| In college, I knew a guy who had this latin phrase tattooed on his stomach: Audentes Fortuna Juvat. In Latin it means, "Fortune favors the daring." He was, and still is, a very interesting guy, but I could never get past this lingering thought of the risk involved. Maybe being daring is fun, but fortune may not always be in your favor. |
Then, serendipity struck. I was sitting at home on a lazy Saturday afternoon, watching one of my favorite networks, The Science Channel, when a program came on about Ignaz Semmelweis. Here is a link to a short clip.
Basically, it told the story about Semmelweis noticing a problem of mother & infant deaths in his obstetrics ward in the hospital in Vienna. Long story short, Semmelweis had a problem that was a "life or death" kind of problem and, through observation and research that followed a hunch, it led him to believe that the problem could be solved by forcing obstetricians to wash their hands. It seemed simple enough, at the time.
Semmelweis daringly published a book on his findings and the positive results he had documented by instituting his tactics in his hospital ward. Long story short, fortune did not favor him. He was ridiculed by the medical community, lost his job at the hospital in Vienna, had a nervous breakdown, was committed to an insane asylum and died soon after. A sad story, indeed.
Semmelweis's practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed germ theory. The main difference is that Pasteur was a disciplined scientist and researcher. Because he was able to prove that microbes exist and they were the cause of infection, his ideas were widely accepted and revolutionized medicine almost over night. His breakthroughs raised the quality of life for all of us, even 250 years later.
You might be wondering to yourself, "Jonny B, what does this have to do with ideation?"
Referring back to my first post on ideation, I talked bout the first source of opportunity being problems. Solve a problem with less resources and you have created value. The bigger the problem solved, the greater the value to society, the greater the return to the entrepreneur.
Semmelweis and Pasteur weren't so much interested in being entrepreneurs. But, they paved the way for the mutli-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry that soon followed. And, if you watched the short video above, hopefully you are drawing some of your own conclusions about people with hunches and ideas. I'll close with this: What would have happened if Semmelweis & Pasteur had been "Friends" on Facebook?
Thanks for reading.
Jon Bachura
Director of Curriculum & Training
Youth Entrepreneurs
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