The Importance of Entrepreneurship to the Economy and Society
An entrepreneur is a special kind of person.
The entrepreneur is a life/world/reality designer.
The entrepreneur takes what isn’t yet and makes it happen. Someone who is entrepreneurial or chooses the path of entrepreneurship will create the world that others live in.
Where most people must settle for the way things are and must pounce on the job opportunities they see in the world because those are the limit of possibilities for them, the entrepreneur will choose to create opportunities for themselves and others when they do not see the opportunities they wish for.
Clearly, I think highly of entrepreneurs.
Can Everyone Be An Entrepreneur?
I think that there are some people who lack the skills and the mindset to ever be entrepreneurial. They will go through their entire life only taking what other people give to them or allow them the chance to work for. All of their life’s choices are simply what more spirited people have created for them.
I believe that this sort of person, a follower, is essential to a successful business, economy, and society.
The problem is that they are too common.
We have too many of these people, and they all need leaders to follow, creators to make jobs for them. Without leaders setting up the systems the followers fit into, the followers are useless. Followers are like a natural resource that businesses and leaders can utilize to create value in the economy.
If at some point we run low on the supply of followers, they would become more valuable than they are now, but I don’t believe that will ever be the case, unfortunately.
Why Are Wages So Low?
The reason wages are so low for so many people is because everyone is replaceable.
A leader created a business that requires labor to produce outputs, but once the business’s system is organized, the individual laborers that work in it don’t matter. If one laborer doesn’t work out, or wants too much in wages, they can easily be replaced with one of countlessly many other laborers looking for work.
If followers/laborers were scarcer, then they wouldn’t be as replaceable, and they could command a higher wage.
I think that it is easier to be a follower and that is why so many people tend towards it. They could take the initiative to be a leader, an entrepreneur, a creator, but that would be too much effort. It’s hard to do. So, they simply choose to fit into existing systems others have made.
What Is An Entrepreneur?
In capitalism, the best, most efficient way to solve society’s and individuals’ problems, businesses are created to solve a problem.
Somewhere in society a person or group of people need something that doesn’t exist, and entrepreneurs step up and create and supply that thing that is needed. The entrepreneur might do this work through altruism, working purely for the solution to others’ problems, or they might be selfishly motivated to earn a profit. The difference makes little real difference, because the end result is that someone is motivated to find a solution to the problem, to supply what is demanded.
It is risky and stressful to be an entrepreneur. They may attempt to solve someone’s problem, at great effort and expense to themselves, and find that nobody is willing to buy their solution, or their solution is insufficient.
This possibility may act as a thorough deterrent to those considering entrepreneurship.
On the other hand, entrepreneurship offers the chance at greater freedom. The freedom of time because you aren’t required to put in your scheduled 40 hours per week working a job for someone else. The freedom of choice and autonomy, because you get to choose which problem you work on and how you wish to attack that problem. You get the freedom to create, because no boss tells you the way things must be. You are the boss.
Entrepreneurs are professional problem solvers. They are more than that, really. A consultant or advisor is a professional problem solver. An entrepreneur is more of a problem-solving superhero. Someone who notices that many people need something, and then go to work to provide that thing for them.
Individuals who personally experience a problem may be inclined to solve their own problem, but they will likely only solve their particular instance of it, and not pass that solution on to others. They will also likely pay the highest cost for their solution because they will not be able to pass the research and development costs onto many eventual users of the solution.
The solution will become cheaper and more efficient if created as or by a business because they will be able to work with economies of scale to some degree and improve on and refine their solution.
Most individuals won’t actually ever solve their own problem, they will just continue to suffer the problem. Without the entrepreneur to provide the solution, the person would continue to suffer.
In addition to the fantastically valuable role the entrepreneur plays as a problem solver, they are also opportunity creators for followers.
Once an entrepreneur identifies a problem, works towards and creates a suitable solution, arranges some way to sell and deliver the solution to customers, and has developed a little reputation for being a solid provider of some sort of solution, they want to unload all of those tasks onto other people as quickly as possible so that they can move onto solving other problems.
An entrepreneur only really feels alive and most useful when working in the unknown. They must be always exploring, learning, adapting, and experimenting. Anything resembling a tedious routine will bore them to tears and make them feel useless.
So as soon as there isn’t a need to constantly figure out each next step, and the process can be explained to an employee to take the task over, the entrepreneur will bring in and teach an employee to do the work in the business.
There was no solution, but the entrepreneur created one, organized a maintainable system around it, and brought others in to work in the system and continue producing value for the economy. That is literally how all jobs are created.
Once the system is in place, sometimes jobs will naturally bud internally as growth occurs and more needs to happen to fulfill demand, but those are really just downline jobs from the entrepreneur’s original creation.
Entrepreneurs, then, solve the world’s problems, grow the economy, and provide job opportunities to followers.
The entrepreneur is the world’s most valuable type of person.
These people are the limiting factor to the improvement of our lives and our happiness. If we have fewer entrepreneurs, our lives get worse. If we get more entrepreneurs, our lives get better.
We need more entrepreneurs.
Why Aren't More People Entrepreneurs?
Anyone, absolutely anyone, can do the work of a follower.
A task can be explained to anyone, and they can repeat the steps infinitely. Any person, even an entrepreneur, can fill the role of a follower. They may despise every moment of it, but they are capable of doing it.
Doing the work of an entrepreneur is harder. For many reasons it is hard, but mostly it is because it isn’t pre-defined by someone else. It is constant guessing and estimating.
There is always the risk that you are doing it wrong and therefore wasting your time.
It is also difficult because it is scary. If you take a job for someone else, even if you hate it, you know that you will get a defined reward for a defined input. You show up, do the time and the work, and you will get a steady paycheck. That is pretty hard to give up in favor of a risky venture where you might work very hard and earn nothing.
Despite these risks, the fear, the exposure to the unknown, we need people to exercise their entrepreneurial instincts and abilities. To choose to do the more difficult work when easier options are available.
If you feel that you could do that work, I believe you have a moral obligation to do it. To not do it is to deprive the world of the good you could do, the jobs you could create for others, and to take an existing job that someone else could have taken.
Why You Should Be An Entrepreneur
A person who could be an entrepreneur choosing against it and instead just taking a job is a bit like a person who can afford to buy their own groceries regularly visiting a donation food pantry to get their groceries. The food pantry is available to ensure that everyone has a chance to eat, but it should be seen as an emergency option reserved for either temporary situations or for those who lack the ability to provide for themselves.
Jobs are similar. Jobs are fine for people who aren’t capable of more, or for when they need income until something they are working on finally earns money, but they should, as much as possible, be avoided by the entrepreneur and left for those not capable of creation.
Doing the difficult work, being an entrepreneur, is something you should pursue if you are able to.
You have this thing the world needs, and you must share it, utilize it. You have the power to change this world for the better. Please take advantage of that power. Others who lack the skills wish they had what you have so that they could do what you should do.
This is how I feel about entrepreneurship and its usefulness and essentialness in our economy.
I hope what I’ve said has been motivational and inspired you to take the next step into solving problems and starting businesses. And don’t stop on your first success. Pass as much of it as you can onto employees and continue creating wonderful things.
You have proven to yourself and the world that you are a part of that rare breed of creators, and you should maximize that until you can’t any longer.
So, go out and create!
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