MSME Digest with Kola Owolabi
Are you wondering like me if the entrepreneur actually needs AI to fulfill his or vision of success in business? We all know that the entrepreneur succeeds by the ability to pick an idea with enough market relevance for a fairly long time into the future. In addition, he should be ready to pursue the implementation of that idea with razor sharp focus and total diligence. Saying it another way, the entrepreneur needs an idea that has an end product or service that the market needs and would likely need for some time in the foreseeable future.
More importantly, he also needs to persist in working on the idea, facing it as if that is the only thing that matters to him and working hard on it without giving up until he breaks through. Check the list of the ten richest people in the world today, majority of them dropped out of school or college to face the pursuit of their business ideas.
In addition, if you read their stories very well most of them worked odd hours (and still continue doing so) before they were able to see the success that they have today. Thomas Edison’s legendary quote sums up the whole thing, “Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”.
So where is the place of AI in the entrepreneurial success quotient? Does AI help one to come up with the most market-relevant idea or does it help one to fashion out how one will concentrate on the idea without shifting focus or does it help one to come up with ideas on how one can work hard so much and pursue the implementation of the idea with so much tenacity that one will most assuredly break through?
Yes, I will say. Using the right prompts, AI will give you abundant strategies on how you can address all the issues that determine whether an entrepreneur will succeed or not. If you type in and ask for ten ways that are required for you to plan your market approach and ten possible prospects that you can approach to make your first sale and keep selling to for life, AI will give you most valuable options.
However, on the flip side, AI may not be of much help in some critical areas when you want to make some decisions that will determine your ultimate success as an entrepreneur. Would AI have advised Mark Zuckerberg to drop out of Harvard University to pursue implementation of Facebook when he was still working on the project and testing it among students on campus? Probably if there were AI then, it would have suggested that he waited to complete his computer science programme, which he was on, to learn more computer science before leaving to continue working on his pet idea. Would AI have told Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and countless others who dropped out of college to face business full time to do so at the time they did? Without having completed their studies, they still went ahead to be among the best crop of entrepreneurs this generation has seen.
Taking it beyond the dimension of making life-defining decisions like dropping out of college, would AI have advised Bill Gates and his partner, Paul Allen to stay in the same room for three solid days without coming out to see anybody else, to work on the first contract they got in order to meet up with the delivery schedule. The twosome were locked-in there maybe with small time for meals that must have been with them all throughout those three days and having virtually no sleep (we were told they would work until they will crash on the floor to sleep and probably wake up moments later to continue working until the job was finished) and they delivered the order, and with which they got the victory that positioned Microsoft as market leader for life in Computer Operating system software market.
AI would have counseled that they should not forget to have enough rest, maybe eight hours everyday because an average person needs that kind of long hours to sleep in order to operate at his best. If that had happened then, we will not have what we call “Windows operating system” today.
Kola Owolabi (08023203198) is CEO, David Solomon Consulting Limited is a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Management Consultants (FIMC.CMC). The company has been helping entrepreneurs, both the new and highly experienced ones, plan and execute market entry with speed and minimal resources. The company can be reached via phone or WhatsApp at 08023203198.
