In the modern world of capitalism, owning or running a successful business has become a prerequisite in order to be able to carve a niche for oneself within the highest order of the social strata. Millions of reckless aspiring entrepreneurs are drawn, like moths to a flame, to the idea of starting their own business. Though the wide world of already successful businesses offer steady jobs and luxurious pay packets coupled with oodles of other benefits to these hot-blooded, sharp-minded youths, it seems the lure of starting a new business entirely from scratch is too great for most of them to resist.
But where does this strange, paradoxically primal instinct stem from? What are the basic factors that sync to create this lust for starting a business? What human element asserts the main role in this activity? Is it the forebrain, the hub of logic and rationality, that paves the road to starting a business? Or is it human emotion, the more oppressed, more animalistic feeling that actually guides the way?
Starting a new business is no child’s play. The entrepreneur is first drowned in legal formalities and harassed by all the odds and ends of the the government and other businesses before they are even given a license to start their business. After that comes the wild, demonic struggle of luring in the buyers. A good percentage of businesses crash and burn due to lack of demand for the goods and services they offer. Why then would one still wish to start a business of one’s own? To better comprehend the sonata within the human psyche that occurs during the process of creating and launching a business, let us first look at the major reasons why an individual would wish to get into the field of business in the first place.
1. To Earn A Profit
The most basic factor at play here is the desire to earn a healthy profit, and to be able to better one’s income every year or so by a margin much larger than one could achieve working as an employee for another firm. This factor at face value seems to stem from pure logic, yet there is a subtle aura of human greed that pervades the air around this seemingly rational and normal desire.
2. To Make One’s Own Choices
Another factor at play here, one more blatantly linked to human emotion, is the desire to be free to make one’s own choices and to not be bound by the dictates of another being. Our legacy of human oppression and slavery has made people wary of being subservient and our minds are infused with a strong desire for freedom. Being one’s own boss would also ensure being able to understand and implement one’s ideas in a way that no second party could. Therefore reason too seems to deal a card in this particular desire.
3. To Attain ‘Success’
Yet another popular ideal as to why one would open a business is to attain a larger measure of ‘success’ and a higher social status that one could achieve as an employee for another company. This particular factor arises purely from the emotional aspect of our consciousness as, if one delves deeper into this wish, it is clearly shown to be backed by no major logical reasoning as such and is but a mere by-product of the effect of today’s capitalist economy on the human mindset.
According to the Marxist theory of economic determinism, economics is the basic foundation for all society, and lies at the core of all social values and morals. In other words, the general human consciousness of a civilisation and of society, including all our aspirations, opinions, and general perspectives of matters, is solely dependent on the method of trade of goods and services used in that particular society.
Thus, a major reason why society at large bestows importance upon the business sector, and why millions of people strive to maraud their way into this contrived idea of success is because it is necessary in order for the capitalist ideology to survive and thrive. Thus there seems to be a logical substructure even to basic human emotion.
4. To Grab An Opportunity
One other major factor that fuels a person to start their own business is if they are able to spot a loop in the market, a blank area where opportunity is ripe and completion is near minimum. If the aspiring business person has a plan to launch a new invention into the market, something that would at first glance be desirable to the intended buyers or has a fresh, new, innovative idea to improve an already thriving market or boost a market with their particular idea, they would rather start their own business and weasel their way into an aimed market with them as the leader rather than hand their idea to another and watch their own sharp observations benefit another. This is a classic example of an amalgamation of cunning observation and human pride. The logical self is what leads to the idea for the new business, and the emotional self is the instigator for launching that business under one’s control.
5. To Give Back
One more less ruthless reason for starting up a business is a need to give back to the community. Businesses that blossom from this thought are usually welfare-providing units. Here, emotion is the dominatrix at play, and reason, which would have laughed and mocked the irrational nature of this business which yields no major material benefit to the entrepreneur, assumes a more submissive role.
In conclusion, the ballad of a business is a tumultuous orchestra, with both emotion rationality playing out their own particular parts in sweet harmony. A business person needs to be above the emotional paradigm that the masses are enshrouded within and use logic and rationality to exploit the emotions of these masses. Marketing of products through advertisement create a false sense of superiority of the product in the mind of the consumer, thus encouraging them to buy the product. So on the whole it appears that the entrepreneur must harness reason and logic in building up their business, yet in our study of the various factors that persuade them to start a business, we observe that their actions too are based on emotion, sometimes blatantly and sometimes more subtly. Therefore, though reason is a major driving force for a young entrepreneur, reason in isolation would never be effective. It is reason blended with emotion that guides the entrepreneur’s mind, and thus their actions, in the process of setting up a business. Hence, neither reason nor emotion is more important in starting up a business, it is a fusion of the two that leads a business to success.