Psycological, Technical and Social Challenges of American Business

The hottest entrepreneurship space on the planet right now is tech, and because the modern innovations in tech are communicative-- internet, AI, software, etc. this space informs and thus lifts all other spaces. In How Market Structure Shapes Entrepreneurship and Inequality, Shubhdeep Deb argues that market structure has a great deal to do with the individual choice to “between-take”. Prior to the wide spread of the internet, jumping into the fray of a market only required saving enough to convince oneself they were prepared to take the target space. Ignorance, as it is sometimes still said, was bliss. Today, individually compiled business intelligence is much easier to come by. Self education has made more people aware of how much they do not know, and thus the market structure has not only changed, but individual awareness of this new unexpectedly massive structure has increased. Three challenges to starting a business are therefore psychological-- dependent on individual confidence in the face of Goliaths, technological-- having the right tools to compete with millionaires and billionaires in the open market, and social--not everyone is going to be a “David” in business, but if Israel had acted as an intelligent collective, they would have easily taken down Goliath. Instead, the narrative shouted by the giant kept them frozen in collective terror. 

Ideas are rarely generated in a vacuum, but instead emerge from observations everyone can see. But observing is only cognition which can be defeated by the psychological challenge to starting a business. If someone does take the first step to pursue the opportunity they observe, they will fall into one of two categories-- skilled or unskilled. As the Ocastsa blog post points out, knowledgeable workers are able to recognize what needs to be done with efficiency, but that does not mean someone relatively ignorant will not observe and reason to the same conclusion, beginning the same journey. While our particular market has cherished and indeed been driven by the rugged individual as pointed out by John M. Barrios in the 2022 study Rugged Entrepreneurs, the unique historical context of Amerindian eradication by disease, war and relocation is rather unusual in history, though I suspect the history will be useful as we colonize beyond Earth. No major force in business in the world is a sole proprietorship. My three tips for someone wishing to start a business on this planet are therefore, recognize your observation of opportunity is likely not a private one, that there are others who can see what you see and collaboration is not only possible but profitable.

The role of an entrepreneurs in business is to part ways from the rest of society to colonize new opportunities. Their objectives are not money, but to mediate life and flourishing for their market. Despite the political will of a few old impotent men, that market is increasingly global and thus even the local mediator should take an overview perspective as they realize they are much too small to address such scales alone. The American west was addressed alone at times out of necessity. Colonizing other planets will face the same challenges, but here, now we are not working for individual, but collective survival and flourishing. Collaboration is imperative.