AN ENTREPRENEURIAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE DAVID AND GOLIATH STORY

‘’Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen’’--- Hebrews 11:1 (KJV)

This piece has taken the longest of time, judging from what I did doing the rest of the articles on this blog, from inception. It was not that I had to spend quite a great deal of time searching for supportive information. It was not also due to an internal debate, within me, as to the aptness or otherwise of its captioning. I was excited when I thought of the idea of this work, as with every other article, but no sooner had I started than it hit me straight up in the head that members of the Christian faith may look at this work as a ‘’devilish/satanic’’ attempt to diminish the spiritual essence of this work’s underlying biblical story, as told in the Holy book, the Bible.

I, therefore, think the following clarification is necessary and only hope it suffices. First off, I cannot stand before Jesus Christ, the Son of God, (if He were to come back now), look at Him and say boldly that I am a Christian, not because I don’t go to church but that I presently fall short of His prescribed standards. I am, therefore, not a competent authority to even contemplate reinterpreting the scriptures, and so that is not what I intend doing here. I am blessed by God, through creation, and through grace by the coming of Jesus Christ, to understand and run with the thinking that even the imperfect God-created being can get some previously unimaginable tasks meaningfully accomplished to provide succour to God’s-created mankind.

The intent, here, is not to rationalise Man’s imperfect state of being, for I know that he can even do better as he betters his relationship with God – and the ‘’hows’’ of which are clearly detailed in the Bible. In a nutshell I boldly make the point, with this write-up, that the very best of modern entrepreneurship, which I have continuously referred to as A+ entrepreneurship, is deeply rooted in the battle of David and Goliath as well and completely told by the Holy Bible. The long and short story of David and Goliath has it that David was a young herdsman for his father, and Goliath an accomplished warlord who at the time was a terror and well-feared by the people of Israel.

Goliath, leading the Philistines in a battle pitched against the Israelites, had thrown a challenge to any man from among the Israelites to engage him in a fight-to-kill battle with the understanding that the loser’s side will remain in servitude to the winner’s. David, according to the Bible story of 1Samuel:17 (KJV), the very unlikely one going by extant popular thinking, volunteered to take on Goliath; and he did kill Goliath. I do not know the number of times this story has been told to Christians and Church-going folks all over the world but I am sure that for a majority of those told it has remained one story of some magical display of God’s powers, and this take I disagree with. On the contrary I reason that the Bible story showcased the perfect nature of God distilled down to the truth in His words, and how David proved the correctness of God’s nature through the action of killing Goliath.

I reason again that God created man to be able to do what David did but that David, amongst other men, did take his to a height previous unassociated with anyone who shared same commonalities such as age, social status, experience/inexperience in warfare, etc. In David’s thought and actions, as far as that battle with Goliath, one finds encapsulated the very essence and definition of modern entrepreneurship. First, David was not nominated to take on Goliath but he volunteered. Ordinarily he, going by conventional wisdom, would have been the last to be considered for a task as huge as that due to his age and relative inexperience in warfare. David, however, did not volunteer from a state of nothingness; he did on his knowledge of God, which translates to the one certain way to success when wholeheartedly and rightly executed.

David, ab initio, redefined conventional warfare by refusing to put on the traditional war adornment as that would have incapacitated him. For weaponry he saw the need for something that will strike at the unguarded part of his target – the sling and a stone, the cost of which became far cheaper than Goliath’s arsenal put together. This, in modern entrepreneurship, is what is generally referred to as creativity and innovation. This, also, is what runs through Mark Zuckerberg’s line of ‘’breaking things and moving fast’’. Elon Musk couldn’t have better rephrased David’s actions than by his popular prescription for doing something new, that of ‘’adopting the physics approach…..that of quantum mechanics’’, which results in the mechanics and economics of efficiency.

One is not suggesting that the biblical essence of the David and Goliath battle can be simplistically captured as I have done so far, no, not at all. Every A+ entrepreneur understands that the late Steve Jobs did not just wake up one morning to say, ‘’Hi buddies, we will begin to roll out what I call the I-gadgets’’, and Apples gadgets started popping out. David had grown as a youngman to become a diligent shepherd who kept his father’s flock, and whose love for and sense of responsibility towards same had led to his killing of a lion and a bear prior to his encounter with Goliath – the very resume on which his encounter and victory over Goliath was built.

It is very well known that the South African born Elon Must taught himself computing at age 10, and at age 12 had developed and sold a computer game for $500. Going by Peter Thiel’s account, four of the six members of the Confinity team (which later merged with Elon’s X-com to become PayPal) had already developed bomb making skills in high school prior to coming together as Confinity. These resumes, selt-developed for the most part, have largely accounted for the entrepreneurial successes of these men.

David anchored his battle with Goliath on the ‘’name of the Lord of Israel’’, the Almighty God, who in our terms represent the perfectly complete body of knowledge for man’s attainment of God-like success in performance. Modern entrepreneurship thrives on the endless search and utilisation of this kind of knowledge which, in its most functional form, derives from man’s direct contact with natural phenomena. Companies like Apple, and Alphabet (Google) take the lead in assembling men and women with this David-like background and knowledge.

David, we are told, was in his youth; the same Bible book of 1 Samuel 17 told us that Goliath commenced fighting at a time when he was in the age-range of David; meaning he was getting or almost rusty with thinking warfare at the time of the encounter with David. David, empowered by youthful energy, pumped by a high dosage of adrenalin rush to take risks, less socially encumbered, disciplined in the right direction, and willing to execute Godliness in a previously unknown dimension aptly responded to the opportunity presented by Goliath’s defilement of the complete truth. Victory for David, therefore, was not one in an array of possible outcomes, but the only outcome.

Today, in the global arena of business and entrepreneurship, smaller and relatively younger companies seem to be the ones who will innovatively define the world’s future progress not because they have grown to amass huge financial and managerial resources/ networks but mainly due to their willingness to reinterpret and recreate anything. Elon Musk has already started (with Tesla) doing to the auto industry what David did to Goliath, and he is poised on doing same with Spacex. Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook may end up truly defining to the world what ‘’freedom of speech’’ stands for, significantly better than what all earth’s supreme court judges, UN charters, law professors, and law makers will collectively fathom.

This is what I call entrepreneurship --- the creation of Godliness in all human societies. David, in the Bible story of David and Goliath, proved this but God created it, when He created man in His image.