I stumbled upon a cool blog the other day called Atlantic  Canada's Small Business Blog.

The blog  focuses on issues faced by small businesses and entrepreneurs (marketing, HR, leadership, finance, operations), but they also talk about other topics - economics, trade, etc.

I want to share with you this article they did called "How would you get back from Mars?"

You may have read elsewhere or have a belief that the goal of an organization is to make money.
Even I have said so many times in this blog. But I read a question last night that made me pause and think about the real objective of the organization. The question was: “How would you make $ on Planet Mars?” The question was asked by Mariam Ispahani (CEM & Founder Saaze Crop) in LinkedIn.

I was about to immediately draft an answer. After all, the goal of an organization is to make money, right? Wrong! The goal of an organization is to create value. And us earthlings today measure value using a tool called money. At the end of the day, what is money? It is just a convenient tool for exchange of goods. In certain countries where the local currency is not convertible on both capital and current accounts (is there such a country?) walking in with the dollar is not going to buy you anything. It has no value there. The same argument holds with a business.

Businesses create value by providing what their customers need. Say you are traveling into a desert. The bottled water holds greater value to you than to someone else not venturing into the desert. And therein lies the answer to why businesses are successful. Successful businesses create value to their customers 24×7.

I must admit, I left out the complete question that Mariam asked: “the shuttle is leaving for the new Earthling settlement on Planet Mars and you have a ticket. Yippee! You only had enough money for a one way ticket, but you are adventurous. Assuming you want to return after many moons, how would you make the money to buy a ticket back to Planet Earth? No stowaways or strippers allowed.”

My answer would be to perform those activities that create value. One enterprise that immediately comes to mind is providing support services to new immigrants and helping them settle down. Moreover, depending on how fashionable it is to get to Mars, you may be able to recover the cost of your two way return flight by selling your existing one way ticket on Earth itself. Hey, remember it is all about value.

What would you do? How would you get back from Mars? Would you even want to come back to Earth?

Posted on July 7, 2007 by CA