Two days ago, I attended a (supposedly) interactive session on Entrepreneurship Development held by the MBA dept. of my college. I thoroughly liked the seminar, but I am not in agreement with a few things mentioned.
An anecdote one of the lecturers mentioned was: A youth was making his living by catching 50 fish a day with an old and tattered net in a small pond. He completed his catch and made his day's earnings in just a couple of hours, taking the rest of the day off. A wise man came up to him and beckoned the youth to accompany him to the bank, where he would help him avail a loan for buying a better net. The youth asked him why he would need a better net, since his old one was serving the job quite well, to which the wise man replied that the youth could catch more fish with that and more efficiently too. Eventually, he could cast more nets, catch more fish, save up to buy a trawler and take to the seas. The youth asked him, "What then?" The wise man replied that he could recruit fishermen for doing the actual work and sit back and relax. "Isn't that what I am doing right now? Why go through all that eventually relax when I can jolly well do that right now?", was the youth's reply.
The lecturer told the youth that he did not have what it took to be a successful entrepreneur, and that if we all were to think that way, we would never be successful.
I disagree. People tend to think that growth and expansion is the only form of development. If the youth had looked for growth like the wise man suggested, here is the scenario that I predict would have happened. The youth would have availed a loan and bought a better net. In order to pay off his loan, he would have caught more fish every day. Due to this indiscriminate fishing, the fish population would have kept dwindling, eventually coming down to zero. The youth would now be minus his livelihood, with a loan on his head. Or if he had managed to pay off his loan, he would be left with no means to earn his daily bread. There is such a thing as development, and such a thing as sustainable development. You can't toy with nature and get away with it. Mining is a prime example for that.
Another point of discontention was: 5% of the people are entrepreneurs, the other 95% being workers. The workers do the same thing day after day, repeating the same acts, not looking for growth, not looking for development, in a rut. The entrepreneurs are dynamic people of action, with ambition and vision, always welcoming change- great thinkers who change the face of society.
I would like to point out that the workers are the ones who cause the change, the entrepreneurs merely promote it and provide a congenial environment for the workers. The success of a space shuttle is in the hands of the many thousands of faceless engineers who are involved in the intricate plans and details concerning it, not the CEO of the space agency. It is only the credit that goes to the CEO. Bill Gates may now be an entrepreneur, but he was a programmer when he started Microsoft.
And finally, one lecturer on money management asked the audience if anyone dared to say that they don't need money. He went on to say that everybody needs money.
True, we need money. But it's not that every single person in this world does. Tribals living in the forest feel no need for it. Indeed, they have lived for generations without money. Can anyone dare to say that Mother Teresa needs money to survive, if she was currently alive? Does The Mahatma need money? The lecturer's statement was reckless.
And thus, I end my post.
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