In August this year, a young
programmer named Patrick McConlogue decided to conduct an experiment. He
approached a homeless man on the street and gave him two choices, either to
accept his donation of $100 or to accept his offer to learn how to code. The homeless
man in question, Leo Grand took him up on his offer to learn coding. For the
next couple of weeks McConlogue would spend an hour or so with Leo teaching him
coding basics, providing him with the books to study and even giving him his
old laptop. Today a smiling and proud McConlogue stands beside his protege Leo
at the launch of his first app, ‘Trees
for Cars’ on the iStore and Play Store. The app works by calculating the amount
of carbon dioxide saved by car pooling and has already received rave reviews on
the web. But what makes this story extra special is the fact that until a few
months ago, Leo was just a homeless man with no prospects. All it took was the
right kind of motivation powered by knowledge and support for Leo to rise above
his situation and make his own destiny.
Leo’s story is the
quintessential example of the maxim, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a
day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. The truth is we are
all entrepreneurs, the difference being that a few among us have learned to
catch their own fish while the rest of us still depend on someone to catch
their fish.
Take the example of Arunachalam
Muruganantham. He hailed from a small town in rural Coimbatore. His family was
poor and largely lived an agrarian life. He noticed that his wife would use
rags instead of sanitary pads to control her menstrual cycle since the family
couldn’t afford to buy pads. He became obsessed with trying to understand how
to develop a low cost sanitary pad which could benefit not only his wife but
his entire village, and that’s exactly what he did. Day and night he would
experiment to try to make a napkin until one day he successfully developed a
prototype. Now all he needed was to test it. He would go around the village asking
women to try it on, but everyone ridiculed him and called him mad. He finally
tested his invention on himself by using animal blood. In time he was able to
create a machine that could develop low cost disposable sanitary napkins. Today
his invention has saved the lives of many women in rural India and has provided
them with suitable employment in his factories.
The moral of the story is that
to become an entrepreneur one must forego ones sense of shame and must be
relentless in getting to the bottom of the problem, no matter what.
Entrepreneurs are those who see an opportunity or a need and try to fill or
bridge that gap by developing a solution.
So, how do we sow the seeds of
entrepreneurship amongst the youth of today? It can be done through a problem
solving approach of education rather than a test based system for grading
intelligence. Entrepreneurs have a keen sense of their surroundings and look to
use their skills to seal a demand in the market. In this regard, entrepreneurs
must,
1. Have a keen understanding of
the environment and market forces
2. Have the knowledge to
foresee a demand or a need in the market.
3. Have the potential to meet
this need with suitable solutions.
Students of this generation are
the kinds that like to take charge of their life. Many are attracted to the
prospect of entrepreneurship as it gives them the freedom to run their own life
and work for themselves, but entrepreneurship is a lot more challenging than
that. To become an entrepreneur one must not only take risks but must do so,
smartly, thinking 5 steps ahead. It isn’t difficult to succeed in today’s
business environment, however one would need to find where the next big
opportunity lies and bet big on it.
In the next section, we will
cover the traits of a successful entrepreneur and how gaining a sound business
sense is the first step on your journey to being an entrepreneur.
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