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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COVID Confusions

 

COVID-19 is a new acronym coined for Corona-Virus-Induced-Disease of the year 2019. Year 2020 made some old word or phrases suddenly very fashionable and buzzing with new meanings, and injected them into active vocabulary of people. Corona, a word hitherto associated with the Sun, novelty and SARS-Coronavirus-1 was not so much in use but became suddenly a dreaded word linked to COVID-19. Positivity, a word that was generally used for the practice of being or tendency to be positive or optimistic in attitude up until then, took on the other meaning of the presence rather than absence of a certain substance, condition, or feature, now a measure of incidence of disease.

 

Check out some of these words or phrases for yourself, because your inability to use them in conversations may be mistaken as your ignorance – animal-human interface, asymptomatic, carrier, clinical trials, community spread, contact tracing, Contagious, Droplets, Epidemic, flatten the curve, herd immunity, HRCT scan, incubation period, Isolation, Mask, mRNA Vaccines, Mutant, Outbreak, Oxygen-concentrator, Oximeter, Pandemic, Pathogen, patient zero, PCR test, personal protective equipment (PPE), Plasma, Quarantine, Rapid-Antigen Test, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), Screening, self-isolate, social distancing, Super spreader, Symptomatic, Transmission, Vax, Ventilator, Viral Vector Vaccines, Zoonotic – and the list goes on.

 

Some proper nouns also made their way in the active vocabulary – Wuhan, AstraZeneca, Covax, Covaxin, Covishield, Sputnik5, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen, Novavax, Coronil, CoviSelf, Remdesivir, 2-DG, and so on; but the most conspicuous proper noun is FAUCI.

 

Anthony Stephen FAUCI (born December 24, 1940) is an American physician-scientist and immunologist who serves as the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the chief medical advisor to the president. He has acted as an advisor to every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan. From 1983 to 2002, Fauci was one of the world's most frequently cited scientists across all scientific journals. In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, The New Yorker and The New York Times described Fauci as one of the most trusted medical figures in the United States. Currently Fauci is the Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden, officially appointed in 2021.

 

After initially declaring in April of last year that the virus was “not a major threat to the people of the United States” and that it was “not something the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about,” Fauci repeatedly urged Americans not to wear masks early in the pandemic. Later, Fauci admitted that he had believed all along that masks were effective but said he had wanted to ensure that supplies would be reserved for medical professionals. In other words, he asserted that he had the right to lie to the public for what he believed to be their own benefit. If Fauci is correct that masks effectively contain the spread, then the cost of his misinformation as the pandemic worsened may be incalculably large, for the US community. (https://www.delcotimes.com/opinion/chris-freind-dr-fauci-needs-a-dose-of-reality/article_9bce984e-7641-11eb-8c87-4f0114a8a7a2.html )

 

After repeatedly dismissing the theory that the COVID-19 virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, Fauci now says he cannot rule out the theory.

 

Fauci has now backtracked on his comments about the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for the Chinese lab under his leadership, that funding was not for “gain of function” research, a laboratory technique that intentionally makes pathogens more dangerous and transmissible. Gain of function research in Wuhan was indeed funded through one of Fauci’s grants.

 

Late last week, COVID policies stated that fully vaccinated individuals do not need to wear masks indoors or outdoors, any longer. Defending the policy, Fauci declared that the abolition of mask mandates was not a contradiction of previous policy but instead followed “evolving science” on the virus; although no examples of this supposedly new scientific evidence were forthcoming. Fauci then added to the confusion by declaring, apparently on his own authority, that young children would still be required to wear masks in school. Then, just a gay later, Fauci suggested that it was “reasonable” for businesses to maintain mask mandates even for vaccinated Americans, in blatant defiance of the CDC’s recent guidance. Whichever way one looks at it, Fauci has become a key player in the current controversy, which completes his transformation from an independent doctor into a political football, at the age of 80 years.

 

Fauci has also steadily moved the goalposts on the percentage of the population that will need to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. Earlier this year, he said herd immunity would be achieved when 60% were vaccinated; in recent interviews, he has spewed out numbers as high as 85%. At the very least, the top infectious diseases expert of the US and chief medical adviser to Biden is loose with the facts and is prone to changing his mind. To be fair, the pandemic caught a lot of people unaware, but the thing about Fauci is that he always is so sure of himself. (https://nypost.com/2021/01/24/dr-fauci-needs-to-be-held-responsible-for-mistakes-devine/ ).

 

India has done well in vaccinating the armed forces personnel with 90% of them having already received both doses of vaccine. India did not listen to the US guidelines (CDC) on reopening of schools, which is now being associated with untold misery that followed in Texas.

 

Luckily, Indian policy-makers do listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci but do not blindly subscribe to all his utterances. Good, is not it, that while being open to all the information, suggestions, knowledge and advice coming from everywhere, we have a mind of our own. When it comes to inconsistent and improvisational COVID messaging, no one can surpass Dr. Anthony Fauci.

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First published 24 May 21

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I Have Tested Positive. Am I Going To Die?

I am not insensitive to the grief of so many around who have already lost someone close to this terrible disease. I feel and share their grief and anger having lost not just one but many from amongst my family and friends over the last few days. While they were gasping for life, all of them repeatedly asked me this question, “Am I going to die?” Many others, who were by their side, attended by the same medical teams, also asked this question recurrently. Of them, many survived but a few could not.

Our pain is unique to us, our relationship to the person we lost is unique, and the emotional processing can feel different to each person. It is acceptable for us to take the time we need and remove any expectation of how we should be performing as we process our grief.

When we lose a loved one, the pain we experience can feel unbearable. Understandably, grief is complicated and we sometimes wonder if the pain will ever end. We go through a variety of emotional experiences such as anger, confusion, and sadness.

This post reflects my concern for those who are battling for life and for their family and friends who are equally anxious.

“I have tested positive. Am I going to die?” is a straightforward question that most people would like answered. This simple question is hard to answer. Ask this to someone who has seen a dear one succumb to this disease and the frank answer would be, “to be true and forthright, yes you are going to die, unless some miracle happens.” Ask the same question to someone who has seen a dear one survive this disease and the likely answer would be, “it is going to be a long, painful and apprehensive battle, but don’t worry, everything will be fine.”

A forthright question, “I have tested positive. Am I going to die?” is remarkably challenging to be answered by a bystander to the agony of the raging pandemic, who can only look at numbers and statistics to support his answer.

When the risk of death from COVID-19 is discussed, the Case Fatality Rate, sometimes called Case Fatality Risk or Case Fatality Ratio, or CFR, is often used. The CFR is very easy to calculate. The number of people who have died, divided by the total number of people diagnosed with the disease is CFR.

CFR is the ratio between the number of confirmed deaths from the disease and the number of confirmed cases, not total cases. That means that it is not the same as the risk of death for an infected person and, in early stages of fast-changing situations like that of COVID-19, probably not even very close to the true risk for an infected person.

Recall the question we asked at the beginning- if someone is infected with COVID-19, how likely is it that they will die? What we want to know is not the Case Fatality Rate; it is the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR). CFR is not the answer to the question, for two reasons. First, CFR relies on the number of confirmed cases, and many cases are never confirmed; secondly, CFR relies on the total number of deaths, and with COVID-19, some people who are sick and may die soon, are not counted in total number of deaths until have not died. The first reason inflates CFR while the second one deflates it.

With the COVID-19 outbreak, it can take between two to eight weeks for people to go from first symptoms to death, according to data from early cases. With CFR data available for the last 67 weeks that this pandemic has been raging, it is seen that the CFR for a country is not fluctuating as wildly as it was in the first 40 weeks and the CFR for many countries, including India, have not seen large deviations from a stable trend line over the last 18 week.

It is exceptionally important however to note that CFR for cases under Home-Isolation, under Medical-care and under critical-care are different. Further, these CFRs vary across states and locations within India. National CFR is an aggregated mean of all of this CFRs. The cases under critical care are overwhelming the health-care-system at this time, for which the CFR is logically and expectedly much higher.

With IFR being non-available, CFR is being used, albeit quite cautiously, to answer the question, “I have COVID-19. Am I going to die?” and the tremendously relieving answer to the question with a very high chance of being true, at least for patients under home-isolation and those kept in quarantine is a very loud NO. I hope the COVID-19 survivors, who constitute over 98% of the confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections will join the chorus.

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First published 11 May 2021

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