The Philosophers and Entrprenuer - Why we need philosophers in business.

A business is an idea of human satisfaction, put into practice. Profit should be the reward for recognizing a hitherto untapped area of satisfaction. Alain de Batton

Businesses or entrepreneurs don’t frame their concerns philosophically. They don’t use weird Greek words; they say that their success depends on ‘understanding their customers or their products.’ And in order to understand them, they typically make use of an armory of market research techniques (interviews, data analysis). But they are often not thinking deeply and broadly enough about human needs and are therefore flawed in their eventual understanding of their customers. The parameters of their investigations are too cut off from broader cultural, psychological and social scientific insights; their questions are wrongly framed. So they will ask, ‘How on earth do we fight off the competition? Rather than asking ‘Where is the need for a service is rooted in our deeper selves?

This lack of a philosophical perspective on customer needs routinely deny business key advantages. It prevents them from perceiving new market areas; it leaves them to fiddle around with price points and margins. Let loose on a business, philosophers consider how well a given a business is catering to the deeper human needs in the areas in which it operates. He or she attempts to give the business owner or entrepreneur three advantages:

•          A more profound understanding of the ultimate purpose what one would call the eudaimonic promise of the company.
•         An understanding of where the company is failing to maximize the potential of its promise.
•         Suggestions of new products, services, brand and communication strategies to align a company more closely with its eudaimonic promise, resulting in a deeper and more loyal engagement with customers.

Let’s take a practical example: a hotel. When people stay in a hotel, they hope to have a nice time. And, at a given price point, the hotel management will go to great lengths to remove the obstacles to a happy visit. They aim to provide excellent beds, linen, televisions, concierge services etc. But, in reality, there are many other kinds of trouble which might spoil a night in a hotel room. One might feel lonely or lost. One might have a grievous argument with one’s spouse. One might stay up far into the night watching movies, only to regret it terribly in the morning. One might drink the contents of the minibar. Typically, hotels do not particularly see these kinds of problems as anything they can address. The hotel only focuses on a very limited range of factors connected with the overall eudaimonic promise.

The full grand promise of the hotel — if it were properly elaborated — might go like this: I will emerge from the hotel in the morning as the best version of myself; I will be calm, collected and energized. Currently, a great many obstacles stand in the way of the fulfillment of this promise, but hotels know how to deal with a few of them. They pour their energies into a few areas (linen, a number of channels etc.) while neglecting the larger picture. A hotel chain which sought to deliver on the implicit eudaimonic promise of a night in a hotel would gradually be led to develop a raft of new services and products. It could, for example, decide it needed to offer a minibar for the mind. It might offer counseling as well as massage. It might choose art to adorn its wall with a more purposeful intent. Hotels are only at the beginning of understanding how to service their clients’ deeper needs because they have, until now, operated with far too narrow an understanding of satisfaction.

A business is an idea of human satisfaction, put into practice. Profit should be the reward for recognizing a hitherto untapped area of satisfaction. Letting philosophers into the boardrooms should lead society to a more sophisticated account of what businesses should be doing for us, and by definition, should also help the bottom line.

Greatest Thoughts: From Alain de Botton on philosophy and business

Alain de Botton is a writer of essayistic books that have been described as a ‘philosophy of everyday life.’ He’s written on love, travel, architecture, and literature. His books have been bestsellers in 30 countries. Alain also started and helps to run a school in London called The School of Life, dedicated to a new vision of education.