Originally written by Matthew Cushen on Small Business
The Chinese word for ‘crisis’ is ‘wēijī’ in the latin alphabet. It’s become (after JFK used it in a speech) a cliché that it’s made up of two Chinese characters signifying ‘danger’ (wēi) and ‘opportunity’ (jī).
The second character is part of the Chinese word for ‘opportunity’ (jīhuì), but that has multiple meanings, in isolation it means something more like ‘change point’.
Another cliché is that recessions are great time to start businesses. The poster children are Uber and Airbnb, both set up during the global financial crisis around 2007. Further back General Motors launched in 1908, after another financial crisis and McDonald’s was founded during the second world war and grew into the efficient franchise model just after (whilst being joined by arch competitor Burger King). I could go on.
But, more to the point, you could name any year and any context and there would be examples of the birth of great businesses.
Whilst the generalisation is unhelpful, thinking about whether you are stronger or weaker over time or more relative than your competition is always helpful and especially so when we are at a change point (‘ji’).
Nature gives us a couple of examples. Think