Maybe it is wrong to take the tag line of the marines and apply it to today’s entrepreneurs, but the courage and service entrepreneurs provide our country is surprisingly similar. We send our marines into battle to protect our country from threats. We send our entrepreneurs into battle to protect our country from threats too: the threat of a stagnant economy, the threat of millions of people not having a paycheck, and the threat of a shrinking tax base to fund our schools, city services, and infrastructure. Today we are relying on our entrepreneurs to protect us from our near total dependence on oil for all our transportation vehicles. Entrepreneurs are at the front lines of the battle to use our energy more efficiently, find innovate new ways to conserve our water resources, and reverse the trajectory of climate change. They grow our food and protect us from hunger.
Entrepreneurs, along with our best government funded scientists, are taking great entrepreneurial risks to bring us new drugs to defend us from disease and extend our lives. Entrepreneurs are finding ways to free us from the pervasive isolation people feel in our society with social media and online communities. And now, with web-based “crowd-sourcing” platforms, entrepreneurs are giving us innovative tools to create new solutions to build upon our “collective intelligence” to collaboratively produce insights and ideas so we can effectively navigate the challenges we face today.
Recently, I graduated from an innovative MBA program focused on sustainability and innovation. It was called a Green MBA. It was akin to a “green” beret program for people to make positive change through entrepreneurship. I knew little about entrepreneurship when I started. Now I have the knowledge to start a new business. Marines have a code they live by. So do entrepreneurs:
Starting a business is very risky, just as heading into battle is.
Your business idea may fail, but do it anyway (just be very smart about it).
Do not just talk about your products. Talk about your principles.
Entrepreneurs are the key to America’s prosperity and they are the hope and promise of each country’s future. A friend of mine travels to Saudi Arabia and Russia and teaches a powerful course on entrepreneurship. Both those countries at one time scoffed at “free enterprise” because they had a lot of oil or a lot of government bureaucrats who knew best. But they are quickly learning that the best hope for new jobs and a thriving economy is an army of entrepreneurs who receive the education, tools, and financing they need to bravely and innovatively lead all the world’s economies forward into a more promising future.
Smart Green 2020 