Key Metrics

Entrepreneurs recognize that failure is not always avoidable, but the smart ones learn from them.

“Between 1981 and 2006 – 423 major companies in the USA with combined assets totaling over $1.5 trillion and individual assets of over $500 million, filed for Bankruptcy. Their combined total annual revenue was almost $830 million. Some of them went into Bankruptcy multiple times; in other words, they couldn’t learn”. David M. Smick

Technology teaches us to better use the available resources –

Living as ‘hunter – gatherers’, we would have needed 85 Earths to feed 6 billion people. As ’slash and burn farmers’ we would have needed a whole Earth and all the Oceans. As ‘organic farmers’ of the 1950’s, without a lot of fertilizers, we would have needed 82 percent of world’s land for cultivation, as opposed to the 38 percent we farm at the moment.’ – Matt Ridley.

Greater wealth distribution for an ever increasing population can really be possible only if wealth is being continuously created. Treating land and the finite pool of mineral resources and water as wealth is engaging in a Zero-sum game with decreasing per capita ‘share value’.

“TTo assume that the creation of wealth comes about naturally and that the Government is only required to take care of the redistribution of wealth is wrong. Creators of wealth are precious members of a society who deserve honor and the right to keep a better part of their rewards.” – Lee Kuan Yew

New and greater wealth creation can come out of value addition through sustainable ways of generating energy, and frugal ways of using all resources, applying innovative ideas, and the efforts of many entrepreneurs who are willing and able to work on such ideas. This would generate a greater quantum of wealth, which would then become available for more equitable distribution, even to the ever growing population.

“Agricultural land will continue to be less and less important as an economic asset, relative to the total value of all other economic assets” – Julian Simon.

Land, as a measure of wealth and as a means for security, can now be replaced by share holding (equity) in ventures which now becomes the ‘New Land’, a more effective, convenient and fungible measure of wealth and security.

“Capitalism (Market economy) is what people do if you leave them alone.” – Kenneth Minogue.

True Capitalism measures only profits, but market economics, the economic system in which decision making is done through voluntary transactors, according to the laws of supply and demand, in a competitive environment where entrepreneurs are free to control and coordinate resources in order to create outputs that are more valuable than the inputs they use up and who then trade such outputs on an open market to also, pursue profits, but through better practices, is a more equitable system. Government regulations in such a market economy should be as less as possible and only to provide stability, fundamental legal, financial and institutional framework. (See-‘Job creation, Labour and other Regulations’.)

Entrepreneurs are passionate about their ideas and are willing risk takers, many may not be successful the first time and lose whatever they have and are unable to proceed, but the few that are able to raise the necessary financial resources and continue, and are successful, end up doing a lot of good for themselves and more importantly, for the Society and Public in general as well.

“The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who do nothing and succeed (at doing nothing).” – Lloyd Jones.

“I am a great believer in luck and I find that the harder I work the more I have of it” – Thomas Jefferson.

Successful entrepreneurial achievements may result in what may seem like out of proportion benefits to the entrepreneur, but considering the risk they take of losing all, and considering the value of the sum total of the ‘New Wealth’ they generate for others, it is really only a well deserved little.

We can all try to encourage such successful entrepreneurs to share their wealth or use more of it for public good, by rewarding such acts of those who do so through public recognition and acclaim. However, the choice of how much to share, in what manner and when, must remain their own and we, the public, must refrain from seeking to decide for them. (See-‘Public Policies- making them right’ and ‘Equity in Taxation -Comments on I.T.& G.S.T.’)

Such entrepreneurial efforts, especially in small businesses, whether successful or otherwise, are the biggest employment generators and job creators, especially for the higher value jobs than those that call for pure manual labour. Civilization and human progress has been achieved only through the harnessing of ideas and manual dexterity leveraged through the use of domesticated animals and other energy sources. Comparing purely muscular output, an Ox, a Horse, or even a Donkey will be rated better than a Man.

“Merchants and craftsmen make prosperity; chiefs, priests and thieves fritter it away. Extravagant Bureaucracy and feeble individual rights, stifle technological innovation, crowd out social innovation and punish creativity” – Matt Ridley.

The manual dexterity and mental / cognitive abilities of people have to be substantially better leveraged through newer machines, methods and systems developed from innovative ideas and entrepreneurial efforts to enable more efficient and higher value output, thus creating greater wealth.

Such entrepreneurial efforts require financial resources not available through the usual conventional channels. Equity and Venture Capital funds must therefore be encouraged and incentivized to ‘Bet on Potential’, and function as more effective financiers to meet this need and be allowed to benefit from such risk taking. Public / Government developmental institutions could also, be allowed to offer such support.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9