We Are Not All Entrepreneurs

[haele]

5. It's difficult for many people to understand that a leader's success depends on those being lead.

A entrepreneur only succeeds if there's a market for his or her business and there's sufficient help to back up the efforts it takes to build that business.
Like an entire family willing to work the shop, a bank or friends and family willing to provide capital, a local community that has sufficient infrastructure to provide location and logistical support...
(...all the notaries, lawyers and clerks, handymen and repairmen, road crews, general engineers, water-department workers, drivers, and all the other support workers that get product "A" to location "B" safely and efficiently - otherwise known to Ms. Rand's acolytes as "the moocher class" - being 85% of the people in this country that works for wages instead of "running a business&quot
The person who "owns" the business, "runs" the office, or "leads" a team is only as good as his or her workforce, and is only as successful as the amount of customer demands and how well they are met.
That's why for every successful family-business donut shop or bakery story (like the one down the street from me run by my next-door neighbor from Laos and his extended family), there are twenty stories of equally hard-working family businesses that fail.

BTW, the "Cambodian" or "Vietnamese" immigrant family donut shop is almost a cliche, just like "the 3rd-generation Mexican-American family run Taco shop with the best burritos in town" - almost every large town and city that has that particular immigrant population has at least two or three, and they really generally only do enough business to pay mortgages on the family house and help supplement scholarships and other aid for the kids who can get through college rather than pay a whole bill.

Y'know, when it comes to the American Dream, I've got a shitload of good, innovative green ideas running through my head that if I only had the time off my responsibilities (keeping a roof over the heads of my family, providing food and health care), some help (both domestic and for research/idea testing) and a couple million dollars to research and market, I'd be able to become an entrepreneur and probably make a fortune - even if I don't get conned into selling off that business to a monopolizing mega-corp capital investment firm when I become successful and innovative enough to be noticed.
But - since it's not just me that might end up under a bridge if I fail, I have the responsibility to weigh sacrifices and risks before I test my safety nets.
As I still have the option to just work hard at a decent job to support me and my family instead of breaking my back and health just for perhaps a 2% chance of being as successful enough to keep a roof over our heads for the next 10 year while I "make a go at building it myself", many of those great ideas will remain on my mental story-board drawing pad while I'm working my butt off for wages until I can get the time and figure a way to napkin engineer them enough to find and interest the right people.

Which brings me to my last point, learned by observing supposedly innovative big engineering businesses competing for R&D work for the government.

What is never really understood by the general public is that the big businesses actually hate competition and real innovation, because it costs way too much money either to innovate or to catch up to the competition if they develop a major new idea or product.
Most "innovative" products one sees being developed - even at DARPA - are usually either incremental improvements or easily implemented re-tooling of existing products or ideas.
Lots of companies prefer to to get new ideas sponsoring "engineering" contests and mentoring projects for HS and College students (which are good for the students, but shouldn't be used to look at the science a new way), and spend most of their R&D dollars investing in ways to figure a way to jack up costs by packaging this "innovation" up in a unique design, and market these "new" and "improved" designs.

Haele