Change the World for the Better (part 4)

Wednesday, October 25, 2006 at 03:43am by Evan Prieskop in Start-Ups

I am sorry for all the (part n)s suddenly coming together here—poor planning on my part. For clarification: Monday and Tuesday of this week constituted part one and two of a two part essay on business models and goal setting for new and prospective business owners. Today’s column constitutes the fourth of a four part series running every Wednesday for the last month expounding upon the four essential talking points of entrepreneurial literature.

To recap, those irreducible points are:

1. Running your own business is hard
2. Be smart
3. Do what you love

The world is great big place. Staggering in its scope, it is easy to feel that the world is too big a place for any one person, or even any one person’s business to effect or change.

This is simply not true.

The world, for all its complexity and grandeur is but a construct of the human imagination. It is the perceptions of human observers that define the world you know—people make it, people break it, and people turn it around. Each person, each observer carries his or her world around in his or her head. Every time you meet someone you change a world. Every friend you make, every driver you cut off on the freeway, every customer you greet represents a full world, vast and complete, that you have the power to mold or bless or malign with your actions.

You are a world-citizen in a civilization of worlds. To be a good citizen of this civilization it your duty to improve and add worth to your fellow citizens through positive influence, by helping them and by providing them with what they want and need. This duty grows not from some commandment from on high but by virtue of your power. Because you can so easily aid or aggrieve your fellow citizens, the most fundamental of ethics dictates that you must aid them.

Now a moment aside for you Germanic reductionists. If everything in the paragraphs above turns you off, if it all reads as wishy-washy nonsense, keep reading anyway. Have a little faith; your part is coming up.

The basis of all economics is that value is created by transaction. Each purchase represents not a “zero sum” exchange of monetary and/or material goods between two parties, but a value added act, where each party leaves the act with more value than they had when they went in. An economy is the sum total transactions within the defined system. Transactions are naught but interactions of value. Interactions of value are exactly what I was talking bout above: one “world” touching another.

So, how is this for a mind blower: a good businessman creates value by being a good citizen and a good citizen creates worth by being a good businessman.

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