The pandemic experience is not all bad. There are blessings that come as great surprises to humanity trying to navigate into what is referred to as the new normal. While many have suffered the negative impact of the economic and health crisis, there are opportunities that may be unfolded – by choice and by chance.
Survival entrepreneurship has become the lifesaver of three kinds of people in the pandemic experience. First are those who lost their jobs and livelihood and need to survive through means within their capacity to reach. Second are those who, in the pursuit of their passion, are able to produce something that gets the attention and patronage of a market, usually within their sphere of influence. And thirdly, those businesspeople who are forced into pivoting their business to be able to survive and remain relevant in the changing times. The pandemic has nested entrepreneurs locked down at homes but accessing the power of social media and digital space to soar into business above the pandemic.
Survival entrepreneurship is highly evident among the millennials, the digital natives, who were labelled notorious for their restless and reckless nature, and misinterpreted as being a selfish generation. Their character, in fact, is demonstrating some excellent entrepreneurial inclinations. They belong to a purpose-driven generation who search for meanings in what they need, what they want, and whom they patronize. They work and spend for a lifestyle as they are guided by the YOLO principle – you only live once. The creative millennials, being the biggest chunk of the population, are significant in number and are very comfortable with the digital world to navigate this new normal of entrepreneurship.
Years from now, we will look back at 2020 not only as the year of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but also as the year of the entrepreneurs.
Tracing back its roots, the term entrepreneurship was coined from the two Latin words “entre,” to swim out, and “prendes,” to grasp, understand or capture. It was the French-Irish Economist Jean-Baptiste Say who popularized the word entrepreneur in 1800. In its original context, entrepreneurs were “resource hackers” who were able to scant resources to create innovative products. In his 1800 Treatise on Political Economy, Say wrote that “the entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of the area of lower into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.” There was however a revelation, through an investigation, that as early as 1755, Richard Cantillon, in his Essay on the Nature of Trade in General, already cited that entrepreneurs are non-fixed income earners who take risk and pay unknown costs of production to earn uncertain incomes. And during the Great Depression from 1929 to 1939, Joseph Schumpeter formulated the Theory of Economic Development (1934) and cited entrepreneurs as drivers of change and progress. History tells us that entrepreneurs were born out of crisis.
This CoViD-19 Pandemic has opened great doors of opportunities for entrepreneurs who are willing to explore the unknown. From the hobbyists who realized that what they create and post in social media may actually sell to friends and neighbors, to the intentional producers of what people need and want, the entrepreneurs are responding to what others are willing to patronize and buy. From the businesspeople who in desperation observe existing gaps in how a market is served to the people who lost their job and who need to find a way to earn a living, the entrepreneurs are taking the leadership to be self-reliant. From a creative pursuit of what is not yet available for the market to an innovative improvement of what is already available, the entrepreneurs are solving some problems. Entrepreneurs are innovative problem-solvers and are ready to seize the many problems and offer solutions.
However, the survival entrepreneurs may need to take entrepreneurship beyond survival. They need to establish a long-term vision of growing the business through an enterprise they should start building, with a team which they should start empowering, and towards a pursuit of greater purpose beyond profit and financial gains. The survival entrepreneurs should be intentional lifelong learners who are reflective of the lessons learned through experience, which no book or education can teach. They should see the big picture of the internal and external environments and brace for the envisioned ideal future anchored on a moral compass that is valued and shared to its people. Survival entrepreneurs should understand the changing needs and behavior of the market it serves, and should relentlessly innovate to improve the product or service.
Beyond survival, the entrepreneurs born of the pandemic should explore the possibility of entrepreneurship as a way of life. And the entrepreneurial journey extends beyond survival towards a more meaningful blessing derived from the pandemic experience. Even if survival entrepreneurs are not engaged in business by neither intention nor design, they are learning the lessons that are imperative to move forward. The survival entrepreneurs should never lose that chance to take the road less travelled by in entrepreneurship, and in the future look back to say that this pandemic is a blessing in disguise.
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