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How Entrepreneurs Can Make a Real Change? The entrepreneurs who want to leave a social impact actually go out and make change for generations to come

By Priyank Narayan

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Entrepreneurs, dressed with curiosity and ardour to make a change, are proactive thinkers. This spirited thinking is what sets them apart from routine job seekers and organizational managers. The world in which we are currently living alters every minute because of enthused demand and supply of goods and services. Continuous technological advancement only adds to this refashioning dynamics, and these fluxing advents offer us multifarious opportunities, challenges, and problems. If given a chance, entrepreneurs around the world, could take to rooftops and proclaim themselves as persistent "solution finders" and "solution providers". Needless to say, such jovial tags in fact in all seriousness are justified as we owe an unpayable debt to such innovators and thinkers.

Entrepreneurship Today

With the enlarging population of entrepreneurs, supplemented by an ever-increasing number of prestigious universities offering entrepreneurship courses, the idea of problem identification has become pivotal in any entrepreneurial journey. The challenge is that most entrepreneurs these days think about the idea first and then weave a problem around it. This is not to doubt their credibility or ability to execute things on the ground, but the crucial process of identifying real problems shouldn't take a backseat. There is no universal approach to entrepreneurship and in some cases, the ventures need to be idea-driven, but the impact of a framework which identifies real problems first and then moves on to devising solutions is tenfold.

The Issues

Understanding real problems demands from an entrepreneur an empathetic attitude towards their colleagues, employees, stakeholders, customers, and more importantly their surroundings. Sometimes seeing from the eyes is not enough, and you need to see from your heart. Here, empathy by no means should be confused with sympathy. Being empathetic doesn't mean that an entrepreneur should hire an undeserving employee out of pity or recklessly invest in a resource that in future will bear no fruits. Empathy has got to do more with understanding what the other person feels by putting yourself in their shoes. It is impossible to please everyone around you all the time, but there is an intoxicating charm of self-satisfaction in exercising an empathetic approach. This method also possesses the potential to harness the unexplored methods of innovative thinking, which all entrepreneurs exercise in their daily life in their own unadulterated way.

Benefits

Consider it the benefit of a conducive environment, the new generation of entrepreneurs like to start-up big while learning at the university itself. The availability of resources at one's fingertips brings along with it the challenge of aggregating them for optimal usage. Optimal resource management is a key trait that all successful entrepreneurs have a mastery on. For doing a job X, you can do it with Y resources, and you can also do it with less than Y resources. It merely depends on an entrepreneur's decision making and leadership skills. The best part of resource management is that it is as easily learnable as it is implementable. To make real change, a test the millennial entrepreneurs will face is to create a business with a social sensitivity that is backed by a sustainable model. This idea of contributing back to society has been addressed by leading social entrepreneurs like Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus and Ramon Magsaysay Award winner Sonam Wangchuk in their talks across the globe. The benefit of a space which renders a multidisciplinary education is that it encourages students to see problems with multiple lenses and then come with solutions. This practice inadvertently brings in an element of social consciousness right from the inception of the thought process. Such breed of entrepreneurs will not only be great thinkers but efficient executors as well, simply because a reward bigger than monetary gain awaits them. The entrepreneurs who conspire to leave a social impact actually go out and make change for generations to come.

Priyank Narayan

Director, Entrepreneurship Programmes - Ashoka University

Priyank is a seasoned entrepreneur and an educationist who brings with him rich experience in organization building. He is the Founder of IndiaPreneurship, an organisation focused on showcasing entrepreneurial opportunities in India to the world. He also mentors a number of startups based in India and abroad. Priyank is a visiting faculty at IIT Delhi, Department of Management Studies. An alumnus of AIM, Manila and IIM Ahmedabad, Priyank is an avid golfer and a licensed scuba diver. He is also trained in Indian classical music.


 
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