For the Love of the Game: The Purpose of Business

Why people engage in business? Well, the answer is relatively straightforward and simple. People engage in business to make money, to earn a decent profit and get a fair return on investment. But is that all? Is business all about money? The answer is yes; business is about money but more. For if business is solely about money, what is then the difference between running a business and investing in a financial instrument like a stock or bond? Surprising, there is none! Why then people even bother to go through all the trouble of starting and running a business when there is a less hassle option of making money? Is it because of the expectation of a bigger return? The fact is that there are instances when investing in a financial instrument would yield a higher return at lesser risk than running a business. Not only that, financial instruments could be crafted in such a way that expected revenue incomes would be consistent and stable compared to the unpredictable and volatile nature of business. Why then would people engage in a risky venture called business? It is because of what in MBA parlance is called the “vision”. In layman’s term, it is called an idea, i.e., the idea of what the future should look like but to romanticist like me, it is called a “dream”. It is this “dream” that drives individuals to be creative and offer innovative products and services to the world to satisfy the people’s needs, wants, and desire and in the process transforms the way people think and live, and ultimately, burrows deep into the people’s subconscious thought to create an immortal legacy. Such is business; it is conceived as an idea, which once ably executed would later on evolve into an immortal legacy. Consider this, for millenniums, human beings drink water to quench their thirst but more a century ago, a genius concocted a syrup and mix it with excessive amount of sugar and a lethal dose of carbon dioxide, bottled and sold it to the public. Today, millions of people drink Coke not water just to satisfy their thirst and also a few million people with type II diabetes as well. Henry Ford didn’t invent the car but he dreamed that one-day, every American would own a car. It is this dream that led him to develop the mass production system and create the modern factory. Now, not only Americans own a car but everybody else in the world. Not only we have attained unimaginable freedom of mobility but we also have nightmarish traffic jams and suffocating air pollution. For all the wrongs that car brought us, the world still owes a great deal to Henry Ford. For if not for him, cars would be just an expensive toys for the big boys with fat wallets and we mortals would have just to suffer walking, if we can’t afford feeding a horse and be stuck in our small world that our two feet would bring us. A dream is not a business. Of course, that should be clear. Imagine where would we be if Henry Ford were simply dreaming of building cars rather than actually making one. However, a business is a dream. Business is not simply an entity made up of people with a structure to perform the functions of operations, finance, marketing, accounting, and human resource development. It is not a standard set – up with the only variable being the type of product or service one wish to sell. On the contrary, the “dream” is the core in which all the business functions are built around it to realize it. DHL is not about the people that deliver the package nor the airplanes the carries the packages around the world nor is the entire logistic system nor is the software. It is the dream of delivering a package on time that everything else is built. SM the mall is not the gargantum monolith that people shop. It is the idea of a “one stop shop” and in the interpretation of Henry Sy Sr. of his dream of “we got it all for you”, it is the structure that we all came to be familiar with. But if he were to interpret it as an internet website that offers virtually everything that could be sold, then SM would be very much look like Amazon, the website. Again, the idea of “We got it all for you” is intact. Business doesn’t have to be a new discovery or invention. SM is not an invention and Henry Ford didn’t invent the car nor IBM about the PC. Some obscure inventor whose name we care not to remember invented the car and the PC. We rather remember the ones that popularize it because they conceive a future based on those inventions in their “dream”. Without a dream, a firm would be without a soul, without a purpose and hence, deprive of it’s reason for existence. Warren Buffet, the second richest man in the world, once defined that entrepreneurs are the ones who “dream, invest, and succession (pass it to the next generation).” Therefore, the first step for people who wanted to start a business is to “dream” but don’t stop at it. Chase it!