The Art of Living Entrepreneurially

As grounded a university as any in America, even Purdue, famously dubbed in the late ‘60s “a hotbed of student rest,” has not had a right-of-center professor in a liberal-arts department since the days of Orville Redenbacher … and maybe not even then.

Redenbacher graduated from Purdue in 1928 with a degree in agronomy. If he took a liberal-arts course beyond comp 101, it is clear no professor discouraged his entrepreneurial ambitions. Indeed, he went on to become the John D. Rockefeller of popcorn.

The Redenbacher mystique did not impress my professors. In 1981, when I presented a proposal for my dissertation, they reeled in disbelief. “The Capitalist as Hero in the American Novel?” They thought it a prank. Had I titled the dissertation “The Child Molester as Hero in the American Novel,” they might have been more comfortable. Seriously.

Not too long ago, I reread my dissertation. In it, I divided the world of the capitalist into two general classes that I described as “builders” and “financiers.” The former, even socialist authors like Upton Sinclair and Jack London could warm up to. 

The latter class was a harder swallow for just about everyone, still is, and it remains the class we associate with “capitalist.” Missing entirely from my dissertation, incredibly enough, was the word “entrepreneur.” That word, I’m convinced, would make a huge difference in the future of America.

Grudgingly, the professors approved my proposal, and I went on to complete the dissertation on schedule. My timing was fortuitous. That same year, 1982, the universities in France shifted the emphasis of their English language programs from the liberal arts to commerce. 

Rather than hiring new professors, the administrators simply asked their Shakespeare professors to teach marketing and the like. You can imagine how that went over. University halls echoed with the charge of amateurism, and rightly so. Few knew what they were doing, and fewer still were willing to learn.

I knew none of this when I applied for a Fulbright to teach at a French university, but, to the surprise of my professors, I was snatched up. That “capitalism” thing caught their eye. With wife and toddler in tow, I headed off to Nancy, a Topeka-sized city in northeast France, to teach at what is now called the Université de Lorraine.

What I quickly discovered is that American-style ambition is not universal. My students had inherited a cultural disdain for capitalism that had taken my professors back at Good Old Purdue U. years of miseducation to acquire. 

Fortunately for me, “entrepreneur” was just coming into vogue. That word, being French in origin, gave me an in with my students. In the way of a pep talk, I told them that capitalism was part of their national heritage. It was they who gave us not only entrepreneur, but also laissez-faire.

It was a tough sell. In French, the word “ambition” is a pejorative. My students associated ambition with a class of people they called les jeunes loups, the young wolves, a species as ruthless and voracious as the name suggests.

The French, I learned, have a cultural tendency toward collectivism. In the one large class I taught, they quickly formed a syndicate of sorts, the leader of which I  was expected to negotiate with before giving out assignments. 

That wasn’t happening. On one particularly rebellious day, I walked over to his seat, knelt beside him, and whispered slowly in English, “If you keep this up, I will kick your ass. Do you understand?” The French tend to respect authority, “Oui, oui,” he said. Issue resolved.

On returning to America, I took an upper-level French course at UMKC to refine my language skills. I noticed immediately the difference between American students and the French, not in the skill level, but on the willingness to participate freely in class discussion. As a people, we are more inclined to individualism in the best sense of that word.

In the 1980s, arguably the most all-around successful American decade, that spirit was unleashed. As a result, we witnessed a flourishing of capitalism driven in no small part by the embrace of the word “entrepreneur,” especially among the young and ambitious.

It was in the mid-1980s that I first started writing for Corporate Report, the magazine that has since evolved into Ingram’s. As a writer and researcher, I was able to learn more about capitalism on something deeper than a fictional level.

In 1988, caught up in the spirit of the times, I took a stab at entrepreneurship myself, starting a small ad agency.

I quickly discovered that as much as I admired the entrepreneur, I was not cut out to be one. Although ambitious, I lacked the will to drive other people hard enough to make me rich. 

In studying the lives of truly successful entrepreneurs, I have found only a few who were both driven and humane. Locally, Henry Bloch comes to mind. There may have been someone who had an unkind word to say about Bloch, but in the course of producing a documentary on his life, I did not meet that person. I also produced a documentary on the life of Ewing Kauffman. Same result. 

I confess to having mixed feelings about the two most productive entrepreneurs of recent years, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. In brief, I would not have wanted to work for either. Both expect the same level of drive from their employees that they expect from themselves, and Jobs especially could be ruthless in demanding it.

That said, I’m glad some people have had the fortitude to endure the pressure. America would be poorer were it not for capitalists like these, especially Elon Musk.

Musk, I put in a special class of hero. One way to evaluate a capitalist is to measure his contribution to a community. The contribution that Musk made to America was the return of free speech, and contributions do not get more valuable than that.