sales-reps once a firm has a scalable sales strategy.

Before there can be entrepreneurship there must be the potential for entrepreneurship, whether in a community seeking to develop or in a large organization seeking to innovate. Entrepreneurial potential, however, requires potential entrepreneurs. Opportunities are seized by those who are prepared to seize them. Entrepreneurial activity does not occur in a vacuum. Instead, it is deeply embedded in a cultural and social context, often amid a web of human networks that are both social and economic. A group, an organization or a community could be entrepreneurial without necessarily having any discernible entrepreneurs per se. The group, organization, or community need not be already rich in entrepreneurs, but should have the potential for increasing entrepreneurial activity. Such potential exists in economically self-renewing communities and organizations. Regardless of the existing level of entrepreneurial activity, such "seedbeds" establish fertile ground for potential entrepreneurs when and where they perceive a personally viable opportunity.

Any agenda for developing Entrepreneurship and birthing Entrepreneurs rests on the basic understanding of the following very minimum requirements:

• Identifying and establishing policies that increase both their perceived feasibility and their perceived desirability.

 a.       Creating social perceptions that entrepreneurial activity is both desirable and feasible.

b.      Entrepreneurs prefer being seen as benefiting their communities, not as exploiting them.

•  Providing a "nutrient-rich" environment for potential entrepreneurs.

a.       Credible information, credible role models, along with emotional and psychological support as well as more tangible resources

b.      Opportunities to attempt innovative things at relatively low risk, e.g., trying and failing can be OK.

c.       Training interested people in critical competencies, raising their self-efficacy at key entrepreneurial tasks. We must also make resources both available and visible.

d.      Increasing the diversity of possible opportunities

• For developing Intrapreneurship and Intrapreneurs (Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurs within the Corporate Ventures)

a.       Increasing perceptions of positive outcomes for internal venturing, including intrinsic rewards such as a supportive culture

b.      Providing opportunities for managers to run an independent project or any of the existing entrepreneurial vehicles for channelling innovation and entrepreneurship.

Innovation in most organizations is inherently "illegitimate" as it unavoidably disrupts the status quo. Downsizing typically leads to less innovation. Stability, not innovation alone, makes companies and their people secure and successful.

Educators can help to increase perceptions of feasibility of entrepreneurship and desirability, not just for prospective entrepreneurs but also for community and its institutional leaders.

Globalisation has erased the line between business and International Business. Opportunities, all over the Globe, can now be pursued from anywhere in the world. India is parroting the western practice of introducing Entrepreneurship related courses in business schools, launching skills-universities, promoting Incubation Centres (New Enterprise Development Centres) and financing Entrepreneurship Development Centres (Training). Surely, there can be no single-universal prescription to such large initiatives. There is no visible evidence however, if these efforts have even considered the very basics of segmenting the target beneficiaries or customers for such relentless efforts. To illustrate the point, there are no noticeable signs of entrepreneurship education providers segmenting their market using any of the simple Segmentation bases (there are many more) for targeting their efforts:

DEMOGRAPHICS

• Gender: women
• Age: youth/young age
• Minorities

DELIVERY PREFERENCES

• Classroom, on-line, interactive

INDUSTRIES

• Technology
• Music/Leisure
• Medical services
• Others

STAGE OF ENTREPRENEUR/BUSINESS LIFECYCLE

• Pre-start-up decision entrepreneurs
• Nascent/intention entrepreneurs
• Start-up entrepreneurs
• Early growth: consolidation
• Growth entrepreneurs
• Corporate entrepreneurs
• Cashed out entrepreneurs
• Serial entrepreneurs

PSYCHOGRAPHICS

• Activities, interests, attitudes, beliefs, opinions

 

The intent is honourable. One does not know though, the depth and width of thought going into designing and executing the effort.  Developing Entrepreneurship in India requires Entrepreneurs not Administrators.

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First Published 07 Aug 21

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If Managers desire to be respected, they must first make their work virtuous

Every discipline or profession has its own self-glorifying vocabulary. It is how its proponents justify themselves, sell themselves, and think of themselves and what they do.

Professors arrogantly celebrate what they do in the noble semantics of truth and knowledge even when they spend most of their time and energy battling one another for position in superbly trivial but venomous campus politics and plagiarising to publish to escape perishing. But who would question their commitment to the truth, to illuminating young minds, and to protecting the values of civilization?

Politicians spread out in the concept of public service even while they pursue personal power and abuse the fears and prejudices of their voters. But who would question their virtue of devoting oneself to public service and public welfare?

Eminent ethical doctors feel terribly upset that the doctors, long known as saviours, play a key role in promoting kickbacks and bribes that oil every part of the healthcare machinery. Who would question the value of human life and well-being and Doctors as the angel-guardians who heal and save lives, an undeniably noble cause?

In the case of business, however, the language of self-description is hardly noble or self-glorifying. The simple phrase ‘the bottom line’ and the vulgar verb ‘making money’ summarize a one-dimensional image of business that is disgracefully uncomplimentary and, in the public perception, extremely negative.

We can readily understand why we should applaud people who devote themselves to public service, or search for truth and knowledge or cure illness and save lives. It is not so easy to understand why we should cheer for those who, as they themselves seem to claim, are out only for material gain for themselves. In many ways, business is an exemplary human activity, involving as it does mutual attention to needs, desires and demands, creative and productive activity, face-to-face negotiation, acknowledgment of certain rules of fair play, and the importance of trust and keeping one's word. When we talk about business as something less than fully human, or as degrading, then these virtues and concerns are lost from view and may even seem irrelevant. There is more than enough cynicism in the world about the callous attitudes in business. We reveal ourselves in the metaphors we choose. The business world is heavily influenced by images and metaphors that shape the strategies, structures and processes of organizations.

Robert C. Solomon (A Better Way to Think About Business: How Personal Integrity Leads to Corporate Success, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) lists some common metaphors used by business that he considers inappropriate to think about business.

Again and again we hear business described as a jungle, a fight for survival, a dog-eat-dog world, a game defined by its so-called winners and losers. “It’s a jungle out there” is one of the most pervasive metaphors that brings into business the classical Darwinian view of the survival of the fittest where the rule is kill or be killed. But this metaphor is grounded on fundamentally wrong scientific premises. Evolutionary systems theory shows that cooperation is an essential strategy in nature, and the jungle metaphor completely ignores this fact. Of course, some of the animal metaphors are charming: A nice boss is a "teddy bear" and a tough negotiator is a "tiger," but most of them are demeaning. Employees, executives, and competitors are described as snakes in the grass, rats and a wide variety of other rodents, and insects and arachnids. Corporations in turn are described as fish tanks, shark-infested waters, and snake pits, as well as the botanical image of the jungle.

Closely related to the jungle metaphor is the conception of business as war and the marketplace as the battlefield. War, a familiar metaphor in so many corporate boardrooms ("the war room"), conjures up more bloody imagery than Darwinian Theory. The war metaphor feeds on our collective insecurity. Few of us as individuals would initiate a violent conflict.

Self-proclaimed realists will tell you that the world is a rough place, that life is unfair, and that only the ruthless survive. But what they call "real" is only the projection of their own bad faith. Why are hostile takeovers considered good business, whereas taking care of employees is considered soft-hearted and un-business-like? Military metaphors are intrinsically nationalistic, alarmist, pessimistic, conservative, and authoritarian. This has grim implications for the mental health of a productive organization. Paranoia is not usually conducive to creativity or competitiveness.

Just as every discipline has its own self-glorifying vocabulary, it also has its heroes, its role models, those who are admired from afar, looked up to and emulated. University professors sing the praises of Socrates, Newton, Einstein, Vishwamitra, Tagore, Ramanujam and Raman. But in popular culture and films, managers are stereotyped as masculine, selfish, mercenary, conscienceless, greedy, fixers, or out an out idiots. In business, we have a cascade of best-selling books lauding the management secrets of Attila the Hun (a major tribal military ruler in 5th-century Europe, best known for his savage fighting) and Machiavelli (connotes political deceit, deviousness, sneaky, cunning, and lacking a moral code). They are full of enthusiasm for "Sun-Tzu" (the art of war), but they neglect his compatriots Confucius and Kautilya, who know the real "secret" of Asian prosperity: virtue, integrity, and a real sense of community. Now, what does all this say of a civilized modern executive that he should take such characters as a guide to business strategy? And what does it say about business, that it honours such "heroes"?

Less violent but as dehumanizing as the jungle and war metaphors is the idea of business as a money-making machine. The machine metaphor transforms everything human into something cold and mechanical. Emotions, affections, and relationships disappear, to be replaced by mere causes and effects. Corporations are no longer to be identified with the people and personalities that make them up but with the system in which people are replaceable parts and in which personality serves as a lubricant or as grist and inefficiency. The business world as a whole ceases to become a matter of human aspiration and is reduced to market mechanisms. The notion of "re-engineering," for example, captures in a word what is wrong with so much of our current thinking about business. Employees and managers are, after all, "human resources," to be replenished as needed. Do we expect the carburettor to be loyal to the engine? And what does the engine owe to the carburettor in return?

The sad truth is that the image of materialistic selfishness easily eclipses the many virtues of business and people in business, their dedication to their work and their companies, their surprising selflessness in facing the job to be done, their pride in their products and services, and their relationships with colleagues and customers. People do not just serve purposes; they first of all have purposes and personalities of their own. It is the "art of the deal" that gets celebrated, not the production and distribution of quality (even lifesaving) goods and services. It is the windfall profit, the "killing" in the market, the outfoxing of the competition, the cost-cutting and axe-to-the-max downsizing that make reputations and headlines, not the routine addition of jobs, the satisfaction of jobs well done, the camaraderie within the corporation, the unpaid (but not unrewarded) compensations of integrity.

Competition is extremely valuable and often necessary in business, but it is not as such the purpose or goal of business life. There is healthy competition, and there is sick, debilitating, depraved competition. There is constructive, positive, even inspiring competition, and there is mutually destructive, negative, inhibiting competition. War and jungle metaphors give us the latter, along with all zero-sum games whose point is to punch out your opponent, debilitate the competition, and win at his or her expense. Business competition, by contrast, offers us the best example of the former, in which competition serves as a spur to one's own excellence and productivity. It provides incentives to improve, creating new heroes, ideals, and possibilities.

How we do business, and what business does to us, has everything to do with how we think about business, talk about business, conceive of business, practice business. If we think, talk, conceive, and practice business as a ruthless, cutthroat, dog-eat-dog activity, then that, of course, is what it will become. And so, too, it is what we will become, no matter how often, in our off hours and personal lives, we insist otherwise.

If, on the other hand, business is conceived, as it has often been conceived, as an enterprise based on trust and mutual benefits, an enterprise for civilized, virtuous people, then that, in turn, will be equally self-fulfilling. It will also be much more amiable, secure, enjoyable, and, last but not least, profitable.

Unless we transcend the dominator paradigm (to control, govern, or rule by superior authority or power), which seems to permeate the thinking and actions of people in Western civilizations, it will be difficult to come up with alternative metaphors and new visions like ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम् the world is one family)’ to guide the evolution of the business world and the emergence of evolutionary corporations. Let us be reminded of Trimurti or Trideva (त्रिमूर्ति trimūrti, "three forms" or "trinity"), the triple deity of supreme divinity in Hinduism, in which the cosmic functions of creation, maintenance, and destruction are personified as a triad of deities, typically Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer. Let us not forget that the Supreme-Manager is Bhagwan Vishnu and let us draw out the symbolic and inner meaning of each of His incarnations (https://www.amrita.edu/news/inner-significance-dashavatars).

 

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First Published 28 Jul 21

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Na Dainyam Na Palayanam न दैन्यं न पलायनम्*

There is no reason to believe that any Indian political leader is anti-India. They all mean well and wish well of the country. They all have illusionary visions and Indian spirituality.

The phrase ‘Vasudhaiva Kuṭumbakam’ (Sanskrit: वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम्) consists of several words: vasudhā (transl. 'the earth'); ēva (transl. 'is thus'); and kuṭumbakam (transl. 'family').

    अयं निजः परो वेति गणना लघुचेतसाम्। ( ayaṃ nijaḥ paro veti gaṇanā laghucetasām)

    उदारचरितानां तु वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम्॥ ( udāracaritānāṃ tu vasudhaiva kuṭumbakam )

The original verse appears in Chapter 6 of Maha Upanishad VI.71-73. Also found in the Rig Veda , it is considered the most important moral value in the Indian society. This verse of Maha Upanishad is engraved in the entrance hall of the parliament of India.

‘Vasudhaiva Kuṭumbakam’ belonged to the world where there was only the Vedic Civilisation and is no more valid in the times of ‘I, me, mine and ours’ ethos. A Hindu may believe that the whole world is ‘one family’ but the rest of the 85 percent of the people of the world may not think so.

Nehru misread China, Shastri misread Pakistan, Indira misread Khalistan, Guljari Lal, Morarji, Charan Singh, VP Singh, Gujaral, Devegowda, and Chandra Shekhar were unable to read anything, Rajiv misread Sri Lankans, Narsinha Rao misread Italians, Vajpayee misread Pakistan, ManMohan did not read anything, and Modi has misread China.

All politicians know and understand that ‘poverty’ is India’s biggest problem. Most of them want to correct it but they do not have it in them to deal with the problem directly. Indian political leadership has conclusively proven itself consistently deficient in its foresight and capability in policymaking and action taking over the last 75 years. 

If India lost the 1962 war with China, due to lack of appropriate weapons and ammunition in the hands of our soldiers, India may lose the 2020-21 war against this virus due to lack of appropriate weapons and ammunition in the hands of our doctors.

A wiser political leader Vajpayee had written:

कर्तव्य के पुनीत पथ को हमने स्वेद से सींचा है,
कभी-कभी अपने अश्रु और— प्राणों का अर्ध्य भी दिया है।

किंतु, अपनी ध्येय-यात्रा में— हम कभी रुके नहीं हैं।
किसी चुनौती के सम्मुख कभी झुके नहीं हैं।

आज,
जब कि राष्ट्र-जीवन की समस्त निधियाँ, दाँव पर लगी हैं,
और,
एक घनीभूत अंधेरा—हमारे जीवन के सारे आलोक को निगल लेना चाहता है;

हमें ध्येय के लिए जीने, जूझने और
आवश्यकता पड़ने पर— मरने के संकल्प को दोहराना है।

आग्नेय परीक्षा की इस घड़ी में—
आइए, अर्जुन की तरह उद्घोष करें:
‘‘न दैन्यं न पलायनम्।’’

A ‘Murali-Dhar’ does not remain a ‘Murali-Dhar’ but goes on to become a ‘Giri-Dhar’ and a ‘Chakra-Dhar’ as the situation requires.

If ‘Maha Upanishad’ gives us, the value of ‘Vasudhaiva Kuṭumbakam,’ ‘Katha Upanishad’ gives the inspiration to Swami Vivekananda to give us ‘Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached. The words "Arise, awake..." can be found in the 1.3.14 chapter of the ‘Katha Upanishad’, where Yama is advising Nachiketa –

उत्तिष्ठत जाग्रत प्राप्य वरान्निबोधत, (Uttisthata Jagrata Prapya Varannibodhata)
क्षुरासन्न धारा निशिता दुरत्यद्दुर्गम पथ: तत् कवयो वदन्ति | (Kshurasanna Dhara Nishita Durataya durgama Pathah tat kavayo Vadanti)

Arise! Awake! Approach the great and learn.
Like the sharp edge of a razor is that path,
so the wise say—hard to tread and difficult to cross. 

 

* न दैन्यं न पलायनम् was the motto of my school that I wore on the badge of my barrette cap.

 

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First published 27 April 2021

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