A question from a client who’d worked in the non-profit sector throughout her professional life got me to thinking. She was adamant that entrepreneurship meant exploitation. And committed to community building, she was concerned that personal gain meant diminution of the common good.

On reflection, what she’d left out was reciprocity. The only way that community works is by reciprocity: individuals support the commons from which they derive benefit. Categorical refusal to “use” the commons– to stand apart as if community were somehow disengaged from its utility to its members—is counter-productive. Were all members to avoid the benefits of communal membership, the very idea of their “common”  link would fall apart.

My client was fixed on the hurtful potential of exploitation: of deceitful, one-sided gain rather than its more general productive  meaning  “making use” of a resource. This utilization means that the entrepreneur makes use of a very specific situation— the focal “need” which solves the customer’s situational dilemma— whether for a product or service.

Successful entrepreneurship is about productive, living use of the commons. Indeed, the success of this reciprocity is not decided by the entrepreneur herself, but judged by what the commons requires and how well that requirement is satisfied by the entrepreneur.

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