The Cult of Entrepreneurship

The fine lines between proactivity and entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship, as we all, know is a huge buzz word at the moment. Whereas once people grew up wanting to be an astronaut or a hippy we are now seeing a generation wanting to be the next Richard Branson, Mark Zuckenburg or Alan Sugar. Myself included.

Karan Bilimoria – Founder of Cobra Beer

While it is admirable, having this ambition to fuel the world’s growth and sounds rather appealing to be earning $2.5 billion in a year, the truth is they are the exception not the rule. The process of creating a multi-billion or even million dollar concept involves so many long hours, character traits and a bit of luck along the way.

So this leads me to my big question… Is pro-activity amongst a cult of university students to do something bigger than themselves, just that… a cult or can we truly change the world?

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The Kairos UK Summit

Or is that even the right question? Do we really have a choice… Are we not the generation that has to solve the world’s problems?

Our parent’s generation have given us an incredible platform, for the first time we can communicate almost instantaneously with countries all around the world at low cost, we have the technology to start to tackle climate change and connectivity to get access to pretty much anything we want any time of the day through the internet. If you were looking at it in technology terms you would say we had the platform from which to build the subsidies that can change our world.

But with these rapid developments we have problems. We are going into a generation where unskilled people are being replaced by machines, which will, whether government intervenes or not cause huge structure economical skill differences between what we need and what we have. We are now more aware than ever before of the scale of: cancer, poverty, corruption, lack of education and the environmental impacts we are causing. We cannot, whether through ignorance or otherwise, turn a blind eye to these problems as people have a voice through the power of social media and other online forums.

Matt and Me presenting at the South Africa Challenge Showcase

So this leads me to one simple conclusion, whether it’s entrepreneurship or good old fashioned pro-activity, we have a responsibility to take action. We need to be the generation that is willing, to think differently, to be ambitious and push our generation forward. This does not mean more replicas of great ideas because you “think you can do it better” unless you actually can do it better! One lesson we need to remember from those we are following is those that succeed, and I am referring to the Nelson Mandelas and Martin Luther Kings of this world, were, and in Nelson Mandela’s case are, obsessed that they could change things and were willing to die for it.

So let’s do this, it is our moment.