Why Entrepreneurs Effect Change

Entrepreneurs are driven by the desire to effect change by having a purpose larger than themselves, being totally engaged in what they do, and constantly striving for mastery. This is no Zen koan. It’s the ultimate formula for building a successful enterprise and a successful life.


Entrepreneurs are change agents. They find new ways of doing things that make the old ways obsolete. They recontextualize problems in new ways and create simpler and more elegant solutions. What accounts for this?

American business culture is dominated by financial incentives. The more you produce, the more you are paid. Entrepreneurship is different. A Steve Jobs, the people at Google, Facebook, and other burgeoning companies that are changing the way we live certainly have an interest in profits. But with them it’s different. Profits are a source for doing more of what they do better. It’s not an end in itself. Consider Mark Zuckerberg’s comment when offered 1 billion dollars for Facebook at the tender age of 22. He refused saying that he was working on an important social revolution and wasn’t selling out.

These entrepreneurs and others like them are largely influenced by three dominant attitudes: autonomy, purpose, and mastery. Entrepreneurs don’t like to be told what to do. They value their independence. Their projects engage them. They pull them in and pull the best out of them. They love what they do and are continually captivated by it.

They are also often driven by a purpose larger than themselves, whether it’s inventing a new way for people to relate, gather information, or turn fast food into healthy meals. Whatever they engage in, they usually bring a critical difference to what they do, one that makes others’ lives better.

And they want to master what they do. It’s the work itself that they are truly interested in, not the bottom line. To them, concentrating on the bottom line would be like a basketball fan going to the final game of the NBA playoffs and spending the entire game watching the scoreboard. It’s about the game. If you play it with passion, commitment, and mastery, the scoreboard takes care of itself.

In a series of experiments at MIT and Princeton by Arieley and Glucksburg, participants were divided into two groups. The first was given a financial incentive, and the second was given autonomy, purpose, and an opportunity for mastery. The results were instructive. In tasks where problems had to be solved, the latter group outperformed the former group by a wide margin. In routine tasks, those with financial incentives outperformed the more creative group.

The researchers further found that financial incentives routinized tasks. It gave participants tunnel vision and made them less creative. The reward rather than the work drove them and disconnected them from other considerations. Too much of this and you get visions of rats trained to press a lever for food pellets. The second group, on the other hand, was infinitely more creative and productive. They were engaged in what they did and were fully conscious of its implications. When you’re constantly considering the impact of what you are doing, it’s less likely your moral sense will go to sleep on you.

When we look at business case studies in light of these studies, we see further validation for their conclusions. In an era of global, almost Darwinian competition where markets have been fragmented into niches where customized solutions are demanded every day, it is the creative, engaged, autonomous, and purpose driven enterprises that are thriving. The best example of the routinized, financially incentive driven companies are those on Wall Street that have recently imploded and our less than successful automakers in Detroit.

That’s the reason that entrepreneurs effect change. It’s hard wired into who they are and how they do what they do. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose: we can no longer think of these as some “feel good” mantra. It is an unfailing formula for successful enterprises and successful lives.

Keep the faith.
Live your life.
Take care of one another.

Leonardo