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	<title>Love of History &#187; entrepreneurship</title>
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		<title>Agro-Business in the Roman World</title>
		<link>http://loveofhistory.com/agro-business-in-the-roman-world/</link>
		<comments>http://loveofhistory.com/agro-business-in-the-roman-world/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 09 Nov 2019 10:18:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[constantinakatsari]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ancient]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[entrepreneurship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Farming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Roman world]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://loveofhistory.com/?p=3694</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Have you ever considered that business may not have been that different 2000 years ago? Oh well, they did not have computers, internet and the digital economy but they still had a buoyant property market, they were trading across the seas and the land, and they were pretty good at financial administration. After all, empires were not built on air but on solid armies, bureaucracies and land expansion exercises (imperialism). In the Roman World, the wealthiest citizens were focusing on the development of farming businesses. Several handbooks were written during the Republic and the Empire. These Agronomists followed the rich tradition of writers coming from the Greek times, such as Hesiod, Xenophon, Democritus of Abdera, even Aristotle. Even though the Roman writers followed the Greeks, they still managed to become better known and more widely revered than they predecessors. Their instructions became the ‘go to’ manual for Landowners across Europe for centuries to come. The most important works that survived until today are those of Cato, Columella, Varro, Virgil, Pliny and Palladius. Today we will focus on Cato the Elder’s farming manual, De Agricultura. This is &#8211; not surprisingly &#8211;  the eldest work of latin prose. It’s scope and importance emphasises on what actually mattered for the elite at the time and the manuscript dates from the second century BC, long before the Roman Empire reached the height of its power. In fact, long before Roman Emperors were ‘a thing’! Let us take a look on what Cato believed of Farming as business. Obviously he preferred it over Commerce and Banking, both of which may have brought profits.  However, the first was risky and the second was considered akin to usury and had the potential to confer upon the banker the title of ‘criminal’. As a result, the only moral and sensible option for the Roman Rich were to become farmers. So, how did they go about it? First and foremost they needed to buy vast expanses of land. Or, alternatively, acquire them through wars. The Romans spent several centuries expanding their lands through military advances. So, there was a lot to be had. Secondly, they needed to learn how to manage these vast expansions of land. And this is where the Agronomists entered the picture. Cato was willing to present his contemporaries with a wealth of advice on how to set up and run a farming business. I will include a few of these comments just to give you an idea of what was expected of a Roman farmer. As a rule, you should not be an Absentee Landowner. As the Master of the Household you should visit your farm often and upon arrival greet Lar (the Guardian/God/Ancestor of the Hearth). Always partner up with a God, just to be on the safe side. Once you pay your dues to Lar, it would be the right time to go around your property ON THE SAME DAY. Cato insists on this piece of advice and I suspect that the master would have liked to see how the farm is run on an average day and not after anticipating his visit. The element of surprise seems to be essential. Once the initial checks have been completed, the next day can be dedicated to analysing the statistics “how much of the work is finished, how much remains, whether what is done was done in time and there will be time to do the rest, and how it is with the wine, the grain and everything else singly.” It should not astonish us that analytics were used regularly in antiquity in order to run a business. The owner needed to know how far they are in the production cycle and when the crops would be ready for sale. The financial aspect would have taken even more time, because of its essential nature. After all, how else would they have known whether the business was profitable or even viable?And how would they have funded their elaborate lifestyles? Cato says on the matter: “You must check the figures for money and grain, check what is set aside for fodder, check the wine and oil figures &#8212; what is already sold, and the income from this, what is still to be produced, and what it will fetch &#8212; agree the difference and take charge of the agreed sum.” This is the end point (scope) of any business. Obviously, they did not have any double entry books (this was a much later invention) and they were lacking in cash flow projections. But they had an excellent understanding of basic finances and how numbers should be used for their advantage. As with every other business, delegation is a big part of running large organisations, including farms. The landowner probably had several farms that needed his attention. For each farm, he would have hired a manager to oversee the work on a daily basis. Even though the manager should have been a trusted employee (rarely a slave), this does not mean that he could waive his carte blanche and do whatever he wanted. Cato seemed to be very suspicious of the managers and insists on holding them accountable. He eloquently writes on the subject: “ When you have this straight, you can get down to calculating people and days’ work. If the work seems wanting the manager will say that he has done his best, slaves were sick, the weather was bad, slaves ran away or were requisitioned for public works: when he has put these and all his other arguments, bring him back to the calculation of workers and their work! If there was rainy weather, what work could have been done while it rained? &#8212; washing and pitching vats, cleaning farm buildings, shifting grain, shovelling dung, making a dung-heap, threshing grain, mending ropes and making new ones; the slaves could have been patching their own cloaks and hoods. On holidays they should have cleaned out blocked ditches, mended the public road, cut back hedges, dug the vegetable garden, cleared the meadow, cut sticks, pulled out brambles, husked the emmer, tidied up. While slaves were ill they ought not to have been given as much food.” It is astonishing the amount of detail he goes into. Just because the masters were wealthy, it did not mean they should not have intimate knowledge of shovelling dung, making heaps  of them, ordering the planting of the vegetable garden, or cutting sticks. Quite the opposite! Even the food portions for the slaves were important, if profit was to be had!   Once the details were understood, then it was important to put forward the right orders for buying equipment, for selling the products (vegetables, animals or slaves), and for contracting the workers. The orders should have been delivered both verbally as well as in writing, so that there was a clear chronological record of the decision making process. Back then, papyri would have been the means of accounts. Today its a laptop with elaborate software. In both cases the outcome would have been similar. The distillation of Catos’s wisdom (and probably his best advice) can be summarised in the following sentence “The master has to be a selling man, not a buying man.” This is the traditional advice of frugality and simplicity, where loans remained an anathema. In Cato’s advice to the manager (not the owner this time) he insists that: “He must lend to no one but ensure that the owner’s loans are repaid. He must have no loans out to anyone, of seed for sowing, food, wheat, wine or oil: there should be two or three households from whom he can ask necessities and to whom he can give, but no others. He must regularly make up accounts with the owner.” Although he does not moralise on the ‘evil’ of loans, he would not willingly accept such an agreement inflicted upon him, unless, of course, it is the owner that provides the loan All in all, the Romans did not put together elaborate business models based on debt and governmental grants. The clarity and minimalism of the economic and financial models at the time cannot be denied. Without trying to moralise on the topic, I would like to emphasise on the effectiveness of such an attitude. Today we are used to building large organisations based on loans, shares, use of derivatives. They grow fast and exponentially, they employ thousands of people and they go bust at the blink of an eye. We may enjoy the boosts as well as the busts of capitalism but I still appreciate the wisdom coming from the pre-industrial, pre-capitalist societies. Just for today, I intend to busk at the words of Cato and apply a bit more simplicity in my life! The texts come for Cato, De Agricultura, 2 and 5. (https://soilandhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/01aglibrary/010121cato/catofarmtext.htm)]]></description>
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		<title>Entrepreneurial Skills for Students in the Humanities</title>
		<link>http://loveofhistory.com/entrepreneurial-skills-for-students-in-the-humanities/</link>
		<comments>http://loveofhistory.com/entrepreneurial-skills-for-students-in-the-humanities/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Jun 2016 17:05:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[constantinakatsari]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Opinions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[employability]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[entrepreneurial]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[entrepreneurship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[history]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[university courses]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://loveofhistory.com/?p=3653</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When you move across academic circles, you notice a general discontent about the state of Higher Education. The complaints are shot from all quarters. The professors are lamenting the good old age when they had time for research. The lecturers are complaining about the burden of becoming jacks of all trades. The administrators feel like they are second class citizens in a university that still nurtures medieval hierarchies. And they all complain about the students who exhibit a newly acquired customer mentality. Of course, the students are the university’s customers. They pay for its infrastructure, professorial salaries, lecture halls and marketing campaigns. In return, they receive proof that they were trained in a specific sector. The proof is stamped by a university that may have a long standing reputation in national and international communities (or not). In effect, the university becomes the guarantee of the student’s knowledge. Despite the university’s attention to student experience, high quality knowledge and advanced learning systems, students remain unconvinced of its value. And with good reason! When they finish their studies, they expect to find a full time job that could pay for their basic expenses as well as the exorbitant loans they already acquired. Reality, though, does not meet their expectations. In most cases, they end up in unpaid internships or dead end part time jobs. They stay in this predicament until they gain enough work experience to start moving up the ladder or across different sectors. Why do universities fail to cater to the needs of their students and future employers? It is evident that they have the resources and the human potential to provide for what their customers want. And yet, they seem to react spasmodically and without a clear plan for the future. Surely, some of the brightest people I know (who are incidentally in academia) could come up with a path to change. In this case, I believe that the problem is emotional rather than intellectual. Change is the key word in this equation. The fear of change permeates large organisations and its institutionalised people. However, the fear of the unknown could cause unprecedented failures in moving ahead with the times. And this is exactly what academics and university administrators need to do. They have to recognise that we no longer live in the Industrial era. Instead, we are moving into a very disruptive phase of the Digital Revolution. Changes happen fast and alter radically the world as we know it. The revolution affects all aspects of our lives, both professionally and personally. In the business world some inspiring influencers already identified the need for change and they are taking steps to a different direction. One of the first measures they took, and should be noted by universities, is that they no longer hire graduates for their skills. Instead, they hire them for their attitude. In a fast changing world skills need to be updated continuously. As a matter of fact, slow paced research, in some disciplines, cannot keep up with developments in the real world. By the time journals and university presses go through the external readership, editing, and copy editing process, ‘innovative’ ideas are already obsolete. Similarly, the skills some students are taught no longer reflect what society needs by the time they leave university. The only solution to this problem is to focus on the student’s attitude, personality, the so called ‘soft’ skills (that are neither soft, nor insignificant). In the 21st century what we need is problem solving abilities, communication skills, creativity, team working, inspiring leadership and analytical tools. Of course, all of these can be found as separate elements in individual disciplines. However, no curriculum brought them together in a coherent lot. Even worse, neither students nor teachers fully understand how these can be identified and applied in real situations. As I was wondering along the paths of my ‘history oriented’ mind and the very real business world, I became aware of the power of entrepreneurship, not as a money making opportunity but as an attitude forming one. For the past three years I mentored hundreds of entrepreneurs. While I ‘supervised’ their projects, I noted how their cognitive and emotional skills developed. And I became truly and utterly surprised! I never expected that a simple business development exercise could bring about such life altering results. I became especially astonished when PhD students started describing my programs as ‘a life altering experience’ or ‘a crash course on real life survival skills’. So, I decided to dig a little bit deeper into the process I was following. This is when I realised that they showed their appreciation not for the knowledge I was disseminating but for the experience I allowed them to have. I obviously touched them at an emotional level and I helped them develop as people, not just as learning machines. This is, of course, one of the reasons I abandoned Economic History for the sake of Applied Entrepreneurship. I do not value theoretical models any less. I just value the application of knowledge a lot more than I used to. And so do my startup/ students. Based on my recent experiences, I took a massive leap. I created a series of virtual programs on entrepreneurship that can be used as part of University courses. The idea was that the students of individual departments or across a College can create their own products or services, so that they build around them a viable business. This does not mean that every one of them would become a business owner. Most probably they would just get the right entrepreneurial skills they need to find the job that they deserve. Such skills (to my mind) would certainly make them more employable. But then, I experienced the shock of my life. I expected that humanities departments, especially in history and philosophy, would be the first to take up the challenge. After all, their students end up in managerial positions and they are the most skilled to run their own business (due to the high quality of their analytical thinking). I was wrong. It was Computer Science, Maths, and Physics departments that showed the most interest. I requested advice on the reasons behind such a low interest in entrepreneurship exercises. I received a combination of answers but none of them seemed to be entirely convincing. Most of them cited the students’ indifference. Others commented on the conservative structure of their curriculum. To tell you the truth, they all sounded more like excuses rather than actual reasons. Is it possible that the Humanities devotees are less forward thinking that their Science counterparts? And yet, I can see clearly the need for a change in direction in the Humanities. Analysing the theoretical frameworks of Tacitus, or synthesising economic data in a coherent lot may be a good exercise in analytical thinking. However, it still does not bear a clear connection with the real world. The invaluable skills that humanities education provides can be highlighted only through the prism of relevant life experiences. And I will continue fighting across these lines. For those of you who are curious about what I am doing with my life after academia, check out my site http://startdoms.com . At this point in time, I am dedicated to entrepreneurship and its infinite potential for changing our world.]]></description>
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