Daily Post 1235
ENTREPRENEURSHIP AS A PROJECT
The media glamorisation for entrepreneurs, few super successes and a feeling that the business environment is ideal today for them has created hordes to enter into the fray. Business case studies being churned by business schools feeds these guys, solidifying the already nascent thought process. The billons dream and hitting the mag covers and becoming celebrities is at the core of the happening start up revolution. Hopefully, the churning gives us enough of human capital to take us to the next level of business.
What is lost in the process are the dark alleys of lives of likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, Dhirubhai Ambani, the much less successful and the also rans. The way they navigated their lives in the harshest of conditions which is radically different from the posh academic backgrounds and also their projections of a posh future. Entrepreneurship is just supposed to be a transitioning slide.
That it is a business that they are getting into, itself is lost.
The present environment propels this very idea. Business acumen is generally not talked about. Customers would come by is the feeling. Idea is the king. Entrepreneurship has become a project rather than freak trait; convergence of grit, skills, learning clearing the untrodden path whatever come may. There is no Plan B. Here we have C, D & E. As you decide to become a StartUp, the rechristened entrepreneurship of today, you have a readymade set of mentors, tutors, consultants, fund managers, incubators et al.
The founders are made to believe that this is only a journey and they would taken care if they follow the well trodden startup path. From project report to ppt to financial documents are directed and dictated. Govt has also pitched in. The ecosystem is hugely tech enabled. Yet the success remains abysmal. Nobody knows who has what axe to grind. Finding the big problem to solve and the purpose of your business enterprise does the magic. Monetisation will happen.
PROJECT MODE ENTREPRENEURSHIP DOES NOT GENERALLY DELIVER.