Our topic for Week 3 of the class was ‘You Don’t Need to “Win” (but you do need to find your place)’. We had three readings to prompt discussion:

1.  Suzanne Simard’s TED talk: How trees talk to each other
2.  Dave Eggers TED talk: My wish: Once Upon A School
3.  If Corporations Are People, They Should Act Like It

These readings, along with the in-class interview with Ellen King and Julie Matthei from Hewn Bakery, provided insight into unconventional perspectives on competition and cooperation in entrepreneurship. Here are the takeaways from our readings and discussion

1. Walk through a forest if you want to learn about entrepreneurship

Forests are made up of so much more than just trees. Forests operate as an intelligent single organisms, running on underground neural networks that allow trees to communicate. Ecologist Suzanne Simard found that trees transmit carbon to each other based on which tree needed it more. In the summer, birch sent more carbon to fir because the fir was shaded, and later in the year, fir sent more carbon to birch because fir was growing while the birch was still leafless. She found that in forest networks, hub trees act like parents to their communities as they nurture their young, by diverting nutrients to underdeveloped trees in their vicinity.

Hold on a second… what does any of this have to do with entrepreneurship? That was the common initial reaction from the class. However, we soon came to realize that the forest is much like the startup space. When we think of the natural world, we are often drawn to the dominant narrative of Darwinian theory and the survival of the fittest, whereas the actual forest thrives on interdependence and interconnectedness. In the same way, the dominant narrative in entrepreneurship is about winning and beating the competition. However, the actual startup space is about so much more—it is about cooperating with your competitors. Last week, in our discussions about Airbnb, we concluded that without competitors, there is no market, and without a market, there is no business.

It is in an entrepreneur’s best interest for their competitors to thrive, and it is in the startup space’s best interest for the competitors to cooperate.

2. Look for opportunities in the intersection of two previously-distinct worlds.

826 Valencia is a writing center connecting the magazine writers of McSweeney’s with the young developing writers of the Mission District neighborhood. This opportunity was found by Dave Eggers who identified the intersection between these two previously-distinct worlds.

826 Valencia was the ‘hub tree’ of its community, linking the nodes of McSweeney’s and the public schools in its immediate community. It also became a ‘hub tree’ for the education space as competitors (or co-operators, depending on your perspective) began to emerge nationally and globally. Time Travel Mart (Los Angeles, CA), Soda Chef (Pittsfield, MA), Ink Spot (Cincinnati, OH), Youth Speaks (San Francisco, CA), Studio St. Louis (St. Louis, MO), Austin Bat Cave (Austin, TX), Fighting Words (Dublin, Ireland) all became part of an interconnected, interdependent neural network working to eliminate social stigma around tutoring.

By forming a startup ‘forest’ of sorts, they live to fix the broken education cultures in their respective communities by connecting previously disconnected nodes.

3. Start with the ‘why’. Then figure out the ‘how’ and the ‘what’.

Dave Eggers started with the ‘why’—he wanted to fix the broken education culture in his community. After talking to his contacts in his literary and educational networks, he realized that one-on-one attention was ‘how’ the problem could be solved. 826 Valencia, and this idea of connecting magazine writers from McSweeney’s with young developing writers was the natural answer.

Entrepreneurship wasn’t the end goal. It was a means to an end. Entrepreneurship should be the byproduct of your efforts to bring changes to your community. Too often we start with entrepreneurship as our ‘why’—we look for design problems to solve to satiate our need for entrepreneurship.

Eggers shows us that when entrepreneurship is born out of a passion to make change—a real ‘why’—it can result in real social change for the betterment of not only the immediate community, but to the ends of the nation.

Starting with the ‘why’ makes business scaling decisions easy, because you have a set of core values and a purpose that you can stick to.

4. Expect civic citizenship out of corporations.

If corporations receive constitutional rights, then they should also be held responsible for civic duties. As human citizens we have responsibilities that go beyond not breaking the law. What if we all expected corporations not just to make money, but to do good?

We need to question the shareholder primacy narrative that a corporation has no higher purpose than to make money for its shareholders.