Hand Made Future
4/11/19
Jesus Chuy
ENGL 1102
Dr. Harris Cox
Hand Made Future
What
does it take to reach our full potential and achieve our goals in life? This a
question I ask myself and often ask others, whom I think are ahead of me in
their quest. Personal goal is a very subjective topic but in most of my
inquiries I get the same answer knowledge, information, and ideas. Most people
I ask this question, are on a path similar to mine which leads to the goal of forming
a business, and through entrepreneurship solved problems and achieve their
personal success. Entrepreneurship is one
of the most successful method we have developed, as a society, to achieve our
most challenging life goals; by shear effort and perseverance of the individual
can these goals be reached.
“OK,
that is an easy question, LEGOS. Very popular!” He told me with a big smile in
his face. That was Marco’s answer to my question “What was your favorite past
time as a kid?” I could tell that he was enjoying this question by the way he
robbed his hands and laid back in his chair. From our vantage point, we could
see the blue sky and the sun shining through the windows, and a sense of relief
that the weather was finally returning to its normal, after having record cold
temperatures in previous days. A few people were coming in and out of the lobby
we were in, and sometimes stopped for a second to greet each other, before
going about their business. We were chatting in a corner of the lobby
overlooking the basketball courtyard and the green lawn on the east side of the
corporate campus.
He
continued, “I was very near sighted, so, I didn’t play a lot of contact sports.
I played some soccer, but I had asthma, so, I didn’t last very long in the
field.” But then he added, “Um, I was a good swimmer” with confidence.
We
were sitting in my favorite hideaway at work. In a building where more than
7000 people work every day, there are not many quiet, peaceful, places were to
sit to have conversation without being interrupted by old acquiesces, or the
cumulative sound of pedestrians walking down the halls chatting. Also, the
temperature in this spot is always enjoyable, not too hot, not too cold. This
is the east entrance lobby which is not in use so not many people go there. In
the past, it was just an empty room, where from time to time, a few of us gathered
and brought some chairs to sit and enjoy a few minutes looking out through the
glass wall toward the green field and sky. But today, facilities have made
accommodations and recondition the place as lounge for associates to meet and
hold informal meeting. There are 2 long sofas facing each other with a
rectangular glass table in the middle, and on the far corner, where we were
located, they placed 4 swivel lounge chairs with a slick industrial design
around a coffee table.
Then
he added, “And I used to love working with my hands, constructing things,
building things, working with wood, working with circuits. Uh, and I really
enjoyed hiking outside. Climbing trees, hills, being in the woods. But, if
there is a clear winner, it definitively be LEGOS, playing with LEGOS.” Marco still
like to work with his hands, he is always eager to jump to the opportunity of
stepping away from his desk when anybody ask him for help to troubleshoot a
fixture, or for advice about a part that is being fabricated. He quickly rolls
his sleeves up and gets busy. On his
spare time, Marco practice the art of making Salami from scratch in his garage
with the help of a neighbor using rigged refrigerator to cure the links to perfection.
He told me that artisanal Salami is becoming a boom industry that sales well through
Amazon and perhaps he could have a breakthrough by launching a business from
his garage.
He
is in his 40s with a decent amount of grey hair on his head but the spirit of a
20 some bachelor. He is still single and actively seeking to find a partner to marry
and have children one day. Every Monday when I see him in the morning, I ask
him about his weekend and he always has a story about it, a new hiking trail in
a remote spot he visited, or a new restaurant he went with a date. He started
working in our company a little more than a year ago, when he accepted the
position of manager at the Product Quality and Engineering Laboratory at Home
Depot.
Marco
has held different roles in his professional life since graduating from college
such as engineer, project manager and Lab manager for different engineering and
technical companies. He graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute over in Worcester, Massachusetts founded by
two entrepreneurs that wanted to teach others through the necessary skills mainly
via a sophisticated apprenticeship approach. One day, he approached me and
asked what I thought of start-ups and entrepreneurship. This question got me
but surprise coming from him, because I never thought of Marco as a risk taker.
I told him that while it was something I hope to achieve one day, for now I had
my hands busy completing my degree and advancing my career. But that
conversation led me to think more about what it entitles get there, to become
an entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurs
are men and women that have an instinctive creativity, problem solving drive,
and resourcefulness to accomplish their goals, and are portrait as risk takers
and impulsive. Their motivations are as diverse as the problems they try to
solve. They have been called by many names such as “the go-to guy”, “the make
it all happen guy”, or my favorite “the guy who thinks he can fix it all”.
Entrepreneurs are a rare breed of men and women that through their make sure we
can enjoy life better by providing us with comforts, technologies, and ideas
that have the power to revolutionize our lives. By now they have conquered many
spheres of our modern existence from Steve Jobs and Bill Gates development of
the personal computers to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos strides to make
interplanetary travel a reality.
But what are the personality traits that we can associate
with these individuals?
Entrepreneurs
are known to adventure into business ventures that others may feel are outside
of their comfort zone. Authors Thomas E. Anastasi and Soren Hougaard offer
different views of the entrepreneur when it comes to risk taking.
Although
Anastasi in the book The Successful
Entrepreneur explains that, “An entrepreneur is, by definition, a risk
taker”, and that while they are more comfortable than normal people with taking
risks, they don’t take fool’s risks (2010), Soren Hougaard in his book The Business Idea: The Early Stages of
Entrepreneurship (2005), counters this idea asserting that the entrepreneur
do go our searching for risky opportunities get rich quick in business (2005).
Similar
to Anastasi, Hougaard would find that “Entrepreneurship is a way of thinking, a
way of acting, a form of organizing, not a personal quality reserved for the
minority of the population: entrepreneurship is a social construction which
arises in the interaction between people in certain situations, professional
connections and life phases” (2005), but unlike Anastasi, who focuses on the
entrepreneur as an individual, Hougaard approach is focus on what the
entrepreneur can do with the right business idea.
Marco
is a soft-spoken person, the kind that always know something about what you are
talking but is not arrogant or cocky. He dress properly and is always well
groom. Under his management, our team has set new records in all of our metrics
and improved the amount and quality of work. His management style is laid back and he
encourages associates to challenge themselves with new goals. While we continue
our chat, someone starts to use the ATM in the credit union that shares an
entrance with the lobby. The beeps from the keypad seem to distract him a bit
and he looks that way a couple of times. Out in the lawn a few people walk
around enjoying the nice weather while stretching their legs.
Then
I asked him “What was it like transitioning from the academic world into the
professional engineering world?”
His
answer was “Well, um, some big changes.” At this moment, he move in his seat,
as if finding a more comfortable position, as if he was preparing to give me a
very long explanation of all that this transition entails. Marco has almost 20
years of work experience in engineering and has worked in many roles during his
career. I knew that he would be able to answer this question with wisdom and experience.
Some
psychologists have studied the behaviors and characteristics of entrepreneurs to
determine what have led them to take the risks intrinsic in entrepreneurship. In
the article “Are entrepreneurs born or made?”, Dr. Mark Parkinson examines the
psychological traits of entrepreneurs drawing from a study conducted using the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the world-famous personality questionnaire (The
Guardian). According to Parkinson, the
entrepreneurs who took the test defined “themselves as creative, impulsive and
prepared to take risks” (The Guardian); at the same time, “They also have a
strong need to be able to do their own thing” (The Guardian). But Parkinson
also notice that the study did not capture other traits of entrepreneurs such
as resilience and optimism.
Similar
to Parkinson, Hougaard and he also describes entrepreneurs as individuals that
are “generally optimists”, “believe in opportunities”, and “have high levels of
self-assurance”. Both authors associate entrepreneurship with individuals that
have high optimism, confidence in themselves, and know how to wait for the
right opportunity to accomplish their goals.
After
settling in his seat, he continued, “First of all, from the social point of
view, when you are transitioning from a being a fourth-year senior student, you
have a lot of friends, you know where the parties are, you know how to meet
women, and how to have a good time. And then you transition, basically from the
top of the food chain to the bottom.” Marco seemed to be reliving those fond
moments in his mind again when he was mentioning them to me. He was giggling
and smiling and his voice got nostalgic, reminiscent of the many good nights
his enjoyed in his college year among his friends. “And so, you have to start
all over again, and work your way up again. Professionally, in the eyes of your
employer, in the eyes of your colleagues, in the eyes of the women you’d like
to date.”
We
laugh together for a moment and then he adds, “So, that, from the social point
of view, it is a humbling experience, because, you know, you come from feeling
that you’ve worked hard and you are accomplished, and knowledgeable, and
successful, to starting all over again, and basically having to compete with
your colleagues to prove yourself once again.” I sensed how his speech cadence
slowed down and now is was a more humble Marco who was speaking to me.
“From
the knowledge point of view”, he paused and look out the window, and then he
said, “the expectations you have when you are about to graduate as an engineer,
I think they are, maybe, a little unrealistic.” As he mentions this he raises
his hand and makes a motion symbolizing the top and adds, “You coming right off
the top of the learning curve, have all the theory and concepts, and now you
are looking to apply them, and you feel like you might be working on the space
shuttle. But in reality, when you go to the work force, you know, they give you
a tiny little part, and say this is your project, this is what you do.
”
In a different approach, Donald A. Walker in his article “Walras’s Theory of
the Entrepreneur”, Walker pieces together different ideas by the famous French
economist to assert that Walras saw entrepreneurs as individual who operate,
own, a business in a managerial role, but at the same time “perform a function
in the making of output” (1986). For example, Steve Jobs role in Apples was
seen as entrepreneurial due to his hand on involvement in the development of
their products.
Anastasi
and Walker share a similar view on the emotional detachment between the
entrepreneur and their enterprise, Anastasi emphasizes that entrepreneurs are
individuals that have no emotional attachments to their venture, as they rely
on data to make decisions (2010), and Walker asserts that Walras saw
entrepreneur as agents in the market economy who take “raw materials from other
entrepreneurs and the services of the factors of production from workers,
landowners, and capitalists, and that sells output”(1986).
He
was speaking to me at a personal level, sort of telling me to tame my
expectation, and to brace for what might be a hard landing when I finish my
degree. I do not take this advice pessimistically, on the contrary, I think it
will help me to adjust to reality and to focus on the future rather than the
immediate present. Marco has worked for some of the leader in our industry of
testing engineering such Intertek, a company with a global presence, where he
was a manager in a local lab. He inspires me to continue ahead and be
successful.
Work
Cited
Anastasi, Thomas E. The Successful Entrepreneur:
American Dream Done Right. Glenbridge Publishing Ltd, 2010.
Hougaard, Soren. The Business Idea: The Early Stages
of Entrepreneurship. Springer, 2005.
Parkinson, Mark. “Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?” The
Guardian, 2 Aug 2017, www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2017/aug/02/are-entrepreneurs-born-or-made.
Accessed 2 Feb. 2019.
Walker, Donald A. “Walras’s Theory of the
Entrepreneur” De Economist, 1986.