Access the FLOW Newsletter Archive

FLOW Vision News: JULY 2007

Dear FLOW Members,

The term "entrepreneur" has an extraordinary range of meanings, and we are expanding on that set of meanings. For us, an entrepreneur is anyone who takes the initiative to start an enterprise, whether that enterprise is for profit or non-profit, materialistic or spiritual, for fun or for a living.

In addition, although traditional entrepreneurs may have been looking for opportunities to make a profit, FLOW entrepreneurs are looking to make the world a better place. It is important for FLOW entrepreneurs to understand how price signals translate into the potential for profit and loss primarily so that we can envision whether or not a particular enterprise will be sustainable. Thus a FLOW entrepreneur does need to understand the fundamentals of business, even if the goal is to make the world a better place. With this understanding of entrepreneurship in mind, I want to sketch a vision of a world in which all of us are entrepreneurial, all the time.

In order to understand this vision of the world, it is important to understand that being entrepreneurial is a state of mind rather than a particular activity. Being entrepreneurial means being alert to opportunity (in the words of Israel Kirzner), being awake to the possibility that there might be a better way of doing things. Being alert to opportunity in our sense means being consistently focused on how there might be ways of doing things better in every moment of every day. We believe that each of us faces thousands of micro-opportunities to make the world a better place constantly, and it is only with practice that we learn to see these invisible opportunities.

To provide a concrete example, our next Flow Activation Circle in Austin, on July 21st, will be focused on marketing crafts produced by microentrepreneurs in Peru, Guatemala, Palestine, Yemen, and Afghanistan: Weavings from Peru, embroidered clothing from Guatemala, wall-hangings, purses, and ceramics from Palestine, rug mats from Yemen, and quilts, rugs, and jewelry from Afghanistan. When I've told some people about this idea, some are intimidated: "Very few people have what it takes to run an import business." On the other hand, one can participate at a very simple level: Would you like to buy any of these products as gifts?

Between the two extremes of being a seasoned businessperson ready to create an import business, vs. buying a few items as personal gifts, lays a vast range of entrepreneurial possibility. It is true that very few individuals will be able to create full-blown import businesses that will provide them with an income sufficient to live on. But there are many millions of individuals who may wish to help poor developing world women create better lives for themselves. While charity, or funding micro-loans, is among the approaches for doing so, we believe that there are many people who might enjoy importing products from these women as a means of helping them.

Initially they might simply purchase products for their own use or as gifts. But if they love the products, and believe that by means of enlarging the market for these products they will be helping these women, they might begin to sell some of these craft products to their friends and family. Or they might approach a local retail store to see if the store would carry some of the product. Or they might sell product on EBay or through an on-line website. Or they might hold Empowering Women Entrepreneurs Parties, similar to Tupperware or Lingerie parties, at which women get together socially and buy things that they love.

At present, each of the suppliers bringing product samples to our July 21st event has a personal connection with micro-entrepreneurs in the country of origin. Thus at present we do not have a scalable means of importing large quantities of goods for thousands of people who want to support this movement. But in each case, we have individuals interested in bringing this movement to scale. Thus in a bootstrap sort of way, once we have created marketing channels for these crafts that begin to exceed existing supply, we have people willing to work and train the women in the country of origin to produce larger quantities of the product in consistent ways. We envision loosely connected groups of motivated, entrepreneurial individuals bit-by-bit figuring out how to create steadily growing supply lines to support steadily growing distributional channels.

Will things go wrong? Of course they will. This will be a learning process for every individual involved. At the same time, it will be an exciting, meaningful learning process that is gradually contributing to the empowerment of women, the alleviation of poverty, and to peace, through commerce.

Some individuals involved in this network may play very simple roles in terms of logistics or marketing. Others may become quite imaginative and creative. Among the ideas we've already discussed is integrating contemporary designs into the work of some of these women. While there is certainly a market for traditional handcrafts, what if a talented designer here, with an eye to what would appeal to more contemporary audiences, created new designs for the women in Guatemala to incorporate into their embroidery? It might well be possible to create stunning new fashions that combine the best of both worlds, and that attracts new customers for the products produced by these women.

Many people want to make a difference in the world, but don't know how. We see a world in which there are endless opportunities to make a difference, and as one opens up one's entrepreneurial eyes, the possibilities are delightful. Some of them take time and commitment. But there are also roles that take very little time, perhaps simply forwarding photos of products to one's friends, or using one's professional skills to advise someone in this network who is as of yet inexperienced in business. We envision a steadily growing network of people for whom supporting micro-entrepreneurs, by means of expanding these distribution channels and supply lines, becomes an enjoyable part of their background activity, their way of engaging in service while living their daily lives. Some may also earn revenue streams from their participation in this network, buying product at one price and selling it for more. A few might create dynamic, successful businesses based on exciting new product lines over which they exercise creative control.

Over time we expect to create similar informal networks of people engaged in selling not only crafts and other products made by developing world women, but also services. The on-line remote services marketplace is exploding, and internet access is gradually spreading to various remote corners of the world; at a microentrepreneurship conference in Chile I met a woman who ran a microfinance project in Bolivia where the microfinance clients were being trained to work on-line, and there is a remote school in Sri Lanka, Horizon Lanka school, that is completely on-line and tech savvy. I've worked with individuals in Uganda and Nepal to do some of my research for me. These opportunities for training, and then purchasing the services of, the world's poor will explode in the coming years.

At the same time, of course, tourism may continue to hold its place as the world's largest industry. While a significant portion of this travel consists of going to mainstream hotel chains around the world, there is a growing sector of adventure travel, eco-tourism, and voluntourism, all of which will provide growing opportunities for developing world women and men to create new enterprises that provide travelers with authentic, safe, interesting experiences.

Again, a cynic will point to all the thousands of obstacles in the way of achieving these visions. But an entrepreneur looks at each obstacle as a fascinating problem to be solved, or circumvented, and pushes on to the next stage of the puzzle. Instead of a world filled with people who see only the problem and not the solution, we want to fill the world with people who see the opportunity and for whom the obstacles are part of the fun.

The developed world is filled with hundreds of millions of people with plenty of time on their hands. Many high school and college students have time to engage in a project that requires only occasional attention, many young people take a year or more off to engage in a meaningful adventure. There are some stay-at-home mothers and fathers who have time to do some connecting with others on the internet, and there are millions of retired people, often very talented and relatively young, who are seeking meaningful ways to spend their time.

We would like to see participation in these entrepreneurial network gradually become a social norm among some sub-cultures, in which people spontaneously mention the various ways in which they are connected to developing world entrepreneurs, and support each other's business development processes. For the vast majority of participants, these activities will be very small sidelines to their daily lives, and yet by means of attentively connecting to these projects they can bring delightful products to the developed world while increasing considerably the incomes of those in the developing world.

Whenever I read arguments about whether or not "we" can "afford" to help people, which typically manifests itself in arguments concerning foreign aid, I always think it strange that the focus is so far away and impersonal. Almost every one I know has dozens of minutes each week, if not several hours, in which they could casually and enjoyable participate in supporting developing world entrepreneurs. We look forward to creating these networks that will allow us all to become more entrepreneurial, in which we all focus on "criticizing by creating."

Peace,

Michael Strong
CEO & Chief Visionary Officer
FLOW, Inc.

P.S. Our book this month, Jack Hollander’s The Real Environmental Crisis:  Why Poverty, Not Affluence, Is the Environment’s Number One Enemy provides a comprehensive review of the ways in which poverty exacerbates environmental problems.

Please contact us at contact@flowidealism.org with ideas, insights, and inspiration. And remember that FLOW is a non-profit organization that promotes economic freedom and broadly distributed prosperity. You can support FLOW through your financial contributions among other means.