Why Do Businesses Even Exist?
Core Drives
For whatever reason, we exist; and during that existence we have core human drives. We are born with simple and essential ones, such as the need to survive. Out of that comes the need for air, water, and food. As our essential drives are fulfilled and our minds mature, we have the need to fulfill more sophisticated, higher-level drives. We then pursue things such as the need for relatedness, growth, and importance.
Problems and Solutions
As you can imagine, those core human drives pose problems for us in our day-to-day lives. For example if our core human drive to survive gives us the problem of hunger, we have to craft a solution in order to fulfill that drive. If we have the desire, time, and resources then our solution can be to obtain the knowledge on how to produce our own food.
However, time is a finite resource and taking the time to obtain the knowledge to fulfill every drive we have is not a practical solution for most people. In the old days, we obtained solutions from other people by bartering. Nowadays, solutions to our problems can be bought from other people.
Value
Our existence gives us core human drives and those drives produce problems that we have to seek solutions for. Since knowledge takes time to obtain and time is finite, we find value in obtaining solutions created by other people. In order to buy solutions, there has to be people creating value and offering them in exchange for currency.
Businesses
Businesses are a collection of people creating solutions we find valuable. They deliver it in the form of products and services in exchange for currency.
Therefore, businesses exist for two reasons:
- to solve problems caused by our core human drives
- ironically enough, to solve the problem of the owner’s own drive to pursue the need for relatedness, growth, and importance.
Successful businesses are a collection of people proficient in reverse engineering particular inner workings of the human mind.