THE BOON AND NECESSITY OF ENTREPRENEURIAL FAILURE – RAJESH NAIR – Director, Ernst & Young LLP
Need to build it young– We have to teach our children to immerse themselves in the unknown and not complacently accept the ‘what’. We want them to relentlessly build insatiability and hunt for the ‘whys’ and probe the ‘hows’. The quest for entrepreneurship will cultivate that curiosity in them and instill and build it at molecular level.I remember teachers urging us in schools, in a distant past, to think over what we hear, read and silently mull over it. Then I remember some seniors at work urging me to ‘think through’. ‘Think through’ is about looking at possibilities,variations, literature and picking up from other’s experiences.
Need to view failures in the frame of integrity:A single experience should never teach you to take honesty and integrity lightly. Integrity and value systems are important for a professional. They say that we are in an age where virtue is in very short supply. It is increasingly important to do what we think is right – always. In a world that keeps throwing nasty surprises at us, it is of imperative to display professional integrity; the willingness to face facts even if they’re at odds with one’s preconceptions. Integrity is simply elucidated as “doing the right thing when no else is looking!”
The day is not far when an young entrepreneur will wear some of his failures like medals and highlight his learning from them rather than gloss over them as aberrations. He will step up to the fore and bring in that experience to run his business, and confidently aver why someone else should believe in his conviction on an investment thesis!
It is time to accept ‘entrepreneurial failure’ in its stride, look at it as a building block, and get and fuel and energy from that experience and move one step further to achieving your dream!
RAJESH NAIR – Director, Ernst & Young LLP
Rajesh is also the President of the Kerala Chapter of TiE Global
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