Convocation Address of by Shri Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman, Aditya Birla Group; Chief Guest for the 6th Convocation of EDI's Post Graduate Programmes held on 18^th September 2004.

Third, entrepreneurship needs to take stronger roots where it is most needed – at the village level, where the greatest income-generating opportunities exist. According to World Bank study, off-farm employment can play a vital role in catalysing income growth and promoting stability of rural incomes Rural households value such non-farm incomes highly, not only because they contribute significantly to overall income levels but also because they reduce their exposure to income fluctuations associated with bad harvests. Sadly, in India only about a third of rural households’ income comes from non-farm sources, much of it from micro and small-size firms. The scope for non-farm income to increase is enormous.

Fourth, even the largest organisations in India need to experience – and imbibe – the refreshing breeze of entrepreneurship. Without that, they run the risk of becoming ossified. It has happened to the largest of companies the world over.

As the Head of Microsoft Research put it: “Most large organizations have a mission, and invention often takes you in another direction”.

So, large organizations need to create a state of continuous tension and flux, and stay alert. The job of the leader is to keep the status quo, the established way of doing things, under constant challenge.

And that is the reason the entrepreneurial mindset is needed, even in the largest of organisations. But, as you may be aware, large organizations can be extremely hostile ground for entrepreneurs to bloom in. Because, while entrepreneurs make ample use of intuition – the ‘gut feel’ – this is an attribute formal organizations downplay. In most large companies, risks are tightly controlled, and out-of the-box ideas discounted.

The task cut out for large organizations like ours is to make space for new ideas and encourage a spirit of experimentation – tone down the bias for analysis and certainty, with the bias for experimentation, and for trying things out. If it does not work, by all means, scrap it. But do give the champions of an idea the chance to try it out.

For e.g. some activities and projects - and some of the people who are inclined towards entrepreneurship – may just need to be shifted outside the more formal work groupings, to looser work settings that provide greater autonomy / or the corporate reward systems may have to be modified so that occasional failure is not penalised. Creating an entrepreneurial culture may also require that normal recruitment criteria be dispensed with – because, people with innovative ideas and impulses may not necessarily have the ‘right’ credentials. The trick is to do all this without throwing overboard what works. The discipline and the checks and balances imposed by formal structures are very necessary. But so is the need to retain the spirit of entrepreneurship.

CONCLUSION

Let me conclude by stating the obvious, but non-quantifiable secret of successful entrepreneurs – the ability to unleash the imagination and to conceive an over-arching vision. The renowned physician and writer Lewis Thomas said : “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought”. Peter Drucker, when asked how he predicted so well said, “I never predict; I just look out of the window and see what’s visible but not yet seen.” Echoing the same thought, Einstein said that: “imagination” was the key to his work …. It was more important than knowledge.

I call upon all of you to dream big, and to let your imagination soar. The opportunities are there, waiting to be discovered. But as is true of the wilderness, not too many dare to tread the unexplored ground.

Back

©2008 This website designed and developed by Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, Ahmedabad