A Mission for Businesses & Entrepreneurs: Help Bring Back Childhood
When I moved from a psychology department (at the University of Virginia) to a business school (at NYU-Stern) in 2011, it felt like moving to another country, with different norms and values, and with a somewhat different language. One of the most common phrases I heard was “creating value.” It took me a while to realize that this was not just some business buzzword; it was the fundamental mission or “telos” of business, akin to “finding truth” in most other parts of the university. Two centuries of entrepreneurs “creating value” is what drives those graphs showing that human prosperity stagnated for thousands of years before suddenly shooting upward in the early 19th century. It is what has driven down global levels of extreme poverty into single digits, for the first time in human history.
I quickly came to appreciate the way that entrepreneurs think. They’re forever scanning the world looking for holes, unmet needs, missing products and services. Successful entrepreneurs are the first people who can see what the world needs and then mobilize people, resources, and capital to meet those needs.
