"On the orders of Spain's Queen Isabella to bring back riches, Christopher Columbus set out for uncharted waters in 1492. While discovering vast new lands assured his place in posterity, Columbus's real triumph was uncovering vast beds of oyster pearls off the coast of Venezuela, a rare natural gem that the queen coveted beyond all else. The "pearl rush" that Columbus started way back when is not unlike the rush to entrepreneurship underway today, a surprising outcome in a challenging time."
"It takes an irritant to get started While the proverbial "grain of sand" is a myth according to Wikipedia, it does take "an irritating microscopic object [to become] trapped within the mollusk's mantle folds" for a pearl to get started. For entrepreneurs, the irritant can be as simple as personality type. According to Emily Lutzker, the founder ofOpenInvo, an innovative resource for idea generators, "I only had one 'real job' once and was told I was disruptive in the workplace," thus necessitating her entrepreneurial journey."
Entrepreneurship is compared to pearl formation: an irritation sparks creation, and persistent work polishes value. Founders often start from personality traits or personal problems that become business ideas. Examples include a founder labeled disruptive who created OpenInvo, a founder who launched Bennu to address landfill waste, and a founder who developed the voice-tagging app Blurts after a frustrating personal experience with voice messages. The metaphor emphasizes both joys and pressures of building companies, highlights bootstrapping from inception to market, and suggests that challenging times can stimulate resourceful, value-producing ventures.
Read at Fast Company
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