Zeitgeist

Why do Business? January 26, 2012

The goal of business is to create happiness. It should lead to the empowerment of material wealth, knowledge wealth, and emotional wealth – for internal & external customers. We should have long term view, and focus on long term gain – because in long run, we can’t avoid consequences of short term mistakes. The western shareholding system promotes short term thinking, If profit is good, exactly how much profit (or greed) is good? Does profit leads to innovation? How does profit maximization helps in building sustainable happiness for internal & external customers? Long story short – the focus is somehow skewed. That leads to Bhopal tragedy, or Subprime crisis, and no one responsible. Comparatively, eastern family business model should be better than public limited liability companies, in terms of short term vs. long term leadership. However, they have to stay “professional”, and not biased towards blood line. Good example – “Bharat”, the emperor our country is named after, begot three sons on his three wives, offered great sacrifices to search his successor, received an illegitimate son Bhumanyu from God, and made him the king – just because he was capable of it (meritocracy). This is eastern culture of running business, promote happiness, empower all three wealth areas, judge without emotion, think long term, focus more on spirit & belief than rules & behaviors.