Joy (2015) is an excellent movie about entrepreneurship, and Joy Mangano is a brilliant entrepreneur. Throughout the movie, we are shown Joy’s gift for entrepreneurship, the struggles that she faces, and her ultimate resolve to push on. Something that Joy has in common with nearly all entrepreneurs is her failed ideas. Milton Hershey (founder of Hershey’s chocolate) failed many times on his path to success, including having to close up one of his first candy shops. In the movie, Joy had an idea for a dog collar, but she could not get a patent. Shortly after, another entrepreneur secured a patent and began selling the same idea that Joy had for a dog collar. Joy shows us that the path to success is not always straight and that everyone is human.
The idea that most people must fail before they can succeed is integral to the concept of entrepreneurship itself. Failure can only occur in competitive environments, and competition is essential to the free market and the idea of capitalism. In order for a society to advance as quickly as possible, there must be stiff competition. This incentivizes innovation and efficiency, which improves the quality of life for everyone in the society writ large. And unfortunately, a consequence of this for most entrepreneurs will be a failure.
Later in the movie, we are shown Joy’s first successful business being an innovative mop company. By changing a few things, Joy has completely revolutionized the mop itself and created a successful business by all metrics. We are shown Joy’s success, but not the failure of other mop companies. Imagine you own a company called Ezmop, that sells ordinary mops. One day you are worth billions of dollars, and the next day some random girl invents a new product to dethrone you. Entire empires have the rug pulled out from under them, but does society not benefit from it? Are we not better off with the better version of the mop? When the iPhone came out in 2007, everyone was eager to get their hands on the latest technology, few people stopped and thought about what would happen to Blackberry or Nokia, and such is the nature of entrepreneurship in tandem with society writ large. There is a reason why there are laws against monopolies in America, why the government doesn’t own everything, competition is necessary. Failure must be an option. The free market must thrive.
Another great example of this is Amazon, featuring one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time, Jeff Bezos. Amazon, along with Tesla and a few others, is probably the single most impactful idea to ever be put into practice. Personally, I use Amazon at least a few times a month. My family uses Amazon, my friends use Amazon, and every single person that I know uses Amazon. They single-handedly changed the way that people buy things. And because of that, they will likely be responsible for the biggest market switch-up of all time. Meaning, of course, that they put a TON of people out of business. Book stores (which Amazon started), clothing stores, toy stores, etc will all either adapt or become obsolete within the next few decades. The era of the internet has been upon us for some time (another entrepreneurial invention) and people either get with the times or they go broke. And again, regardless of all the carnage that Amazon has caused in the business world, they are probably the most used product on the face of the planet, and certainly one of the most valuable companies. Jeff Bezos is one of the richest men in the world, and society is better for it. With every invention, society levels up, and the general quality of life for the average person is improved drastically.
The same can be said of Tesla, and electric cars in general, which leads me to the next point. It is not simply new ideas that can shake up markets and cause failures, but also cultural issues and politics. Perhaps the number one and two reasons for failures behind innovation ARE cultural and political issues. For car companies, the writing is on the wall and has been for some time. Electric cars are the future, whether they like it or not. Most of them have already begun making their own electric cars, but all of them are well behind Tesla at the moment, which was the first out of the gates. Elon recognized a cultural issue that he could capitalize on, and he did, now becoming the richest man in the world. And again, society benefits. Quality of life goes up. In this case, California might stay above water for a little longer because of the rise of electric cars. These are real problems, and real solutions created by entrepreneurs, with the full backing of the free market behind them, proving once again how necessary it is for competition to be incentivized, and for people to fail. Success cannot be achieved without failure, and society cannot function without entrepreneurs.
Joy was a perfect example of this. Failure can be reached in many ways. Whether someone else is simply faster than you (in Joy’s case), more innovative, or more in touch with cultural and political issues, there is always another player waiting to profit from your failure, and feast on your corpse. The free market can be cutthroat, and entrepreneurs must always be on their toes if they want to succeed, which is another reason why so many of them fail. Laziness is not an option, nor is complacency. Nothing is certain, other than the guaranteed benefit to society and an increase in the quality of life for the average person. And what could be more important than that? Certainly not the success of any given entrepreneur. Any aspiring entrepreneur must recognize these facts, along with the futility of their efforts and the looming likelihood of failure. They must be critically and alarmingly aware of how likely it is that they will fail if they ever wish to succeed. And if they do happen to fail, what must they do? Try and try again. The mantra for entrepreneurs, or at least the successful ones. Never give up, and you might stand a chance.
Works Cited
BYLUND, PER L. Seen, the Unseen, and the Unrealized: How Regulations Affect Our Everyday Lives. LEXINGTON Books, 2018.
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