Every other person wants to be an entrepreneur or claims to be one. Start-ups pursue billion dollar valuations, but as it often happens, not many are able to pull the mythical ‘unicorn’ out of a hat. In fact, the majority are better at pulling the ‘disappearing act’.
Thus, I couldn’t help but ponder, ‘what is true entrepreneurship and innovation’? Having once been an accidental entrepreneur myself, I know that it’s not all smoke and mirrors in a magic show. An inflight movie on entrepreneurship answered my question. (And no, it wasn’t The Social Network.)
THE PAD MAN
The movie was about Arunachalam Muruganantham, an impoverished man from Tamil Nadu, India, with no formal education and a lowly salary. It chronicles his journey as an accidental entrepreneur which started with wanting to solve one simple problem: making sure the women in his family had access to affordable sanitary pads. While the movie may have been romanticised and embellished in some ways, Arunachalam’s story of how he became the famous “Pad Man” imbues simple lessons that strike the true core of what entrepreneurship is and what drives innovation.
FIX A PROBLEM
Most people have an innate instinct to shun problems. Trying to solve them takes a lot of time, and there’s no guarantee of payoff. By contrast, entrepreneurs and innovators actively seek problems out. When they see a problem, they see an opportunity. They would ask ‘How can I fix this?’
This story is from the January 2020 edition of SME Magazine Singapore.
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This story is from the January 2020 edition of SME Magazine Singapore.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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