Ignorance is a small word with an explosive and dangerous principle contained within. Ignorance is the sad and unfathomable condition in which an individual or a society is deficient in the most very basic building block of progress: knowledge. The utterance Ignorant is a mere expression of our language to depict this awful state, and it is understandable that the word can be used as a corrosive insult. Once, a philosophy teacher told me that the worst insult you can offend a woman with is to tell her that she is ugly, and the worst insult you can affront a man with is to tell him that he is an ignorant. Now, within the simplicity of this short but powerful word there is some inbuilt sophistication and intelligence which discriminates between the levels in the peaking order of the scale of the very fiber of ignorance.
For example, we have pluralistic ignorance that shelters the ignorant masses so no individual stands out. If you are an ignorant, it is OK because everyone is an ignorant to some extent. This herd mentality conducts to conformity, perpetuating ignorance, and handicapping intelligence. In psychology and specifically within social psychology which is an interdisciplinary area of psychology, there is a field that studies the dynamics of interaction of people and groups, and it is called pluralistic ignorance.
The dynamics of pluralistic ignorance play in a process which engages a group of several members who individually assume that they have dissimilar perceptions, beliefs, ideas, concepts, or attitudes from the other members of the group, or that their perceptions and ideas differ from the group as a whole. This phenomenon causes to coerce an individual, and to reinforce his or her keenness to coincide with the group’s archetypal mentality rather than articulate their own discrepancies and thoughts. In some cases this paradigm leads an individual to subordinate his or her individual behavior, and induces intellectual alienation and emotional dependency. These individuals should get acquainted with the Abilene Paradox.
Then we have rational ignorance. Rational ignorance in reference to an issue or a matter resides in deciding if the cost of learning and acquiring oneself knowledge in regards of an issue or matter adequately to formulate an educated decision, will outweighs prospective benefits. If the combine cost of arriving to a level in which decisions are made based on knowledge would be higher than the benefits, it would be irrational to spent resources in doing so, therefore, we will not waste efforts. This attitude have great consequences for the significance and usefulness of decisions, and in the ability of intervention made by a substantial number of individuals in situations such as popular elections, where they think that the probability of their personal vote to change the outcome of the election it is infinitesimally minute. This might conduct to apathy, and to the proliferation of herd mentality polarization.
There is also what is called vincible ignorance, where the individual excuses himself from ignorance by the fact that he, or she, was ignorant of the fact or facts that were the source for causing an issue. In other words, they boast that they are not guilty of breaking the law because they did not know the law. They missed the fact that not knowing the law is a crime in a civilized society. Vincible ignorance can come as a result of the premeditated denial to work out or consider a particular point of view or canon. A disciple of vincible ignorance will tell you that you are completely wrong, and it does not matter what you say, you will still be wrong, and that he (the disciple) does not need to convince you otherwise, because he (or she) know he is right. It sounds just like your mother-in-law, doesn’t it?.
Another sticky area is superstition, or fallacy ignorance. This is the most stupid and absurd form and tool of ignorance that there is, because superstitious people insist in being ignorant, turning their flawed beliefs permanently into invincible ignorance. Superstition ignorance is the equivalent to the unrestricted blind faith and, for instance, the voluntary and unobstructed acceptance of an unfunded urban legend. In fallacy ignorance, no one muscle of the brain has been trained to flex into rationalization. Individuals who posses these mythological brains, have been completely drained of their gray matter, and the empty space left in the cranium have been filled up with mushy saw dust.
Ignorance has many children that are better suited for the environments of “Resident Evil” than among members of an educated and intellectual society. There is no positive efficiency in ignorance, but deep social impacts and ailing effects on the mass population who embraces it. Some of the most unwanted and dangerous children born from ignorance are vice and crime; paucity, flustered and erratic families; general misconduct, and an unavoidable loss of civility. What is shoddier is that ignorants do not realize that they are carving for themselves a permanent place in the foundation of intellectual slavery and rational submission.
Regrettably, poverty breeds ignorance. Poverty it is not a personal fault or an individual’s blunder, and poverty can be conquered because poverty is a state of affairs that can be changed, a state created mostly by circumstances, and circumstances can certainly be altered. Ignorance is like a virulent disease, it is highly contagious among weak minds, and it is incisive in the cultural stocks of our planet. Ignorance is fed and nurtured mainly by ourselves, and fostered by our human incapacity to defeat laziness. Ignorance is a very personal enemy, and possibly the most dangerous private element one will have ever to deal with.
The Erudite Ignorance
The ignorance of something for a prodigious mind is not ignorance. The uncovering and acceptance of the ignorance is a well-educated, erudite ignorance. The corrective action against ignorance turns it into knowledge, and ignorance is defeated. Our natural intellects are attracted to discover, and always attempting to comprehend the incomprehensible. It is the natural instinct of the intellect to survive ignorance. Our intellects have an unpretentious aspiration towards higher wisdom. The erudite ignorance is never transcendental, and our compulsion to attain wisdom does not come from the outer surface of our minds, but is instilled. The erudite ignorance dies to give birth to knowledge.
Knowledge is not lack of ignorance, but it is made of what we do not ignore. The very first step towards ignorance is to presume we are not ignorants. When we ignore what we should know, we walk towards ignorance, and if we do not know well what we should know, we are idiots. Sometimes ignorance brings about a positive outcome. Perhaps friendship would be stronger, and love would be deeper with more ignorance than knowledge. However, unlike ignorance, knowledge is evasive. Ignorance does not breathe in an instant or live in one thing, but it is an ongoing process in action, and while knowledge liberates the mind and the soul, ignorance chains and slave the intellect and the spirit. And there is more: while ignorance is heavy, bulky, and noticeable, knowledge is quiet and does not occupy any space.
The British natural philosopher Sir Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626), the son of Nicolas Bacon, the Lord Keeper of the Seal of Elisabeth I, who later became Lord Verulam and the First Viscount Saint Alban, in a bright philosophical momentum of epitome, coined the memorable sentence: “Knowledge is Power”, setting forever the diametrically opposite vectorial orders between knowledge, and ignorance. The opposite speed of these vectors (Ignorance and Knowledge) also increases in mathematical progression deepening every second the abyss that separates both of them.
Perhaps knowledge as a whole it is difficult to attain, however, it is infinitely more difficult to pinpoint the birth of an idea, and ideas are the bread of progress. Ignorance feeds into itself, an easy survival strategy that requires no effort or imagination. The best advantage of ignorance is that ignorance is never complete; there is always room for more ignorance.
Ignoramus
Ignoramus is the name of the principal character – a silly old common law lawyer - of a classic, mordant, but accurate satire of the English legal establishment written by George Ruggle in Latin, and first performed in 1615 for King James of England (and also King of Ireland) who was delighted with the play. Ruggle’s play was designed to ridicule even further the already ludicrous language of the common English law, and the bizarre stupidity of the always nonsensical, however “academical” lawyers of the epoch. The medulla of the play is based on real trials involving a legal dispute between the vice-chancellor of Cambridge University (believed to have been Samuel Harsnett, Bishop of Chichester) and the mayor of Cambridge, then Francis Brakin. This revolutionary but real play did irate and scandalized the legal community then, and still incensing them now, because of the same hard-die stained characteristics of yesterday’s and today’s lawyers. So, if you really want to insult someone, just call him (or her) a lawyer! This is not prejudice but reality. Lawyers hold their own ground on this matter because their never-ending preceding reputation has been fail-safe over and over by their own actions.
Ignorance always speaks in a vitriolic tone to progress. Is it envy?, or is just flat ignorance in the arts of communication? Vitriolic tone is one; voluntary blindness is another. This is a known example by you. There are infinite offers in internet and TV of “medicines” that will “cure” you of your sicknesses. This “medicines” carry some side effects that are read to you in a very high speed, or placed in the add with achondroplastic letters that you normally do not understand, disclaimers you can not read or listen to, or are too dull to comprehend.
These advertisement producers and the concoction makers they represent want people to believe that if you ingest that medicine you will be healthier and feel better, but they purposely fail to mention that the “medicine” they are offering will not cure you at all. Just for the record and to prevent law suits, they warn you that you will have a ton of negative side effects, in fact; too many to even try it safely. Whoever offers this is an accomplished ignoramus, however, within the “Ignorance Kingdom” there are plenty of mentally blind (ignorant) footmen that will follow this unadulterated rubbish, and still take the “medication”. This is an excellent example of a money motivated individual cleverly disguising an empty argument born out of unfathomable ignorance, and espousing it as science for their own financial benefit, and for the health demise of the idiots.
Ignorance it is omnipotent. It touches everything and everybody, and the only vaccine against it is knowledge. Nobody knows exactly what bring intelligence into being, but in any case, intelligence need to be developed, groomed, and polished it. In a sense, a “do it yourself” gift but without the customary “Owners’ Manual”. And there is more to this. You have to be at least PG-13 to start taking some advantage of good old knowledge, and to start retaining some usable pieces of it. On the other hand, the free endowment of ignorance comes naturally and in a complete packet. It is a wall-to-wall carpet for the black hole of knowledge that dwells unperturbed in your delicate brain.
Tele-Vision (or very small screen)
Perhaps television is the most hedonistic contributor to the cultivation of the disease of ignorance. Tele-Vision is a much undeserved title for the myopic vision and for the lack of intelligent forethought that this medium perpetrates against us. Have you lately observed the programs being unashamedly put on air? In forensic communications, many of the programs that are being broadcasted daily classify as forcible intellectual rape, and not as a syllabus program. Why then TV is so appealing to so many? Because a few ignorant stories is often and exactly what the anthropogenic ignorant needs! The ignorance within their shrunken brains thrives with mindless programming. Some of today’s TV programs are so deeply ignorant and senseless, that hurts when the brain drool that they produce comes out sluggishly through your nose!
Some think that ignorance pays off, or does it?. If you would like to experience an out-of-the-body encounter at your own intellectual jeopardy, just watch almost any TV program. For example, there is a TV program where a gang of rappers (a celebrity panel is what they like to call themselves, however RAP is CRAP without the “C”) gives outrageous, disgraceful, and bamboozling answers to questions chosen from a dunce cap that can hold more knowledge on itself than what the panel and the audience altogether can. Members of the audience try to give the correct answers to stupid questions, but the collective ignorance is so immeasurable that I can hear the TV set pitifully moaning. Some call it “entertainment”, however, an individual who has suffered mental castration by ignorance, can not possibly give an intelligent opinion. As for the rappers, they just make public their ignorance. There is not worse ignorant that the one that makes a public display of his or her ignorance! Ignorance pays all right, but it pays to those who milk the ignorants that watch and participate in those shows. The public has fun though, but remember that laugh is abundant in the mouth of the imbecile.
Political Ignorance
Oh, boy! There is so much to write about political ignorance! Political ignorance engenders nepotism via rational ignorance. Most people are colossally uninformed about politics; nonetheless they are very opinionated about it. Political ignoramuses ask often, what you know about politics?, as if they know anything at all. The best answer to this question is to raise your three middle fingers, and ask them to read in between the lines. This is the appropriated and balanced communication aim for their steady level.
Political ignorance deforms opinion about candidates. Famous people, for whatever they are famous for, have a better chance to triumph in politics because the unconscious ignorant masses worship them as gods. The civilized populace would love to give the Nobel Prize of Ignorance to Paris Hilton, but at no avail because she would not know what the heck it is, and what she is supposed to do with it. When she talks to herself is fine. When Paris Hilton starts answering herself becomes a bit awkward, but that still fine. The problem befalls when she starts interrupting herself!
Political ignorance is the forcible rape of democracy by the ignoramuses, and it is also self-inflicted intellectual terrorism, and an embryonic liability to civility. The political ignorance of the ignorant ends up electing our leaders and frankly, they deserve them. Political stupidity and ignorance turns our governments into cheap circuses and when emergency strikes, we end up with a bunch of Acab Kings, democratic or not, trying to resolve the accumulation of their own political excretion, and at this point, the only difference between those places and the Titanic, is that the Titanic had a band. All of this causes a political numbness that paves the way for more political ignorance whose echoes can be heard bouncing off the parietal lobes of the ignoramuses’ empty skulls.
What now?
No person can force other individual or a group to face their inabilities, and to recognize how their individual ignorance impinges on their flawed perceptions and thus, makes the outcome of their unbalanced actions not only unpredictable, but flat wrong. To efficiently overcome ignorance they must understand themselves, appreciate their own value as human beings, weigh up their personal central place in our society and the intrinsic value they hold in the bounds of their spirits, and avoid all the shoddy fundamentals listed herein in this document. Never forget that ignorance is a colossal might to reckon head on with.
The Adversaries of Ignorance
Ignorance is the precept that perhaps has more enemies against it than anything else within the logical reaches of the human scholar cosmos. Conceivably, the biggest foes against ignorance are knowledge, freedom, democracy, and self determination. Of course there are more adversaries of ignorance contained in the ranks of counterparts against ignorance, but they are too many to mention and to put in perspective here, so I will just concentrate in the Sergeants Major of the Drum.
Knowledge is an open virtual connection within a narrow, but multi-complex relationship between two or more notions. Intelligence connects and makes sense of the relationships and togetherness of these perceptions, and renders what we know as the concept of knowledge about things. To know, or not to know? That is the question. The answer to this incisive philosophical question is that you better know, or else is going to cost you. Here is an example. The boiler of a man’s shop stop working, and the man could not make it start again, so he called the repair man immediately. The repair man arrived shortly after to the shop. The repairman appearance was more like a forced breed between a hillbilly and a redneck with an apocryphal accent, and he walked like someone with severe bowel obstruction. Anyway, the repair man entered the shop and took a close look at the boiler. After a few “hums”, he turned around and headed straight back to his truck. He returned back into the shop a couple of minutes later with a big slash hammer. He positioned himself in front of the boiler, spit out on his hands, and then grabbed the hammer and bang!, he banged the boiler hard. The boiler coughed a couple of times, shivered once, and after it heave a deep sigh started working again.
The shop owner was thrilled with the simple fixing realizing that he could get back into production immediately. The shop owner asked the repairman then, “how much I owe you?”, and the repairman responded “Five hundred and five dollars”. The shop owner looked at the repairman in disbelief, and added “What? You have been here for less than five minutes and you are charging me that much? I would like an itemized bill, please!”. The repairmen without any perturbation took out a pad, and begin to scribble on it conscientiously. After a few seconds, he handed the itemized bill to the shop owner. The bill read: 5 dollars for the wear and tear of the hammer, and 500 dollars for knowing where to hit. End of the story.
Sometimes knowledge does not need to be highly technical, but practical. In any case, knowledge is a power to be harnessed as soon and as much of it as you can.
Freedom is a dream of fantasy some might say, but others say that to live after dreams is the real and truthful thing. There are also those who think that religion and politics are the opium of the masses. So the whole thing it is just a matter of personal opinion. In spite of whatever your personal definition or conception of freedom is, freedom lends us a flexibly empirical platform with some pragmatic and adaptable frontiers from where we can cultivate and grow our minds and our indomitable human spirit, even if freedom is a faux assumption that only exists in our mental power.
With the concept of freedom embedded in our intellect we are empowered to search for the ultimate thing, for the highest thought, for the farthest frontier, for the smallest of the small, and for the fastest and more elusive dreams. Freedom is like an internal power engine on super steroids that allows us to think faster than the speed of light, and give us the possibility to leave ignorance behind us eating our dust, the dust of knowledge, that is.
Democracy allows us, like freedom, to share and discuss our thoughts, concepts, wants and do not wants without being killed by an ignoramus. I remember the first time I casted my vote ever. It was for Presidential elections in the US, and shortly after I became a proud citizen of this splendid nation. I was 38 years old at the time, and I had never voted before in my life because I lived under a mental castrated dictator who will kill anyone who opposed him without any dilation, someone who never liberated his brain from a Spartan psychosomatic constipation. Yes, there I was, standing on line. It was about 4:00 AM and I was the first in line. I was wearing my biggest smile, and enduring a very cold morning. At about 5:00 AM a lady came to the voting place and started to set up a table to sell pastries, and she said to me “the polls do not open until 6:00 AM, how long have you been here?” “I know” I responded, “I came here as early as I could. And you know what?, I can vote for whoever I want to, and nobody will shoot me dead for that, is that right?”. After a silent pause she retorted, “I guess so…” and started to walk slowly away from me looking at me with distrusted askance. She probably thought that I was some kind of psycho, one those people who you should never interrupt and keep on telling them “Yes!” until the ambulance with the straight jacket arrives.
In my mind I was savoring democracy… It was not who I was going to vote for, it was that I could be exercising a “right” (look at that!) without being killed on the spot. I felt like I was being defiant against the democratically neutered shithead dictator, and no one could do a thing about it! What a trip! I was exercising freedom and democracy at the same time, while I was freezing to death, but I was also feeling a reinforcing peace within, an excitement I had never experienced before! The knowledge of freedom and democracy had turned me into a tremendously powerful human being. After I casted my vote, I walked home feeling abysmally sorry for that inferior dictator and his dictatorial ignorant extravaganza. I just had walked all over the face of the dictator and his minions with total impunity, and I liked it! This happened long, long time ago, but I still have the same sarcastic smile on my face today, and I still walk tall, and I will never walk in any other way.
To have a sound and solid self determination, you also have to have will power. Self determination by itself it is not articulated to be fully functional, it needs your will power. Self determination also feeds on knowledge, freedom, and it can thrive wild within the walls of democracy. Self determination builds independence to grow the untapped human potential that is dormant, but restless inside all of us.
Self determination epitomizes the righteous right for people of all kinds and walks of life to pursue and establish their own financial, social, and enlightening development, which is great, but how will you do that without knowledge, freedom, and democracy to put these elements into positive effect? The right of self determination is an instrumental factor in pursuing the road of opposite direction to ignorance.
So, ignorance has many enemies, but these enemies need to be organized and activated against ignorance. Ignorance has a leg on us. Ignorance was given to us free of charge, it was a gift, but with a hidden price tag. We all are ignorants to some degree. Ignorance is not our fault, but we will be guilty of doing nothing to reduce it to the smallest degree we can possibly do within our wherewithal and possibilities.
Ignorance incline but does not obligate, and ignorance has two distinctive directions. I understood this a long time ago when I observed two small embarkations with sails navigating Lake Titicaca in the highest Andean borders of Peru and Bolivia. Although the wind was blowing in a southern direction and both ships were navigating simultaneously, one boat was navigating south, the other, north. This did look gawky to me at first, but recognizing the type of sails in use, I understood the effects of wind mechanics at work, but more important, I visualized in my mind the two very real and contradictory directions of ignorance. The ignorance was represented by the wind, the boats represent us, and the sails, the will power. It is a lot of work and effort to navigate opposing the wind, but it can be done. Going in the conflicting direction of the wind is going in the direction of knowledge. The easy way is to follow the same direction of the wind, the direction of ignorance. You need to decide what direction you are going to hunt, then use your will power, and the rest will be ancient history.
In the struggle against ignorance you have to take a ferrous and sustained attitude. You know how it goes: “Attitude is everything!” and that is about right. You have to become somewhat like my son’s little dog “Roxie”. Roxie is a little Yorkshire Terrier that has an admirable attitude about certain things. Every time she hear someone knocking the door, she gets tremendously excited and runs swiftly towards the door because she thinks that whoever the visitor is, is coming to see her. She barks and jumps of anticipation until we open the door and she realizes that the visit is not for her. Then, she goes back to whatever she was doing before the knocks at the door. Roxie does this every single time she takes notice of a knock in the door, and with the same exhilaration every time. I can see the uncontained expectation in her little eyes hardly visible among the hair that covers them. Roxie does not know that the visitor is not coming to see her, and that will never be. However, she keeps (and will keep) doing this forever. If we can take Roxie’s attitude against ignorance we will be able to counter it every time. We need to have that sense of urgency, that enthusiasm, that thrilling level, that drive to combat ignorance, every time, like this is it, this is the visit for me, this is the last chance and it is mine, and it has to be because there is no tomorrow. Dogs might be stupid in that sense, but for sure they have something to teach us about attitude.
Ignorance is the foolish devastation of knowledge, and ignorance is not a stigma or pathology, but a contagious chronical disease, a terminal disorder for the human mind, a mental jail without chains, walls, or bars, an embarrassing entanglement between philosophical existentialism, relative consciousness, and the cognition of conscience. We must know the difference between rights and wrongs before is too late. Why? Here is an example. Two ignoramuses were walking down a dirty street when one of them did see a brownish semi-solid substance, of cylindrical form, and coiled on itself. Here is the dialog:
Ignoramus 1: “Look!, Chocolate!”
Ignoramus 2: “No!, It is crap!”
Ignoramus 1: “Are you sure?”
Ignoramus 2: “Well, it looks like it”
Ignoramus 1: “I am sure it is chocolate”
Ignoramus 2: “The only way to know is to taste it”
Ignoramus 1: “You try it first”
Ignoramus 2: “No, you do it first!”
The Ignoramus 1 tried a sample with his finger and said:
Ignoramus 1: “It tastes weird for chocolate, but it is chocolate”
Ignoramus 2: “Let me see… Hum, yes, it tastes kind of crappy chocolaty, does not it?”
Ignoramus 1: “Let me try again”
Ignoramus 2: “Let me try again too”
The ignoramuses repeated their tasting trial several times until there was not much left of the brownish semi-solid substance of cylindrical form coiled on itself.
Ignoramus 1: “I can not decide!”
Ignoramus 2: “Sorry man, but I really think this is crap!”
Ignoramus 1: “Maybe you are right!”
Ignoramus 2: “Maybe? I know I am right!”
After trying once more, Ignoramus 1 says:
Ignoramus 1: “Yep! You are right! It is crap!”
Ignoramus 2: “Good thing we did not step on it!”
Sometimes the pursuing or discovering of the naked truth might not take someone along the right road, or the company you might have in the pursuit of the truth might not be the most appropriated one. The point is that the more ignorant you are, the easier it will be to fail even in the most basic and mindless situations.
As soon as our limited human and ignorance-fragile minds can learn about the reign of freedom of the captivity of ignorance, they will flight wildly liberated and unbounded towards knowledge, freedom, democracy, self determination, and of course, to the glorious, safe, and trustworthy bastions of civility.
The Good News
The good news are that every one of us is capable (not necessarily willing) and equipped to strappingly defeat ignorance. Unless you have a strong Oedipus complex propensity toward ignorance, you can indubitably defeat it. The many efforts you will invest on your personal behalf during your epic journey en route for victory will be costly, long, sustained, hard, sometimes bitter, and it will take a lot of discipline, but the rewards you will conquer will surpass every unfeigned effort you did put on during your road to knowledge. You need to do this. You owe it to yourself. You do.
A Public Apology
My written expression of the English language throughout this pamphlet might not be the best, or perhaps it might sound “ignorant” to some, and this humble servant can accept that. The only excuse I have to offer for this dearth of language is that English is my fifth language, and I have not mastered my command of it to an acceptable level of knowledge just yet, and I sincerely apologize for this ignoramical deficiency.
To close, I would say that this conceivably unusual trend of un-standard philosophy on the subject of ignorance is a pet project belonging to the free thinker portion of my soul of Renaissance Philosopher and Thoughts Trader. And yes!, I do contraband assorted and random judgments and tangential perspectives brought to life by unforced caesarean, from between the active and prolific sphenoids of my mythological Cerberus’ skull, to graciously launch them into the mighty Internet for both, the enjoyment and torture of the structured extrasensory human wisdom, and with a bit of luck, for the non-impaired judgment of the creatures who lack ignorance.
Showing posts with label human. Show all posts
Showing posts with label human. Show all posts
Entrepreneurial Business 101
Business Model
The practical implementation of the “business model” concept dates back to the earliest days of organized business when businessman sought to have a better return of their investment, a more practical and efficient way to open markets, and a pragmatic manner to “see” into the future of their business ventures to counter the unpredictability of markets, costs, and sales.
A business model simply depicts in detail the company plans to make money by offering a service, or a product. Depending on your own natural concept and your quintessential idea of a business model, your business model can be very simple, narrow, and straightforward, or it can be very complex, detailed, wide-ranging, and far-reaching, as you want to make it. A supermarket's business model is to make money by offering customers as many products as possible beneath one roof, in a convenient and pleasant place, putting the convenience and speed on the side of the client. An internet based business model such a website can be potentially confusing, and with wide-reaching objectives since there are too many different ideas and concepts on how this atypical class of companies try to engender profits. At the end, all these companies will offer products or services like anyone else.
A business model then, is an eclectic term brought into play to illustrate a profit-generating scheme. This business method is in most cases, independent from the set of business models within the same endeavor, although it is an integral part of the general business objectives of a company.
The expansive and flexible structure of the business model is the recipient of an all-encompassing range of pinpointing sales strategies, offering tactics, managerial structures of the human capital, descriptive approaches to attain the purpose of the plan, operational and implementation methods, flexible navigational courses of action, new-fangled market penetration stratagems, original infrastructures models, re-deployable commercial tactics, and updated trading practices to deal with the relentlessly evolving market forces.
What is a Business Concept?
A business concept is a theoretical and intangible design, an abstract idea that represents at its best the company’s offering of the product or services to the market. This sketched business concept must capture in its entirety the purpose and object of the business model. The business concept must lead concisely and evidently a set of activities that define in a distinct, different, and innovative way of presenting the service or product to the market. This should be a 3-minute vocal concept capturing a brand new concept of marketing, which must be swayed into the minds of investors and marketers.
The business concept then must outline exactly what the company will deliver to all relevant targeted constituents. This includes the tangible value that the service or product will provide, the vertical market that will be able to access to, and the sustainability of its business model in the sought-after marketplace. The business concept is the cornerstone for all and each activity supporting the business endeavor. It is fundamental that your business concept soundly testify to your business plan and its original value proposition
Back to the Business Model
The active implementation of a new business model under the guidance of the business concept, will allow companies to have a better and more controlled administration of their products and services, and a better handling and monitoring over manufacturing, marketing, sales, and distribution strategies.
One critical element of particular importance that should never be overlooked in the development of a business model, it is its essential chronology. In developing a business model for a new product or service, the lack of careful and logical planning and timing of investment vs. expenses and cash flow, will always discredit the expected delivery of profits and revenue. The critical path and implementation table of your business concept delivered by your business plan, must be logical, convincing, and most of all, realistic. Investors can smell wishful thinking a mile away and will keep your business at a safe distance from their dollars.
To avoid a certain concept-to-reality failures, some of the issues you need to cautiously percolate are:
Determine how much of the product or service has to be constructed or established before a customer makes a purchase decision or a purchase commitment. Most mayor clients will not buy more than 10% of your total proven capacity of production. For the client, this will circumvent strategic dependency from you or the product.
Define the amount of investment that will be necessary to secure contracts and commitments from customers. Clients need to see your financial stability and capacity of deliverance before they entrust you with a long-term obligation. This decision also entails strategic dependency and risk for the client business.
Extrapolate the dimension of the investment’s cumulative risk factor before achieving net positive cash flow, evaluate contractual to upfront investment, and define an acceptable timeframe to penetrate and secure a steady sales market to generate revenues. The investors must see clearly how you are going to protect their money, how you will amortize the investment, and how you will generate profits within a levelheaded agenda.
The above mentioned topics of concern when not addressed properly, time and again will make, or break your new venture. The business models that call for a reduced and less risky upfront funding need to be optimized to be reasonable, and realistically quicken the intake of revenue, receivables, and cash inflow. Business models that implement consequential actions across the board to minimize and shorten the exposure (in time) of the investment at risk will have a better chance of, and a faster prospect of success.
In the car manufacturing industry, a new model has to be produced and stocked away before any resulting revenues from sales can be obtain. This is an elevated upfront investment with an inherent risk of sales market failure. However, you can’t sale cars by parts to secure a market, so your investment overflows into other areas such as manufacturing facilities, parts, materials, equipment, marketing, etc.
In the food industry, the upfront financial risk is a fraction of the car industry if you are trying to sell bread because of the lower cost of infrastructure, and also because you can start with a scalable strategy by selling small amounts of bread until you can build a steady and growing market.
In both cases, a reasonable, well-thought business model will determine the viability and accessibility of the target market, and the possibilities of success in it. Also, a car is a higher ticket-price item than bread, so the fundamentals of economies of scale also change and differ, and its integration into the business model is of utmost importance.
Not in all business the popular adage “built it and they will come” actually works. If you are risking a lot, you need a more comprehensive, realistic, judgmental, less vulnerable, and proactive means to factually measure risk and success.
To Sell or Not To Sell: The Question is Diamonds or Potatoes?
Here is a little story about two entrepreneurs who decided to go in business by themselves roughly at the same time, but in two distinct industries, and how it worked for them. The stories are real, so I am concealing the actual names of those performing the business, and the places where they performed their business at, because I have no way to ask for their permission to make these elements public.
Meet Pedro. Pedro finished college and he could not find employment for his career anywhere due to the regrettable state of the economy and lack of opportunities in the country where he lived. His father did not own a business and Pedro really had no place to go, so he decided to start his own business.
Meet Carlos. Carlos also completed college but his father wants him to work in the family business as resellers of Caterpillar equipment. Carlos had a place to go, but he disliked the family business so he decided to start his own. Carlos shared the same lack of opportunities that Pedro had.
Carlos’ Short Story
Carlos was used to a fairly good life. His family’s business was not great, but provided for a comfortable living standard. Once Carlos decided to start a new venture, his family helped him with advise, contacts, and capital. Carlos went into the luxury car business. Carlos did not know much about this business, but he figured that with all the help, contacts, family support, and money available for him, he could have a good business up and running fairly quick. And he did it. After jumping through the trade ropes, permits, and regulations, after 4 months he had a flamboyant European sports car dealer. After the inauguration party of his new and exclusive dealership, and after a few sales to family members, to close friends of the family, and a few sales within a niche market of affluent people in the area that followed the first 2 months after he opened, no one else came to his dealership to buy cars.
In spite of the efforts of Carlos and his family, the glitzy car dealership closed, leaving Carlos and his family with debts and losses. Like most people in that country, I was in no position to buy one of those expensive and non-practical cars (for the economic environment) Carlos used to sell, so I couldn’t contribute. A few months later I run into Carlos and he explained to me the long list of mistakes he made before and after his failed venture.
In short, he did not have a clear business model, nevertheless a sound business plan. Carlos learned dearly from this awful and expensive experience, and so did I.
This might sound unbelievable, or even dumb, but do not be surprised because many business are started this way. In the country where Carlos lives, some people start a business because they “heard people saying that is a good business”.
Pedro’s Less Short Story
Pedro lives in the same country than Carlos, in a different city. Pedro did not have capital, or a family that could help him, neither he knew the business in which he was about to start. But Pedro had an idea, and he took the time to dig out knowledge about his idea, and to see how it could fit it in the business environment he was targeting, and how could he fund his idea. After about a year, Pedro was ready to flight. Pedro explained his business concept to an uncle, he got a small investment and a partner with him, and both went into the French fries business!
This is what Pedro did. Pedro prepared a different kind of French fries. He peeled and grinded the potatoes, then he mixed them with a secret minced compound to make a sort of dough; protruded the mix through a small machine in the form of French fries, next he fried them, and afterward sold them at the beach during the summer.
Pedro and his uncle had an old beaten pick up truck (a re-formatted Studebaker) that they loaded every summer morning with potato sacks, machinery, other paraphernalia needed for the business, and him, his uncle, and a helper went off to sell French fries to the beach. I tried his potato contraption. He offered several flavors: spicy, non-spicy, salty, non-salty, hot-mild, hot-hot, and of course the regular nonsense French fry. His product was exquisite. He named his business “The King of the French Fries”. Little he knew…
I intermittently observed Pedro and his crew almost every day during the hot summer of 1970, and I noticed that he didn’t stay long in the beach we use to frequent as he did at the beginning of the season. He just dropped off his uncle with a helper and after a while he and other person who accompanies him went off somewhere else. Close the end of the summer I learned that Pedro had a total of 7 little stands, just like the one in our beach, in 6 other beaches. “The business went well, but is a lot of hard and hot work”, he told me once after the summer. “I have to get ready for the next summer,” he said, and that was the last time I saw Pedro.
By the following summer I had totally forgotten about “The King of the French Fries” until I did see a small, but colorful add in a local paper at the city I used to spent my summers. The add portrayed a big French fry guy with a crown, in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt standing by a small cart with a awning saying “Make your summer unforgettable, starting with your tummy”. That summer he had grown his business reaching to a staggering 22 beaches! His French fries were the sensation at the beaches and everyone had, at least once, eaten one of his products. That summer went fast as my money, and I catch a glimpse of Pedro’s business now and then in the papers, TV, and radio. Pedro had become the BONA FIDE KING OF THE FRENCH FRIES, the real McCoy.
I have no details, but I know that Pedro became the biggest seller of (these) French fries in the country, and he was dominating the industry at this time not just during the summer, and according to the rumors, he had at least one stand of French fries in each and every beach in the country. As indicated by the local papers, Pedro was still working hard, but now supervising the operation with his uncle aboard of an Italian Red Alpha-Romeo sport car… I couldn’t prevent learning a lot from Pedro. He started his Human Capital Team with 2 people and a business concept, and I believe by the end of the summer of 1973, he had more than two hundred people in his potato Kingdom, and a flourishing business.
Neither Carlos nor Pedro had a business plan to start with, but Pedro had a Business Concept. Pedro never developed a business plan, but he did evolve his business concept into a working tool. Today, Carlos is working in the family business and he is doing just fine, and Pedro, well… Pedro sold the business, retired, left the country, and now he lives comfortably with his family in Florida.
Of course there are many details, and countless boring steps missing in these two stories that I did not bother to include, but the point is that a little serious and responsible preparation and planning can go a long way in your new venture.
The Mighty Human Capital
In my view, Human Capital is the only and sole dynamic resource of indispensable value any company will ever posses that will evolve synchronically with its business model. Pedro would have never been able to grow his business without the support of his reliable human capital.
What is the Capital Value of the Human Element?
When writing a business plan, normally a great apportion of its content deals with industry, sales, projected revenue, competition, the product or services, investment opportunities and capital amounts, risks, local and foreign markets, and market availability among other valid points, however, very little of the business plan is devoted to the most important element of the entire system: The Human Capital.
The real risk of an investment does not reside in the speed of recuperating the money, or how much inventory will be sold, or what size of the market can be captured, or how profitable the company will be in the years ahead. At the end of the day, the entire risk of the company rests on the shoulders of its human capital and its ability to make it all work. All your money is bet on you managers and their dedicated and loyal crews.
You always end up investing in a management team, and if you don’t, your business venture is condemned before starts. The business hell is full of entrepreneurs without crews. Why do you invest in your management team, your essential human capital? Because what is established in the business plan will not come to fruition, or will never will be executed without an adaptable management, capable of carry out the objectives of the business plan that are always in need of change and adaptation. Business plans are like a vehicle. It doesn’t matter its size or capacity, they all need a skilful driver to maneuver them safely to their final destination. That driver is you human capital!
The single most important understanding of an entrepreneur is to recognize, appreciate, and embrace his/her human capital strategic potential, so he/she can utilize it and apply it towards the success of the business. You need to comprehend the important characteristics and virtues your human capital provides as a whole, and how it stands out compared to other management teams.
As long as you acknowledge that the human capital is the most important positive feature your company will ever have, you will be not alone, but empowered to conquer a successful future. It is important to groom your work force to work as a team, to work together, evaluate its past performance, and use the learned lessons to put the teams’ work in perspective for the future. It is important to ask yourself who’s missing in the team. It is important to find natural leaders among your lineup, it is important to publically or privately recognize manifest member’s abilities and skills, it is important to promote advancement and progress, and it is important to multiply these capabilities as much as you can among your human capital members.
The Capital Value of the Human Element is the entire investment in the endeavor.
Avoid Single Points of Risk
No business model is guarantee of success. Only humans dare to guarantee things, knowing that there are no guarantees for anything. The only guarantee in business is that risk will be ever-present.
Some people think because he or she is the only person that can perform well a specific task, because it is difficult, or requires and advanced level of skill, or otherwise they are the only ones capable to execute such task, they have achieved job security. This can’t be farther from reality! As a business owner or responsible manager of an industry, you can not bet the future of the enterprise in one single point. If that employee becomes sick, or goes on vacations, or dies, then the industry stops. Ridiculous! If that “critical employee” decides to ask for more money or other benefits, he or she will hold the company hostage until the demands are satisfied. Ridiculous! If you are the only one able to perform certain tasks in a company, you are at the highest risk to be eliminated as soon as possible if not before. And this includes the entrepreneur.
Make sure your team is interchangeable, capable, well trained, and everyone of its members is taken care of. Good management and good care of the human capital can be de most decisive and accelerating reason for success or failure. Always consider making available prospects for growth and opportunity for your work force.
Our glorious US Marines are lethally effective in their indivisible team cohesion. Any member of the team can and will perform the other member’s duties at any time and with the same efficacy, they work together, they support each other, they relay blindly on each other, they all fight for the common goal, and they deliver. This is a perfect example of the ideal strength for a human capital team. Turn your human capital into a Business Marines Team.
The Perfect Business Model
The perfect business model is your own business model. Think about it. You will give birth to this baby in any and each way you want this business to be. You will plan every piece of it, maneuver every decision, design every strategy, define each goal and purpose, architect your human capital, and impregnate your business plan with your ideas, wishes, desires, objectives, output, and imagination. You have the exceptional opportunity to create the perfect business model for your own business.
In order to accomplish this, you must honestly apply sound business principles, market knowledge, and experience. You need to bring to existence a solid, cohesive, and well organized management team (human capital) to help you to fill all the blanks within the lack of knowledge and expertise you might have. You will not find honesty, loyalty, or responsibility in any market, product, or service. These virtues can only be provided and embraced by your human team, and if you are the chief leader of your human team, you must lead with those principles deeply rooted in your conduct first.
Your business model is not a logistic regression where you can predict the probabilities of success of your venture, but a carefully crafted document, a detailed roadmap, a planned strategy, a calculated input and output, a blueprint of the market, a tactical assessment of the risks, an archetype configuration for human capital, a powerhouse for accomplishment, an exact compass for direction, a financial chronograph, and your legitimate keystone for success. Design it well!
Perhaps we all need to be a little like Pedro, but carrying our business endeavor preparation to the next higher, logical steps, and turn it into an innovative Business Concept, a solid Business Model, and an accomplished Business Plan.
The practical implementation of the “business model” concept dates back to the earliest days of organized business when businessman sought to have a better return of their investment, a more practical and efficient way to open markets, and a pragmatic manner to “see” into the future of their business ventures to counter the unpredictability of markets, costs, and sales.
A business model simply depicts in detail the company plans to make money by offering a service, or a product. Depending on your own natural concept and your quintessential idea of a business model, your business model can be very simple, narrow, and straightforward, or it can be very complex, detailed, wide-ranging, and far-reaching, as you want to make it. A supermarket's business model is to make money by offering customers as many products as possible beneath one roof, in a convenient and pleasant place, putting the convenience and speed on the side of the client. An internet based business model such a website can be potentially confusing, and with wide-reaching objectives since there are too many different ideas and concepts on how this atypical class of companies try to engender profits. At the end, all these companies will offer products or services like anyone else.
A business model then, is an eclectic term brought into play to illustrate a profit-generating scheme. This business method is in most cases, independent from the set of business models within the same endeavor, although it is an integral part of the general business objectives of a company.
The expansive and flexible structure of the business model is the recipient of an all-encompassing range of pinpointing sales strategies, offering tactics, managerial structures of the human capital, descriptive approaches to attain the purpose of the plan, operational and implementation methods, flexible navigational courses of action, new-fangled market penetration stratagems, original infrastructures models, re-deployable commercial tactics, and updated trading practices to deal with the relentlessly evolving market forces.
What is a Business Concept?
A business concept is a theoretical and intangible design, an abstract idea that represents at its best the company’s offering of the product or services to the market. This sketched business concept must capture in its entirety the purpose and object of the business model. The business concept must lead concisely and evidently a set of activities that define in a distinct, different, and innovative way of presenting the service or product to the market. This should be a 3-minute vocal concept capturing a brand new concept of marketing, which must be swayed into the minds of investors and marketers.
The business concept then must outline exactly what the company will deliver to all relevant targeted constituents. This includes the tangible value that the service or product will provide, the vertical market that will be able to access to, and the sustainability of its business model in the sought-after marketplace. The business concept is the cornerstone for all and each activity supporting the business endeavor. It is fundamental that your business concept soundly testify to your business plan and its original value proposition
Back to the Business Model
The active implementation of a new business model under the guidance of the business concept, will allow companies to have a better and more controlled administration of their products and services, and a better handling and monitoring over manufacturing, marketing, sales, and distribution strategies.
One critical element of particular importance that should never be overlooked in the development of a business model, it is its essential chronology. In developing a business model for a new product or service, the lack of careful and logical planning and timing of investment vs. expenses and cash flow, will always discredit the expected delivery of profits and revenue. The critical path and implementation table of your business concept delivered by your business plan, must be logical, convincing, and most of all, realistic. Investors can smell wishful thinking a mile away and will keep your business at a safe distance from their dollars.
To avoid a certain concept-to-reality failures, some of the issues you need to cautiously percolate are:
Determine how much of the product or service has to be constructed or established before a customer makes a purchase decision or a purchase commitment. Most mayor clients will not buy more than 10% of your total proven capacity of production. For the client, this will circumvent strategic dependency from you or the product.
Define the amount of investment that will be necessary to secure contracts and commitments from customers. Clients need to see your financial stability and capacity of deliverance before they entrust you with a long-term obligation. This decision also entails strategic dependency and risk for the client business.
Extrapolate the dimension of the investment’s cumulative risk factor before achieving net positive cash flow, evaluate contractual to upfront investment, and define an acceptable timeframe to penetrate and secure a steady sales market to generate revenues. The investors must see clearly how you are going to protect their money, how you will amortize the investment, and how you will generate profits within a levelheaded agenda.
The above mentioned topics of concern when not addressed properly, time and again will make, or break your new venture. The business models that call for a reduced and less risky upfront funding need to be optimized to be reasonable, and realistically quicken the intake of revenue, receivables, and cash inflow. Business models that implement consequential actions across the board to minimize and shorten the exposure (in time) of the investment at risk will have a better chance of, and a faster prospect of success.
In the car manufacturing industry, a new model has to be produced and stocked away before any resulting revenues from sales can be obtain. This is an elevated upfront investment with an inherent risk of sales market failure. However, you can’t sale cars by parts to secure a market, so your investment overflows into other areas such as manufacturing facilities, parts, materials, equipment, marketing, etc.
In the food industry, the upfront financial risk is a fraction of the car industry if you are trying to sell bread because of the lower cost of infrastructure, and also because you can start with a scalable strategy by selling small amounts of bread until you can build a steady and growing market.
In both cases, a reasonable, well-thought business model will determine the viability and accessibility of the target market, and the possibilities of success in it. Also, a car is a higher ticket-price item than bread, so the fundamentals of economies of scale also change and differ, and its integration into the business model is of utmost importance.
Not in all business the popular adage “built it and they will come” actually works. If you are risking a lot, you need a more comprehensive, realistic, judgmental, less vulnerable, and proactive means to factually measure risk and success.
To Sell or Not To Sell: The Question is Diamonds or Potatoes?
Here is a little story about two entrepreneurs who decided to go in business by themselves roughly at the same time, but in two distinct industries, and how it worked for them. The stories are real, so I am concealing the actual names of those performing the business, and the places where they performed their business at, because I have no way to ask for their permission to make these elements public.
Meet Pedro. Pedro finished college and he could not find employment for his career anywhere due to the regrettable state of the economy and lack of opportunities in the country where he lived. His father did not own a business and Pedro really had no place to go, so he decided to start his own business.
Meet Carlos. Carlos also completed college but his father wants him to work in the family business as resellers of Caterpillar equipment. Carlos had a place to go, but he disliked the family business so he decided to start his own. Carlos shared the same lack of opportunities that Pedro had.
Carlos’ Short Story
Carlos was used to a fairly good life. His family’s business was not great, but provided for a comfortable living standard. Once Carlos decided to start a new venture, his family helped him with advise, contacts, and capital. Carlos went into the luxury car business. Carlos did not know much about this business, but he figured that with all the help, contacts, family support, and money available for him, he could have a good business up and running fairly quick. And he did it. After jumping through the trade ropes, permits, and regulations, after 4 months he had a flamboyant European sports car dealer. After the inauguration party of his new and exclusive dealership, and after a few sales to family members, to close friends of the family, and a few sales within a niche market of affluent people in the area that followed the first 2 months after he opened, no one else came to his dealership to buy cars.
In spite of the efforts of Carlos and his family, the glitzy car dealership closed, leaving Carlos and his family with debts and losses. Like most people in that country, I was in no position to buy one of those expensive and non-practical cars (for the economic environment) Carlos used to sell, so I couldn’t contribute. A few months later I run into Carlos and he explained to me the long list of mistakes he made before and after his failed venture.
In short, he did not have a clear business model, nevertheless a sound business plan. Carlos learned dearly from this awful and expensive experience, and so did I.
This might sound unbelievable, or even dumb, but do not be surprised because many business are started this way. In the country where Carlos lives, some people start a business because they “heard people saying that is a good business”.
Pedro’s Less Short Story
Pedro lives in the same country than Carlos, in a different city. Pedro did not have capital, or a family that could help him, neither he knew the business in which he was about to start. But Pedro had an idea, and he took the time to dig out knowledge about his idea, and to see how it could fit it in the business environment he was targeting, and how could he fund his idea. After about a year, Pedro was ready to flight. Pedro explained his business concept to an uncle, he got a small investment and a partner with him, and both went into the French fries business!
This is what Pedro did. Pedro prepared a different kind of French fries. He peeled and grinded the potatoes, then he mixed them with a secret minced compound to make a sort of dough; protruded the mix through a small machine in the form of French fries, next he fried them, and afterward sold them at the beach during the summer.
Pedro and his uncle had an old beaten pick up truck (a re-formatted Studebaker) that they loaded every summer morning with potato sacks, machinery, other paraphernalia needed for the business, and him, his uncle, and a helper went off to sell French fries to the beach. I tried his potato contraption. He offered several flavors: spicy, non-spicy, salty, non-salty, hot-mild, hot-hot, and of course the regular nonsense French fry. His product was exquisite. He named his business “The King of the French Fries”. Little he knew…
I intermittently observed Pedro and his crew almost every day during the hot summer of 1970, and I noticed that he didn’t stay long in the beach we use to frequent as he did at the beginning of the season. He just dropped off his uncle with a helper and after a while he and other person who accompanies him went off somewhere else. Close the end of the summer I learned that Pedro had a total of 7 little stands, just like the one in our beach, in 6 other beaches. “The business went well, but is a lot of hard and hot work”, he told me once after the summer. “I have to get ready for the next summer,” he said, and that was the last time I saw Pedro.
By the following summer I had totally forgotten about “The King of the French Fries” until I did see a small, but colorful add in a local paper at the city I used to spent my summers. The add portrayed a big French fry guy with a crown, in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt standing by a small cart with a awning saying “Make your summer unforgettable, starting with your tummy”. That summer he had grown his business reaching to a staggering 22 beaches! His French fries were the sensation at the beaches and everyone had, at least once, eaten one of his products. That summer went fast as my money, and I catch a glimpse of Pedro’s business now and then in the papers, TV, and radio. Pedro had become the BONA FIDE KING OF THE FRENCH FRIES, the real McCoy.
I have no details, but I know that Pedro became the biggest seller of (these) French fries in the country, and he was dominating the industry at this time not just during the summer, and according to the rumors, he had at least one stand of French fries in each and every beach in the country. As indicated by the local papers, Pedro was still working hard, but now supervising the operation with his uncle aboard of an Italian Red Alpha-Romeo sport car… I couldn’t prevent learning a lot from Pedro. He started his Human Capital Team with 2 people and a business concept, and I believe by the end of the summer of 1973, he had more than two hundred people in his potato Kingdom, and a flourishing business.
Neither Carlos nor Pedro had a business plan to start with, but Pedro had a Business Concept. Pedro never developed a business plan, but he did evolve his business concept into a working tool. Today, Carlos is working in the family business and he is doing just fine, and Pedro, well… Pedro sold the business, retired, left the country, and now he lives comfortably with his family in Florida.
Of course there are many details, and countless boring steps missing in these two stories that I did not bother to include, but the point is that a little serious and responsible preparation and planning can go a long way in your new venture.
The Mighty Human Capital
In my view, Human Capital is the only and sole dynamic resource of indispensable value any company will ever posses that will evolve synchronically with its business model. Pedro would have never been able to grow his business without the support of his reliable human capital.
What is the Capital Value of the Human Element?
When writing a business plan, normally a great apportion of its content deals with industry, sales, projected revenue, competition, the product or services, investment opportunities and capital amounts, risks, local and foreign markets, and market availability among other valid points, however, very little of the business plan is devoted to the most important element of the entire system: The Human Capital.
The real risk of an investment does not reside in the speed of recuperating the money, or how much inventory will be sold, or what size of the market can be captured, or how profitable the company will be in the years ahead. At the end of the day, the entire risk of the company rests on the shoulders of its human capital and its ability to make it all work. All your money is bet on you managers and their dedicated and loyal crews.
You always end up investing in a management team, and if you don’t, your business venture is condemned before starts. The business hell is full of entrepreneurs without crews. Why do you invest in your management team, your essential human capital? Because what is established in the business plan will not come to fruition, or will never will be executed without an adaptable management, capable of carry out the objectives of the business plan that are always in need of change and adaptation. Business plans are like a vehicle. It doesn’t matter its size or capacity, they all need a skilful driver to maneuver them safely to their final destination. That driver is you human capital!
The single most important understanding of an entrepreneur is to recognize, appreciate, and embrace his/her human capital strategic potential, so he/she can utilize it and apply it towards the success of the business. You need to comprehend the important characteristics and virtues your human capital provides as a whole, and how it stands out compared to other management teams.
As long as you acknowledge that the human capital is the most important positive feature your company will ever have, you will be not alone, but empowered to conquer a successful future. It is important to groom your work force to work as a team, to work together, evaluate its past performance, and use the learned lessons to put the teams’ work in perspective for the future. It is important to ask yourself who’s missing in the team. It is important to find natural leaders among your lineup, it is important to publically or privately recognize manifest member’s abilities and skills, it is important to promote advancement and progress, and it is important to multiply these capabilities as much as you can among your human capital members.
The Capital Value of the Human Element is the entire investment in the endeavor.
Avoid Single Points of Risk
No business model is guarantee of success. Only humans dare to guarantee things, knowing that there are no guarantees for anything. The only guarantee in business is that risk will be ever-present.
Some people think because he or she is the only person that can perform well a specific task, because it is difficult, or requires and advanced level of skill, or otherwise they are the only ones capable to execute such task, they have achieved job security. This can’t be farther from reality! As a business owner or responsible manager of an industry, you can not bet the future of the enterprise in one single point. If that employee becomes sick, or goes on vacations, or dies, then the industry stops. Ridiculous! If that “critical employee” decides to ask for more money or other benefits, he or she will hold the company hostage until the demands are satisfied. Ridiculous! If you are the only one able to perform certain tasks in a company, you are at the highest risk to be eliminated as soon as possible if not before. And this includes the entrepreneur.
Make sure your team is interchangeable, capable, well trained, and everyone of its members is taken care of. Good management and good care of the human capital can be de most decisive and accelerating reason for success or failure. Always consider making available prospects for growth and opportunity for your work force.
Our glorious US Marines are lethally effective in their indivisible team cohesion. Any member of the team can and will perform the other member’s duties at any time and with the same efficacy, they work together, they support each other, they relay blindly on each other, they all fight for the common goal, and they deliver. This is a perfect example of the ideal strength for a human capital team. Turn your human capital into a Business Marines Team.
The Perfect Business Model
The perfect business model is your own business model. Think about it. You will give birth to this baby in any and each way you want this business to be. You will plan every piece of it, maneuver every decision, design every strategy, define each goal and purpose, architect your human capital, and impregnate your business plan with your ideas, wishes, desires, objectives, output, and imagination. You have the exceptional opportunity to create the perfect business model for your own business.
In order to accomplish this, you must honestly apply sound business principles, market knowledge, and experience. You need to bring to existence a solid, cohesive, and well organized management team (human capital) to help you to fill all the blanks within the lack of knowledge and expertise you might have. You will not find honesty, loyalty, or responsibility in any market, product, or service. These virtues can only be provided and embraced by your human team, and if you are the chief leader of your human team, you must lead with those principles deeply rooted in your conduct first.
Your business model is not a logistic regression where you can predict the probabilities of success of your venture, but a carefully crafted document, a detailed roadmap, a planned strategy, a calculated input and output, a blueprint of the market, a tactical assessment of the risks, an archetype configuration for human capital, a powerhouse for accomplishment, an exact compass for direction, a financial chronograph, and your legitimate keystone for success. Design it well!
Perhaps we all need to be a little like Pedro, but carrying our business endeavor preparation to the next higher, logical steps, and turn it into an innovative Business Concept, a solid Business Model, and an accomplished Business Plan.
The Evolution of Human Capital and its Progressive Impact on Economic Growth
The Evolution
It has been said by various scholars that the evolution process of the human capital accrual and supply is largely ruled by two strapping, contrary powers: value and depreciation.
An important element of value would be the accumulation in numbers of human capital. Another factor would be the added value of investing in the education of the available human capital, partly attained through skills training, and partly attained by hands-on experience according to their employment purpose.
The obsolescence or depreciation of human capital occurs when this resource can not be employed anymore, in part, or completely. Elements of depreciation can vary; they can be the natural consequence of biological aging of the workforce; premature obsolescence brought about by unabsorbed advances and changes in technology development, or simply, by shortage or lack of employment.
Since ancient times and all the way through the history of human civilization, influential leaders or leaders in a position of power have been able to manage to organize and set in motion the human capital at their service to exploit its power of deliverance. This powerful influence and ability to muscle intellectually or emotionally the human capital at their dispose, has engendered invariably in the essence of this vulnerable human capital, the exceptional strength and state of mind to overcome the impossible task. The vulnerability of the human capital resided in that it was less educated as a whole and had a more of a heard mentality then, but that has also evolved.
The unmeasured might of the cohesion of the human resource can be detonated like a nuclear explosion when a clever leader from a position of power over human capital recognizes its full potential, and unleash it to his benefit. The person in charge now formulates strategies and means to direct this obliterating energy for its use within an inclusive plan.
Some examples of this can be seen in ancient Egypt where the Pharaohs mobilized their human capital to accomplish the construction of structures of colossal proportions, such as the pyramids.
The era of building pyramids lasted until the Ptolemaic period. The Ptolemaic period was the ruling of a Hellenistic family that reign Egypt from 305 BC to 30 BC. However, the most prolific period of pyramids building was from the third dynasty until the closing stages of the sixth dynasties, where only 4 pharaohs ruled (Teti, Pepy, Merenre Nemtyemzaf, and Pepy II – 2345 – 2184 BC). In total, over 100 pyramids were built in Egypt. One can only imagine the size of the stock of human capital utilized in this trade during that flourishing period of mankind history, and the convincing power of the influential leader in charge.
We have spoken of paradigms of utilization of the human capital theory throughout history, however, the modern hypothesis and concept of human capital has been conceived as such only over the past half century or so. Our contemporary “concept of human capital” has been under development for a while now. It has been traced all the way back to the 17th century where values were started to appear attached to laborers, and their impact on large economies, and economies of scale. Furthermore, value was placed in future “commodities” of this labor force such as earnings, savings, net worth, risk, and education to name a few. Since, the theory of “human capital” seems to have become an intricate, mobile, and quickly evolutionary non-stationary science.
So, does human capital requires leadership, or is an amorphous essence that can evolve, adapt, and direct itself? I think that the answer to this question is both. It is as simple as it is logic: The smaller the work force is, the less guidance requires, the bigger, the more leadership and competence is needed to control and manage successfully this awesome power.
The destabilization of the inter-dynamic relationship between the buildup of human capital, indiscriminate or not, and a balanced vehicle (source of employment) which channels, focus, and directs this monstrous force can be anarchic and catastrophic This destabilization takes place when the endogenous accumulation of high-tech and low-tech human capital is developed beyond its utilization.
When human capital is undirected, it evolves and adapts to the local and current economic circumstances that is being object of. It diversifies into smaller clusters, which integrates local economies at the minute level. It is like a big organization working together for a common goal, and suddenly, its fragments and disperses itself in order to survive.
However, the legacy of a learning process, and the wealth of skills and knowledge is not lost. As soon as that agglutinant conduit (the source of work) becomes available again, these clusters are able to pull together again from their scattered universe, rejoin, and continue working as they were doing it before, as a single unit. Nevertheless, the human capital now knows something it didn’t know before, and it has become more aware and knowledgeable about uncharted, disabling changes, their devastating impact, and its consequential effects.
Internal Evolution
Human Capital is a delicate and expensive commodity. Skilled individuals who form an intrinsic part of the fabric of human capital are born, they grow, they learn, they execute their duties, they become old, and finally, they die. In this eternal cycle, there is a continual replacement of individual components on the human capital body, but its technological skills and knowledge levels can not be inherited, sometimes transferred, replaced, but never repeated.
Even though human capital it is like a gargantuan on-the-move live sponge and it can absorb and rummage knowledge, skills, variations in economy, educational differentials, heterogeneous race idiosyncrasies, cultural intricacies, lack of correspondence for its own value, and the ever-changing technological rollercoaster among many other absorbable trends, human capital can depreciate. Perhaps the factor that has the most impact on human capital stock is technology change. The progress of technology is an unstoppable energy that nothing or no one can impede. It can be delayed, obstructed, hindered, harassed, stalled, assailed, disagreed with, but technology will always prevail. No witch hunt will ever stop it. Without technology, the human race can not grow and progress. It is the quintessence of our mechanical evolution, and our most valuable ticket to the future.
Because of the lightning advance of communications and the inexorable pace of developments in transportation, our civilized globe has become tiny, and every point of it, reachable. This singularity has hasten and made possible the colligation of an assortment of human capital stocks from diverse places, and organizations and business conglomerates all over the world are being threaten with an looming shifting in the established order of cultural rules which sculpts the focal point of their organized human capital.
This human capital organized in a cohesive workforce, now it is being gradually pushed into focusing on individuals, rather than the group. Despite the fact that life-long employment with the same company used to be the norm, employees are now more skill-versatile and aware of it; therefore, they are changing jobs or occupations more often, and are continuously prospecting for better employment opportunities.
According to results of employee turnaround trend research, a frightening turnover rate is anticipated in vital and strategic specialty roles, comprising managerial and entry level positions during and throughout the upcoming decade. Businesses have being also forced to surrogate seniority-based employment in reaction to new instated policies that are focused on results, performance, and economics.
The need to reinvent the way we do things is being imposed on us by our own era. We must quickly synchronize our economic development goals, the technology currents that move our business, the delicate and ever embryonic human capital, and our intellectual capacity to adapt, all in order to survive in this sophisticated fast-paced twenty-first century jungle.
The Impact on Economic Growth
Economic growth is created, maneuvered, and dominated unswervingly by human capital. No human capital, no economic growth. It is that simple.
Economic growth is the definite upsurge in the amount of the goods and services produced by an economy over a period of time, and are a direct effect of the human capital that produces it. The more prepared is the human capital, usually the better quality the products and services are. The bigger the human capital, usually the bigger the potential output.
A rapid growth of an economy creates all kind of challenges. An early and important one is having a sudden shortage of appropriately skilled workers, shortage that grows increasingly urgent, generating a destabilization in labor rates. The less skilled workers available to fill the vacancies, the more expensive become the labor. This paradigm occurred in the US during the e-commerce fever when a huge shortage of software developers occurred during the late 1990’s, while the housing infrastructure where the flow of the e-commerce communication was going to run, was being constructed.
At the same time, software to engine a myriad of applications and services was being developed. The indiscriminate proliferation of e-commerce related applications and services exploded in such way, that a shortage of software developers forced the economy to “import” labor from overseas, and also forced the government to legislate in order to open the gates to the great flood of software engineers and programmers marching towards this new developers’ “Mecca”. The prices that were paid for labor were exorbitant to the limit with the ridiculous.
Branding is another impact on economic growth. Branding is an anthology of images, descriptions, and concepts that describe the inherent attributes, symbols, and ideas such as a product, company, or service mark. These names, marks, logos, slogans, and artistic designs that express and communicate to the public, in an audio-visual and sensorial perception the essence of a product, a service, a business, or a concept, are called brands. The actions and undertakings to produce a brand are called branding. What does all these possible? The human capital behind is the originator of the cause and effect of the produced brand. A person recognizes and embraces “brands” because he or she associates quality to it, and ascribes worth to what the brand represents. This inclusive economic concept of “added value” makes a brand “valuable” and marketable.
The brand, branding, and brand equity that separates one product form another have become central to the cultural neo-apparatus and its economic collectivism, which our cosmopolitan society labels it now a "cultural gadgets for a personal philosophy of individual expression". Nowadays, semantics will articulate it as “groupies”.
When the economy grows, it is predominantly through escalating numbers in the workforce, and the resultant economic growth it is based on workforce progression. In a developing economic system of great interchange, skill shortages and weak human capital will not sustain a rational and balanced economic growth.
The Future. What is in the bucket?
Today the human capital stock has reached a level of sophistication and knowledge far above what it had accomplished until the 1960’s. Because of its struggle surviving the pan demonic integration of full global connectivity, human capital has turned less vulnerable to sudden technological changes, to market impacts, and more resistant to changes in demographics. Today’s workforce in general, is smart, educated, highly skilled, aware of its strengths and vulnerabilities, conscientious of its impact on economics, responsive to its own human capital configuration and governance, and finally, has developed an extraordinary adaptive capacity.
What will keep the human capital validated and in closed quarters with its evasive future? The answer will reside heavily in its ability to keep learning, the capacity of retraining itself, and its competence to swiftly embrace change and maintain its level of productivity, and quality output.
The many aspects of human capital evolution discussed here are deep-seated factors that stimulate and compel the human capital to constantly evolve, thus impacting progressively on the frail equilibrium of economic growth.
Finally, the Human Element, this fundamental piece of civilization, this original cornerstone, and eternal foundation of everything, must prevail over the unmistakable and troublesome quandary of getting along with each other, specifically with those who are different from them, and undertake a promissory route to the remedy of these diminishing difficulties.
It has been said by various scholars that the evolution process of the human capital accrual and supply is largely ruled by two strapping, contrary powers: value and depreciation.
An important element of value would be the accumulation in numbers of human capital. Another factor would be the added value of investing in the education of the available human capital, partly attained through skills training, and partly attained by hands-on experience according to their employment purpose.
The obsolescence or depreciation of human capital occurs when this resource can not be employed anymore, in part, or completely. Elements of depreciation can vary; they can be the natural consequence of biological aging of the workforce; premature obsolescence brought about by unabsorbed advances and changes in technology development, or simply, by shortage or lack of employment.
Since ancient times and all the way through the history of human civilization, influential leaders or leaders in a position of power have been able to manage to organize and set in motion the human capital at their service to exploit its power of deliverance. This powerful influence and ability to muscle intellectually or emotionally the human capital at their dispose, has engendered invariably in the essence of this vulnerable human capital, the exceptional strength and state of mind to overcome the impossible task. The vulnerability of the human capital resided in that it was less educated as a whole and had a more of a heard mentality then, but that has also evolved.
The unmeasured might of the cohesion of the human resource can be detonated like a nuclear explosion when a clever leader from a position of power over human capital recognizes its full potential, and unleash it to his benefit. The person in charge now formulates strategies and means to direct this obliterating energy for its use within an inclusive plan.
Some examples of this can be seen in ancient Egypt where the Pharaohs mobilized their human capital to accomplish the construction of structures of colossal proportions, such as the pyramids.
The era of building pyramids lasted until the Ptolemaic period. The Ptolemaic period was the ruling of a Hellenistic family that reign Egypt from 305 BC to 30 BC. However, the most prolific period of pyramids building was from the third dynasty until the closing stages of the sixth dynasties, where only 4 pharaohs ruled (Teti, Pepy, Merenre Nemtyemzaf, and Pepy II – 2345 – 2184 BC). In total, over 100 pyramids were built in Egypt. One can only imagine the size of the stock of human capital utilized in this trade during that flourishing period of mankind history, and the convincing power of the influential leader in charge.
We have spoken of paradigms of utilization of the human capital theory throughout history, however, the modern hypothesis and concept of human capital has been conceived as such only over the past half century or so. Our contemporary “concept of human capital” has been under development for a while now. It has been traced all the way back to the 17th century where values were started to appear attached to laborers, and their impact on large economies, and economies of scale. Furthermore, value was placed in future “commodities” of this labor force such as earnings, savings, net worth, risk, and education to name a few. Since, the theory of “human capital” seems to have become an intricate, mobile, and quickly evolutionary non-stationary science.
So, does human capital requires leadership, or is an amorphous essence that can evolve, adapt, and direct itself? I think that the answer to this question is both. It is as simple as it is logic: The smaller the work force is, the less guidance requires, the bigger, the more leadership and competence is needed to control and manage successfully this awesome power.
The destabilization of the inter-dynamic relationship between the buildup of human capital, indiscriminate or not, and a balanced vehicle (source of employment) which channels, focus, and directs this monstrous force can be anarchic and catastrophic This destabilization takes place when the endogenous accumulation of high-tech and low-tech human capital is developed beyond its utilization.
When human capital is undirected, it evolves and adapts to the local and current economic circumstances that is being object of. It diversifies into smaller clusters, which integrates local economies at the minute level. It is like a big organization working together for a common goal, and suddenly, its fragments and disperses itself in order to survive.
However, the legacy of a learning process, and the wealth of skills and knowledge is not lost. As soon as that agglutinant conduit (the source of work) becomes available again, these clusters are able to pull together again from their scattered universe, rejoin, and continue working as they were doing it before, as a single unit. Nevertheless, the human capital now knows something it didn’t know before, and it has become more aware and knowledgeable about uncharted, disabling changes, their devastating impact, and its consequential effects.
Internal Evolution
Human Capital is a delicate and expensive commodity. Skilled individuals who form an intrinsic part of the fabric of human capital are born, they grow, they learn, they execute their duties, they become old, and finally, they die. In this eternal cycle, there is a continual replacement of individual components on the human capital body, but its technological skills and knowledge levels can not be inherited, sometimes transferred, replaced, but never repeated.
Even though human capital it is like a gargantuan on-the-move live sponge and it can absorb and rummage knowledge, skills, variations in economy, educational differentials, heterogeneous race idiosyncrasies, cultural intricacies, lack of correspondence for its own value, and the ever-changing technological rollercoaster among many other absorbable trends, human capital can depreciate. Perhaps the factor that has the most impact on human capital stock is technology change. The progress of technology is an unstoppable energy that nothing or no one can impede. It can be delayed, obstructed, hindered, harassed, stalled, assailed, disagreed with, but technology will always prevail. No witch hunt will ever stop it. Without technology, the human race can not grow and progress. It is the quintessence of our mechanical evolution, and our most valuable ticket to the future.
Because of the lightning advance of communications and the inexorable pace of developments in transportation, our civilized globe has become tiny, and every point of it, reachable. This singularity has hasten and made possible the colligation of an assortment of human capital stocks from diverse places, and organizations and business conglomerates all over the world are being threaten with an looming shifting in the established order of cultural rules which sculpts the focal point of their organized human capital.
This human capital organized in a cohesive workforce, now it is being gradually pushed into focusing on individuals, rather than the group. Despite the fact that life-long employment with the same company used to be the norm, employees are now more skill-versatile and aware of it; therefore, they are changing jobs or occupations more often, and are continuously prospecting for better employment opportunities.
According to results of employee turnaround trend research, a frightening turnover rate is anticipated in vital and strategic specialty roles, comprising managerial and entry level positions during and throughout the upcoming decade. Businesses have being also forced to surrogate seniority-based employment in reaction to new instated policies that are focused on results, performance, and economics.
The need to reinvent the way we do things is being imposed on us by our own era. We must quickly synchronize our economic development goals, the technology currents that move our business, the delicate and ever embryonic human capital, and our intellectual capacity to adapt, all in order to survive in this sophisticated fast-paced twenty-first century jungle.
The Impact on Economic Growth
Economic growth is created, maneuvered, and dominated unswervingly by human capital. No human capital, no economic growth. It is that simple.
Economic growth is the definite upsurge in the amount of the goods and services produced by an economy over a period of time, and are a direct effect of the human capital that produces it. The more prepared is the human capital, usually the better quality the products and services are. The bigger the human capital, usually the bigger the potential output.
A rapid growth of an economy creates all kind of challenges. An early and important one is having a sudden shortage of appropriately skilled workers, shortage that grows increasingly urgent, generating a destabilization in labor rates. The less skilled workers available to fill the vacancies, the more expensive become the labor. This paradigm occurred in the US during the e-commerce fever when a huge shortage of software developers occurred during the late 1990’s, while the housing infrastructure where the flow of the e-commerce communication was going to run, was being constructed.
At the same time, software to engine a myriad of applications and services was being developed. The indiscriminate proliferation of e-commerce related applications and services exploded in such way, that a shortage of software developers forced the economy to “import” labor from overseas, and also forced the government to legislate in order to open the gates to the great flood of software engineers and programmers marching towards this new developers’ “Mecca”. The prices that were paid for labor were exorbitant to the limit with the ridiculous.
Branding is another impact on economic growth. Branding is an anthology of images, descriptions, and concepts that describe the inherent attributes, symbols, and ideas such as a product, company, or service mark. These names, marks, logos, slogans, and artistic designs that express and communicate to the public, in an audio-visual and sensorial perception the essence of a product, a service, a business, or a concept, are called brands. The actions and undertakings to produce a brand are called branding. What does all these possible? The human capital behind is the originator of the cause and effect of the produced brand. A person recognizes and embraces “brands” because he or she associates quality to it, and ascribes worth to what the brand represents. This inclusive economic concept of “added value” makes a brand “valuable” and marketable.
The brand, branding, and brand equity that separates one product form another have become central to the cultural neo-apparatus and its economic collectivism, which our cosmopolitan society labels it now a "cultural gadgets for a personal philosophy of individual expression". Nowadays, semantics will articulate it as “groupies”.
When the economy grows, it is predominantly through escalating numbers in the workforce, and the resultant economic growth it is based on workforce progression. In a developing economic system of great interchange, skill shortages and weak human capital will not sustain a rational and balanced economic growth.
The Future. What is in the bucket?
Today the human capital stock has reached a level of sophistication and knowledge far above what it had accomplished until the 1960’s. Because of its struggle surviving the pan demonic integration of full global connectivity, human capital has turned less vulnerable to sudden technological changes, to market impacts, and more resistant to changes in demographics. Today’s workforce in general, is smart, educated, highly skilled, aware of its strengths and vulnerabilities, conscientious of its impact on economics, responsive to its own human capital configuration and governance, and finally, has developed an extraordinary adaptive capacity.
What will keep the human capital validated and in closed quarters with its evasive future? The answer will reside heavily in its ability to keep learning, the capacity of retraining itself, and its competence to swiftly embrace change and maintain its level of productivity, and quality output.
The many aspects of human capital evolution discussed here are deep-seated factors that stimulate and compel the human capital to constantly evolve, thus impacting progressively on the frail equilibrium of economic growth.
Finally, the Human Element, this fundamental piece of civilization, this original cornerstone, and eternal foundation of everything, must prevail over the unmistakable and troublesome quandary of getting along with each other, specifically with those who are different from them, and undertake a promissory route to the remedy of these diminishing difficulties.
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