ABSTRACT
Paul Hawken, in his book Growing a Business, said something very inspiring. He proposed that as an initiator of a new business, one should “plan to be around a hundred years or longer.”2 He observed “If you are planning to be here ten, thirty, seventy years from now, you have to conduct your business as if the world around you will remember everything you have done to date.” He recalls that when he started his company, he set out to create a company that would “peak in the next century.” While a century may be too long for today’s entrepreneurs, we think that extending one’s time frame out beyond the conventional five-year financial projections may be a healthy exercise. To paraphrase Dorothy Sayers, a business shouldn’t be something you do to live, but something you live to do.
