Famous Entrepreneurs

I was fascinated to discover the other day that 'famous entrepreneurs' is a very popular search term in Google. Lots of people, it seems, want to know about famous entrepreneurs.

So what is so fascinating about these people? Is it their fame that so rivets the attention, or it it because fame so often comes accompanied by wealth and/or political influence? Of one thing we can be sure, however, it is that few people are interested in entrepreneurs for just being entrepreneurs. 'Ordinary' entrepreneurs are, for most people, as interesting as last week's stale bread.

Just think of this: almost all entrepreneurs have very small enterprises, so are neither rich nor powerful, and, unless famous for some other reason (such as being movie or sports stars), they are most definitely not famous. Newspapers, for instance, rarely mention small-scale entrepreneurs at all, and devote the whole of their 'business' pages to the activities of publicly listed corporations, who between them probably have less than 1% of the world's entrepreneurs.

From the perspective of the world's major media organisations (who are largely the people who decide who gets to be famous, and who stays in obscurity), it is only corporate leaders who get to feature as famous entrepreneurs. If media ran their sports news the same way, only 1% of professional players (perhaps tiddly-winks players?) would ever get a mention!

Now, why should this be, I wonder. A possible answer could be found in the fact that, in our world, small organisations almost always carry less prestige than large ones. Big is always beautiful; small is either ugly, unimportant or entirely non-existent.

Most of us are taught this from infancy. Going to school (a large organisation) is better than learning at home (a small organisation). Working in a government or a large company is better than working in a small one. And when it comes to business, only big companies can be regarded as 'genuine'. As I was told in all seriousness at university while studying entrepreneurship, businesses withoutsubstantial capitalisation (that is, medium to large businesses) "are only hobbies" (and hence, I presume, pay their employees in play money.)

Now, if entrepreneurship were indeed some kind of hobby activity, none of this would matter. In the world of sport, for example, most players regard their sport activities as indeed a hobby, a bit of fun. Very few people give up their day jobs to become professionals. More importantly, nobody is particularly the worse off for it.

In entrepreneurship, however, the exact opposite is true. Very few people take up entrepreneurship as hobbies, just doing it for fun. Whether or not they are successful, they are almost always in deadly earnest. Furthermore, everybody else - their entire local community, and even their entire nation - depends on them for their future happiness and prosperity. The success or failure of local small businesses decides the fate not only of individual entrepreneurs, but of everybody around them.

To understand this last point, consider: in Australia, as indeed in most developed countries, small businesses (those with 20 or fewer employees) provide round about 50% of all private sector jobs. Given that the public sector (government) provides almost half of all employment, that means, for most people, that either they work for government, or they work for or in a small business! Big business, by contrast, provides employment for barely 10% of the workforce.

Worldwide, and historically, small business is and always has been a major driver of community prosperity. This does not mean that big business does nothing useful; to the contrary, its products and services are essential for our current First World lifestyle. By themselves, however, without the help of small businesses, corporations can do little to aid the communities in which they exist. This is seen most clearly in the Third World countries where large corporations operate without local small businesses. In those countries, often the only people who benefit from their presence are corrupt politicians and their cronies.

So where does this bring us to when considering famous entrepreneurs?

The first point is that, when it comes to fame, no entrepreneur, no matter how deserving, is going to receive fame unless involved in a large-scale business or unless famous for something else besides being an entrepreneur. So if you wish to study entrepreneurship, do not study famous entrepreneurs. All they can teach you is about fame.

The second point is that, if the criteria for fame were community benefit, then each of us would have our own list of famous entrepreneurs, who would be our local entrepreneurs. These people between them provide our local shops and other services, and most of our local jobs.

These are the real heroes of the entrepreneurial world.