The more time I spend with the entrepreneurs I guide I am confronted with a simple question: what is big? I don't know how many of you have seen Apocalypto - the film by Mel Gibson.
Many people wrote it off saying is was simply just violent mayhem in a Mayan setting. For those of you who have not seen the film yet the plot basically goes something like this:
As the Mayan kingdom faces its decline, the rulers insist the key to prosperity is to build more temples and offer human sacrifices.
As the Mayan kingdom faces its decline, the rulers insist the key to prosperity is to build more temples and offer human sacrifices.
Right, so what does this have to do with anything? Somewhere in the middle of the film there is an interesting fable being told by the elder in the tribe (please forgive me if I don't get the detail right - I saw the movie quite a while ago) that centres on man's desire for more and how all the animals in the jungle gave him their special skills and gifts in order to make him happy and yet he never is. The point of the fable is that 'he will never be happy, because there’s a hole in man that causes him to take all that he can until the earth can give no more’.
From this perspective I doubt if going big is the answer in developing entrepreneurs. At least the definition of big should be reevaluated. I believe that entrepreneurs are not aware of the whole they have and it really is necessary to go the distance with them so that the motivation behind their entrepreneurial endevours truly takes the interests of broader humanity into account. That is the greater strategy.
We'll talk about this some more in the near future...
