E-M8 Entrepreneurial Management for Eternal Mission

I have often like to ask the seemingly simple question: “What is business?” in my undergraduate and MBA business classes, as well as with my business clients. One response I get consistently is silence.

Usually the silence is followed by some kind of comment about making money or serving customers. Though plenty of businesses do not make money and it seems these days few actually serve anyone.  

Once in a while students define business by the buildings and machinery that it utilizes. Though many businesses have no visible assets.  

Occasionally, more financially astute say that business is an investment vehicle, which from the investor’s standpoint is a legitimate statement, though many businesses are not investment vehicles and many investment vehicles are not businesses.

So, what really is business? Is your garage sale a business? Or if you help your neighbor mow her grass, is that a business?

In both cases you have something that lies at the heart of business, a transaction. An exchange, sale, or a gift – the transaction is what business is all about.

Yet, it takes more than a transaction to have a business,  it takes many repeat transactions. That is what business is: a going concern, a set of repeating transactions. And thus behind all the fancy language and all confusion, business is about relationships and people. It is about engaging in activities together, not just occasionally, but on ongoing basis.

If that is not a basis for building community, I am not sure what is. Let us trade together, so that we all might prosper. May our world be surrounded by multitudes of businesses that connect us and cause us to engage in dialog with one another.