Recently I saw on Linkedin of an "entrepreneur" the image of Paulo Lemann with the quote: "I have never met a successful pessimist", and names like Nietzche, Kafka, Van Gogh, Dostoyevski or Bukowiski himself came to my mind. Not that their complex personalities can really be synthesized in a single taxative constant, but they were certainly people who escaped from this logic of stage entrepreneurship, from this entrepreneurial positivism inflated by "model" personalities.
Model entrepreneurs aside, it is interesting to take a more critical look at this entrepreneurial mentality that thinks outside the box. I have always said that every time I hear the old "think out of the box", I imagine the person inside a box, celebrating having just come out of another box, like little Russian dolls in an infinite loop. This is because the current "entrepreneurial generation" is not able to understand that human knowledge is given in several layers, no matter how much we free ourselves from the "molds" of one, we always fall into another.
The current layer of stage entrepreneurs has Tibetan refinements, spiced with a pseudo Hindu Buddhist cuisine that talks about spirituality, but contemplates life on a computer screen. Perhaps because they seek the path of great visionary minds that had a Zen footprint, represented by the iconic Steve Jobs. Not that there is anything wrong with this, but let's face it, if entrepreneurship has to do with process innovation, with the implementation of new ideas... Then following an already trodden path is not exactly being an entrepreneur, correct?
"But you can't reinvent the wheel. You really can't, but you can think about a tire, you can think about a bicycle, a car that flies... What you can't do is to follow a TED or MEJ primer and feel like an entrepreneur without having risked once in your life. Entrepreneurship has nothing to do with being part of a junior company, this is being an employee, this is corporativism. And the biggest symptom of this is to see that the young people who are part of an EJ refuse to work during university vacations, or are always late for a little task during exam week. The risk is zero.
Entrepreneurship is about innovating, a process that involves a creative fissure that is nothing more than a break with the status quo. When professionals are going to launch a new product, it is part of Design Thinking to understand and elaborate ways of inserting this product in the market, to find out how to improve its insertion in society, its acceptance and usability. Tools such as Consumer Path can be part of a larger study in the creation of a healing loop, which will help the product to position itself well in the market. Microsoft launched a Tablet in 2005, but most probably you think Apple created the technology, just because in the apple company, the healing mesh relied on ipods and iphones, which ensured the ultimate success, familiarizing the user with the technology long before it was launched.
If thought of as a healing mesh of an innovation of society as a whole, the Junior Enterprise Movement and TED are fascinating entities, acting in ways that contribute to a more engaged and creative society. That said, it is unfortunate that such channels have been plundered by mere spectators, who repeat a discourse in consonance, like a mantra, young people who have read Orwell, but live in Huxley's society, anesthetized by the entertainment of their smartphones, attached to information and innovation, and disconnected from the reality of a world where 53% of the population does not have access to internet, and 13% does not even have what to eat for lunch.
But this anesthesia is part of the culture of a generation that was born ready, and that needs this alienation to be able to live in its own reality, where they are waiting for the world to recognize them, to accept their genius and their visionary mind - which reminds me of a fantastic article by Eliana Brum on the subject, which you can see here. A generation that wants to discover the next Nirvana, but is content with the performances on The Voice.
Equally symptomatic in this generation is their ideal of professional success, mirrored in a career filled with sabbatical periods of vacation in Bhutan, with a fat paycheck at the end of each month. It is a mixture of utopia with a bit of clumsy elitism. The idea of "making it in life" is associated with long periods of relaxation and a more than "favorable" economic situation.
The generation of stage entrepreneurship sells, and sells very well. They talk about sustainability, politics, social engagement, all without having at least opened a book on philosophy. They stay in the shallow, on the surface, with the cool authors. They delight in hours of debate about left and right, fascism and socialism, but have not read a single line of Trotsky, Marx, Adam Smith, Weber or Rousseau. They are incapable of understanding that renowned biographies have been carved out of the vast literature that has influenced them. They want to be the next Bill Gates, but they don't want to read "The Art of computer programming" by Donald Knuth. The truth is that never has so much been read in the world, and never has so little been read, or rather never has so much been read about so little.
In fact, I always found it funny when friends asked me what books on entrepreneurship I read, and were surprised that my lists did not include works such as "The Monk and the Executive" or "The 48 Laws of Power". Nothing against it, I have never read those books and I don't know them, but I always found it amusing how surprised they would look when they found out that I would rather read a Harvard Business Collection - that old blue-covered new culture book you see around the bookstores - than spend my time with something more "modern". But I am just a young Padawan who would rather read "The Discourse of Method" than "Who Moved My Cheese".
It is not about being a model or following a model, it is about the simple fact that most likely: there is no model. Bukowiski launched his first book at the age of 49 - after working tedious years inside the Post Office - he found inspiration in his greatest boredom and his first novel became a success. Andrea Bocelli played piano in bars until he was 33, Ray Kroc sold milk shake machines at 52, until he met the creators of MacDonalds and turned it into the world's biggest franchise. None of these personalities is seen as a model of entrepreneurship; we prefer to put them in the "geniuses" box, because they can experience failure. But not entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs have only success stories and learning cases, they think positive, they are always optimistic, they never had doubts about their ideas, they never questioned, they filled their chests and went ahead.
In reality the previous sentence describes a soldier better than an entrepreneur. Many want to create the next big app, the next facebook, the new ipad, want to be the next Elon Musk, but are not willing to face hours of heavy programming, the bankruptcy of Next, the sick isolation and explosive temper of the apple founder, nor do they want to be the young nerd, with no money and no girls, who dropped out of college to become the richest man in the world selling soft micros, or microsoft as you know it.
The truth is that there is no path, no valid golden rule that points the way to success, to happiness. But if Tibetan Buddhism can teach you something, let it be to know that the path to happiness passes first through pain, through suffering. And if entrepreneurship is about creating, and creating involves failure, prototyping, losses, mistakes, and successes, then it also involves self-knowledge. And if self-knowledge is to accept your nature, maybe you are a pessimist like Dostoevsky, a depressive like Van Gogh, or a cynic like Bukowiski, or you believe that "only the paranoid survive" like Andy Groove from intel, or maybe you are even a visionary with an Indian spirituality like Pete Townshend and Jobs. But may you never be the projection of a dream you were sold, of a model you bought just because you liked the cover.
But if you are still looking for a path to success, maybe Bukowiski has some tips for you...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN1Tw8XM1LY
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