ENTREPRENEURIAL SUCCESS AND THE PROFOUNDNESS OF THOUGHT

ENTREPRENEURIAL SUCCESS AND THE PROFOUNDNESS OF

THOUGHT

Whenever I am asked to define business, I end up repeating this rather simple statement. Business is the one right thinking which captures the creation of some inextant but needed value for an end user/consumer. In same simplicity, I would respond to the question of who an entrepreneur is , as that person who creates a business.

This is irrespective of whether or not the business is a for-profit or social enterprise. The bottom-line, here, is that of the purposefulness of the value-creating engagement—purposefulness which must be adjudged satisfactory by the end user/customer through repetitive consumption or usage of the product or service {the very embodiment of value}.

Entrepreneurs, expectedly, are of varying degree of ‘smartness’. Some may come smart enough to zero in on this right thinking prior to starting the business, while others may discover this thinking somewhere along the journey. This timing difference notwithstanding , the ‘right thinking’ becomes known as the business model and straight-on defines the entrepreneur’s scope of engagement i.e. what value to create, for whom, who to bring on board, how to create, the specific activities to be performed or undertaken, choice of location etc.

The one right thinking or business model, to the extent of its aptness and profoundness of thought (depth) coupled with the boldness of execution along the line of its uniqueness of intended or real value created, is, for the most part, what drives entrepreneurial success. This one right thinking can variously come as mission/vision statement, a slogan, or simply the expression of core values.

Entrepreneurs or those who have successfully created businesses seem to have a common understanding --- one better captured by the handsome and smart founder of Tweeter, and Square, Jack Dorsey. He was, once known, to have said, ‘’everyone has an idea, but it’s really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you work on the idea’’. I will quickly add that ‘’other people’’ is understood to be the ‘’right’’ people, and not any and every other person from the population of available persons (a subject Jim Collins very well talked about in his book Good To Great).

From when Gottlieb Daimler penned down Mercedes Benz’ iconic ‘’The Best or Nothing’’, George Merck 2d’s definition of Merck’s philosophy as‘’we try to remember that medicine is for the patient….It is not for the profits…’’, to the 1980 scripting of Apple’s mission statement by the late Steve Jobs, ‘’To make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind’’, these companies have attained their well-known enviable performance heights by attracting team members who literarily drove the written words to action.

When asked to describe what kind of company the ,globally, fastest growing ride-hailing services provider, UBER, is , Travis Kalanick its cofounder and CEO would let you know it is simply a ‘’time company’’. This simpleness of characterization drove Travis Kalanick to acquiring Anthony Levandowski’s self-driving Truck startup, OTTO, for $680m, bringing Anthony over to UBER to head its autonomous driving unit. The result of which was the Pittsburg Pensylvania, USA launching of UBER’s self-driving cars. In the same vein Thuan Pham, formerly of VM Wares, was hired as CTO ( chief technology officer) after a historic 30-hour interview by Travis.

In Africa, and for the most part, business-like activities (my preferred coinage) are not without slogans, catch phrases, and buzzwords—some of which sound attractive, compelling, and ‘’cool’’ enough, but have they been driven into action by their ‘’’wordsmiths’’?. These bald-faced hustling activities, sure, ‘’makes’’ money for the hustlers, and is popularly and ignorantly greeted as business success from entrepreneurial efforts.

People have been schooled, and fooled into defining all seemingly legal but hustling activities as business, and the hustlers as entrepreneurs. To the public, the distinction between ‘’earning money’’ and ‘’making money’’ on one hand, and that of ‘’creating real value’’ for the end user and ‘’packaging, even if by deception’’ is not of any importance in the understanding and practice of business and entrepreneurship.

My experience with using banks ATMs, in Nigeria, for instance, leaves me with no doubt as to classifying these owners as ‘’money making hustlers’’ and not entrepreneurs. These ATMs with boldly written 24/7 banking, which (as I frequently experience) do not dispense cash 70% of the time, often with long queues, cannot in all fairness, and in 2017 terms, be seen as providing competitive banking services. Any set of 21yr-olds in Silicon Valley can write better functional and customer-friendly codes than those on which these ATMs run. And as for entrepreneurship in banking, Elon Musk , the world’s most ambitious entrepreneur (if he sets his mind and head on it) can operate a bank in Nigeria which will be better in service delivery than all currently existing banks.

Elon Musk will not get this done from some ‘’X’’ number of superior banking experience (he is not a banker), but by his exercise of the power of creativity, problem solving, assembling the needed A+ talents, his ‘’high intensity’’ work personality etc. Elon is not, primarily, a money-chaser like Nigerian bank owners and their lazy managers, and other business-like activities operators. This is just the point---- that missed by local ‘’business’’ people, and that which will delay the global competitiveness of Africa.