{"id":1170,"date":"2020-12-04T09:16:02","date_gmt":"2020-12-04T09:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/?p=1170"},"modified":"2020-12-04T09:16:03","modified_gmt":"2020-12-04T09:16:03","slug":"the-end-of-scarcity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/12\/04\/the-end-of-scarcity\/","title":{"rendered":"The end of scarcity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Image by Pexels from Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As it was Thanksgiving in the US last week, I wanted to follow up with a reflection on the notion of scarcity and abundance. Many in industry operate with a scarcity mindset, believing that basically everything we\u2019re concerned with is available only in limited amounts. Whether it\u2019s \u2018winning\u2019 a customer, being promoted or getting a project that you asked for, the basic assumption is that either someone else gets it or you get it. It\u2019s a win-lose situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason for this can, of course, be found in the evolution of \nhumankind. For the hundreds of thousands of years that the predecessors \nof modern-day humans roamed the earth, everything was driven by \nscarcity. Food was scarce, safe places to live were scarce, people to \npartner with safely were scarce, and so on. And this translates into \nmany of our current behaviors in society. In football games, one team \nwins and the other loses. In television shows, there\u2019s one winner. In \ncomputer gaming, the battle royale games go through successive rounds of\n fights until only one player is left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For virtually everyone in the western world, scarcity is largely an \nillusion. We all have access to food, a safe place to live, access to \nhealthcare, protection from threats, and so on. Using Maslov\u2019s theory as\n a basis, our physiological and safety needs are largely taken care of \nand these basic needs were historically where scarcity existed. Our \npsychological and self-fulfillment needs are typically not where \nscarcity is an issue. When someone else enters a relationship, it \ndoesn\u2019t reduce your opportunities to enter a relationship. When a \ncolleague of mine publishes a paper, it doesn\u2019t affect my opportunities \nto publish a paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our economy and business, we have the same misconception of \nscarcity. Most people seem to miss that the economy is growing all the \ntime. GDP growth means that there\u2019s more value, with money as its proxy,\n created by an economy. That value and money don\u2019t mean that a country \nhad to lose for another country to win. In some way, we\u2019re creating \nvalue and money \u2018out of thin air\u2019 (see Wikipedia<\/a>\n for a longer exploration of this topic). Thanks to the digitalization \nof society, more and more of that value is digital, as can be witnessed \nby the valuations of technology behemoths such as Microsoft, Facebook \nand Google. And because of that, our planet\u2019s physical resources are \nless and less the source of value creation, which is a good thing from \nan environmental perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The point I\u2019m trying to make is that we live in an age of abundance. \nFor most of us, we can put virtually all our life energy into \nself-actualization and creating a positive impact on the world we live \nin. We can do this through work, volunteering, relationships, community \nefforts, politics or any other means. But we should view the world \naround us through the lens of abundance, rather than the lens of \nscarcity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In business, this means that a competitor or partner doing well \ndoesn\u2019t mean that you lose opportunities to do well. In fact, several of\n the startups I\u2019m involved in celebrate when companies in the same space\n do well as it means that the size of the cake is growing. Especially \nfor new companies, it\u2019s not the competition that\u2019s the concern, but \novercoming non-consumption, eg companies that continue to use pen and \npaper instead of the nifty tool you created. So, instead of competing at\n the sharp end of the knife with a scarcity mindset, look for ways to \ncreate win-win situations and adopt an abundance mindset. There\u2019s more \nthan enough for all of us. Your growth is only helping my growth!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many who will read this will undoubtedly point to all the pain and suffering that still exist in the world and I don\u2019t want to ignore that or sweep it under the rug. But the fact is that virtually every metric concerning the quality of life in the world, ranging from war deaths and people living in poverty to child mortality and life expectancy, is improving and humanity has never lived in a better age. We live in the age of abundance and, for all the troubles in the world today, I believe it\u2019s good to remember that and be grateful for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get more insights earlier, sign up for my newsletter at\u00a0<\/em>jan@janbosch.com<\/em><\/a> or follow me on<\/em> janbosch.com\/blog<\/em><\/a>, LinkedIn (<\/em>linkedin.com\/in\/janbosch<\/em><\/a>), Medium<\/a> or Twitter (<\/em>@JanBosch<\/em><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As it was Thanksgiving in the US last week, I wanted to follow up with a reflection on the notion of scarcity and abundance. Many in industry operate with a scarcity mindset, believing that basically everything we\u2019re concerned with is available only in limited amounts. Whether it\u2019s \u2018winning\u2019 a customer, being promoted or getting a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1172,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions\/1172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}