One of the earliest cavemen "sold" a crudely fashioned, oddly-shaped wheel to his cave-dwelling neighbor for two stone clubs and a chunk of an unknown game animal. As this trade occurred, a cave dweller from a neighboring village happened to pass by, becoming a witness to mankind's first business transaction.
The neighboring cave dweller, intrigued by the possibility of that wheel, picked up a stone and took to writing about it. He wrote until his hands bled, but finally, the walls of his cave were all but covered with etchings of every picture and symbol he knew. When complete, he looked at his work and grunted his approval.
After many rotations of the sun dial, that same caveman emerged from his cave with what crudely resembled a wheel barrow. Instead of one wheel, though, his contraption included two. An axle crafted from the finely honed leg bone of a buffalo connected the two wheels and a hollow rock rested atop the crude axle. "I know this will bring me more than two stone clubs and a piece of meat," he said to himself.
When he arrived at the first village, he and his new invention were surrounded by droves of inquisitive cave dwellers. The original creator of the wheel, who had since created another, stood alone in front of his cave, looking sadly at his wheel and wondering what might have been.
Not long thereafter, the crude wheel barrows were seen around the villages, their hollow rocks transporting bushels of corn, the day's fresh kill, and even small children.
When he saw the number of wheel barrows in the village continue to grow, the self-proclaimed leader donned his best animal pelt and arranged a gathering of all the villagers. "We must ensure the safety of the villagers, especially the children," he proclaimed. "My tribe will attend to this. We will watch over the creation of these strange carts to make sure that each one is made safely. In exchange, you will give us one cart each time the village sun dial revolves 10 times." The villagers nodded their heads in approval, as the leader made his way though the crowd, kissing babies as he went. If the creator of the wheel barrow had known how to do so at the time, he would have cringed.
A strange little man stood among the crowd of villagers. He had a pointy little head, with pointy little ears. He wore his animal pelt high on his torso, almost up to his breasts. Unlike the other cavemen who wore their hair long and loosely about the shoulders, this man's hair was flat, almost plastered to his head. He kept to himself mostly, but sometimes people recited stories about seeing him around the village wearing what could only be described as horn-rimmed glasses bound together by scotch tape. That's where the stories ended, though, because even the dullest villager knew that horn rimmed glasses and scotch tape hadn't yet been invented.
The strange little man knew he was smarter than the other villagers. He had studied all of the great hieroglyphics, including the classics from ancient times, as well as the etchings of the modern scholars.
This strange little man was thinking about the wheel barrow, but differently than the others saw it. Imagine if one were able to replicate a similar concept, but this time using four wheels, instead of two. The multitude of possibilities circled endlessly through his mind, only to return again and again to the same thought: "four wheels — chick magnet."
Billions of revolutions of the sun dial subsequent to that day, a descendant of the strange little caveman affixed his final signature to the document that awarded his company with massive amounts of funding from the government in order to keep it alive. The man wondered to himself if, and if so, how long, the company would last.
Nature abhors a profit.
The ancient philosophers, in this case most likely Aristotle, taught us that "nature abhors a vacuum." Whether interpreted scientifically or proverbially, the concept is similar: Unfilled space is unnatural. Much like profit.
Profit is unfilled space, a vacuum of sorts, where expenses long to live. Profit must perpetually resist the infinite number of forces that exist solely to eliminate it, including competition, regulation, taxation, macro-economic factors, and external disruption, to name a few. When left unattended, profit will disappear.
This phenomenon has held true since the the first business transaction, and will continue as long as profit exists. And make no mistake about it — profit will always exist, even if fleeting, and despite the fact that their form will perpetually evolve. The only difference between the era of the caveman and the modern era is that, today, we measure change in terms of nanoseconds, rather than revolutions of the sun dial.
Although profit will always exist, it is by no means an entitlement and no organization is exempt from its potential to implode and ultimately, disappear. Profit, the engine of business, will never be a slave to any organization. Indeed, those who choose to ignore these concepts, or even underestimate them, do so at their own peril.
Illustration courtesy of Alexcoolok|Dreamstime.com
