Little-e entrepreneurship is the charming eccentricity that drives business innovation in our culture and economy.
It’s a willingness to accept risks that others would shy away from, in exchange for eventual rewards nobody else can see.
It’s the Earliest Adopter’s enthusiasm for a fad that doesn’t yet exist.
It’s the heady taste of hubris that helps you move just one step past what everybody was thinking, I could do that, and actually give it a try yourself.
It’s an inordinate willingness to ignore risks, to forge ahead, to plot a course into the unknown. On a promise.
Big-E Entrepreneurship is the cultural fetishization of that risk-seeking behavior, magical thinking and obsession. It’s taught in business schools. It’s the sole focus of some economic development institutions, it gets investors’ hearts racing, it’s the stated core of our government’s hope for the national future.
This cartoon “Entrepreneurship” has become a pervasive economic fetish.
Why is that a problem? Look:
Some young women are naturally beautiful, and also naturally thin. Our culture’s fetishization of Thin Beauty has fostered deadly anorexia, poor self-images among normal women, the sexualization of children, drug abuse, and more.
A real cottage in the country is unusual, and can also be pretty and restful. Our culture’s fetishization of Suburban Life has fostered an industry of chemical lawn treatments, greige developments at the edge of every city where the windows never open, social isolation, mortgage debt, financial crisis, the necessity of driving everywhere, and more.
It’s rewarding and healthy to play sports. Our culture’s fetishization of Professional Sports has built media empires and lobbying companies, offered false promise to disadvantaged youth, encouraged drug abuse by even school-age athletes, glossed over the effects on city centers, and more.
We’ve fetishized commerce and craft into shopping mall sprawl. We’ve fetishized the complex consensus-bulding of politics into talking points and intransigent argument. We’ve fetishized combat and national defense into gun sports.
In the same way these other unusual but natural extremes have given birth to social evils, the notion of big-E Entrepreneurship depends on over-exaggeration and over-generalization of natural but unusual extremes: the little-e entrepreneur’s eccentricities of risk-seeking, and magical thinking and obsession.
We’re told we can be “entrepreneurial” church members, “entrepreneurial” social activists, “entrepreneurial” artists, “entrepreneurial” employees.
Think about that. What does that really mean?
You don’t need Angels or VC to change the world. They need you. They need you to rush ahead. They need lots of you in their portfolios; your rare returns are their sole resource. You are their crop. You are their slot machines.
You don’t need to monetize everything, or promise ten-fold returns. Financial capital is not the only kind. A project can make you rich in social capital, intellectual capital, individual capital.
You don’t need to grow forever, or to burn down to bankruptcy. Maybe what you’ve done so far is enough. Even if you disappoint business culture because you’ve started a “lifestyle business”, at least you still have a life to live.
You don’t need to think of people as tools and resources. People are people. This institution you’ve started must be for the people who comprise it, more than they are expected to work for it. Never lose sight of the fact that it is an it.
You never have just one goal. Your venture is not your world. Even the most obsessive investor will admit that reducing risk is as much a goal of any venture as increasing returns. When you begin to believe some subset of “winning” is the only goal, when your investors drive you to forge ahead at all costs, when your instinct is to cut away the parts of your life that other people think are important just to make it to launch? That’s when you’ve become a danger to yourself, and to society.
Big-E Entrepreneurship is just like Hollywood and the NBA and the Billboard charts and the bridal magazines. You are not going to make next Google or Facebook. Your idea isn’t as original as you imagine, your skills aren’t all you need, your beautiful office in a fashionable ZIP code won’t make your product any better.
And those successful, rich people you find egging you on, “advising” you and “supporting” you and “connecting” you?
They’re just as caught up in the illusion as you are. Pity them. It was their luck that got them through the maze. Not their skill, not their mentors, not their investors, not their “best people”, and certainly not The System as a whole.
The culture reinforces them at every turn. Is it any coincidence they’re surrounded by all the evidence they need to keep believing that their illusion is universal and valid? They’re swimming in success. They see evidence of the System of Accepted Business Practices and Rituals working around them, all the time.
Because they have arranged life so they never see it fail. They’re not allowed to see anything else as success.
Where are the Big-E Entrepreneurs whose ventures didn’t grow? Didn’t hit it big? They were torn down for parts and raw materials, skillsets and capital, and dumped right back into hopper to be fed into the machine.
Who are you? If you define yourself by your project, I don’t think you’ve answered the question.
What do you want? If you only mention your project, you’re a liar.
What are the risks? If you don’t know, I can start your list with this one: “I don’t know the risks”.
What will be enough? If you don’t have any idea, I’ll guarantee that “more” isn’t the only answer.
What will you sacrifice? If you didn’t say “myself”, then take a moment to consider the Big-E Entrepreneurship complex out there, waiting and ready, yearning to drop you into the hopper.
You’re a pile of raw materials.
Portfolio filler for investors.
Promotional material for your city.
Future donating alumni of your University.
The cover of unsold magazines.
Oh yeah, and you did some stuff once. What was that thing, that company you did back when?
That was your vision? Huh. Who knew?
