Who’s your role model?

Having to give a speech on social entrepreneurship at the Naples Start Up WE I found myself in some trouble. Young Italian guys are fed up with the old political rhetorics. They want opportunities and action.

However, I found the opposite as I arrived in Italy. From Wednesday to Thursday I spent my time listening to ageing men in suits self-pleasuring about how ‘Europe is necessary to save people from the crisis’ – i.e. euro-brainwashing, navel-gazing ‘don’t dare even think about cutting our jolly’. It was the State of the Union conference in Florence.

I found it useless and boring despite the fact that it’s my field. I can’t imagine how such euro-talk must wash away as water flowing on glass when aspiring entrepreneurs are in the audience.

Young people want opportunities to realise their dreams, prove their capacity and get a hand to succeed. They want it now, not justifications in jargon for bureaucratic delays and system failures.

I changed angle when speaking to my young audience and shared my experience as social entrepreneur. I started with a question: Who’s your role model?

Almost nobody had an answer except for one. He proposed Richard Branson. What a delusion! How has Branson ever changed the world?

Then it was the time for my blow. I commented: ‘My role-model is Cristoforo Colombo, a real impact leader’.

He had a dream: to find the alternative route to reach Asia and start a new spice trade across the Atlantic, cutting out all the competitors. The commercial ambition was combined with the missionary and a hunger for gold.

He was from Genoa but had to leave his homeland. Nobody wanted to fund his enterprise. He found his investors in the King of Aragon and Queen of Castilla.

His business model was based on wrong assuptions. Copernicus’s calculations on the earth’s size were underestimated and, in any case, the entire American landmasses were not included.

Colombo succeeded in 50% of his goals. He found a new oceanic route but neither leading to Asia nor for spices trade. He found gold to steal and souls to covert but died in poverty and disgrace.

What he did made an impact but neither as expected nor equally desidered by all parties. On one hand, his discovery created a unique opportunity for Europe to build the necssary capital for the Industrial Revolution, and shook European world order to its foundations, paving the way for modern Europe and its world domination. On the other hand, Europeans wiped out millions of indigenous destroying entire civilizations and taking over their resources.

This is impact isn’t it?

In a country like Italy, Colombo is a model for young people who don’t give up and want to make a difference in life.  He’s mine!