“Envy is everywhere. Who is without envy? And most people are unaware or unashamed of being envious.” – T. S. Eliot
Envy can be felt by everyone and entrepreneurs can use this feeling to their advantage. According to Victor Pride in the article How to Use Jealousy and Envy to Your Advantage, “When someone has an enviable life means that he probably did something to obtain his good fortune and if you can learn from his successes and mistakes, then you may be able to obtain similar fortune. And when you study the lives of many enviable entrepreneurs you can let all of their combined advice, teachings and mishaps inform you of what it takes to be successful. Then, you can use envy as motivation”.
This feeling of desire to have what or even better what others have is to be recognized as opportunity to business. Envy gives chances to everyone to do something to be greater than others. Also, in the article Opportunity Recognition as Pattern Recognition: How Entrepreneurs “Connect the Dots” to Identify New Business Opportunities by Robert A. Baron, Baron said that, “prior knowledge of a market, industry, or customers is a basis for recognizing new opportunities”. So it is important to know the customers and customers are all human beings who can feel different emotions including envy.
Rivals also envy each other. They want to be like or better than the other companies so they sometimes resort to imitating them. But these events also increase the competition because companies want to be better than their rivals but competition is important because only in competition thus the company strive to be ahead of others. And according to What Is Strategy by Michael Porter, Porter said that, “A company can outperform rivals only if it can establish a difference that it can preserve”. That difference can be achieved by using strategic positioning. It maybe new process or innovation but the strong the strategy is the better.
This innovation or new process may annihilate or destroy others. This supports Joseph Schumpeter’s theory about Creative Destruction. In the article Principles of Entrepreneurship: 1. what is Entrepreneurship? it is stated that, “Schumpeter believe that entrepreneurs carries out new combinations, thereby helping old industries obsolete. The term “new combinations” refer to the innovation that entrepreneurs introduced. But this is not always a bad thing because in another article, The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy by Michael Porter, Porter said that, “removing today’s competitors often attracts new competitors and backlash from customers and suppliers”.
Envy is not really a good feeling but depends on how you view it; it can be a good thing. Envy can make anyone struggle and persevere to get what others have or to experience what others experienced. It is not always putting others behind you but putting yourself ahead for once. And if entrepreneurs are able to control and use this feeling in good way, it can be used as motivation to entrepreneurial success.
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janinealfaro20 