Celebrating Achievements in Entrepreneurial Thought and Action
Eric G. Johnson ’72, P’08 speaking at Celebrating Achievements in Entrepreneurial Thought and Action
On Wednesday, April 13, the Blank Center co-hosted Babson Celebrating Entrepreneurial Thought and Action®. The event took place in Knight Auditorium, where Babson College recognized this year’s four Rising Stars, announced winners of the B.E.T.A. (Babson Entrepreneurial Thought and Action®) Challenge, and also recognized the 2016 Hall of Fame honoree Eric G. Johnson ’72, P’08, president and CEO of Baldwin Richardson Foods Company.
The four Rising Stars were Alex Debelov ’10, Alex Moazed ’10, Jamie Siminoff ’99, and Savitha Sridharan M’14. All of them have great companies that are constantly creating social and economic values to our society. I remember what Savitha said while sharing her personal stories. “Run if you want to, walk if you can, crawl if you are exhausted, but never give up,” Savitha thinks that for an entrepreneur, if you believe, then you can make it happen. Hearing different stories from all of these entrepreneurs, you can easily find that they all share one thing in common: everyone has struggled with or has encountered some kind of hardships along the way of becoming a successful entrepreneur and building a valuable venture. However, none of them gave up when confronting with these difficulties. Instead, it has became second nature that they implement Entrepreneurial Thought and Action® to solve problems and learn from failures in order to achieve bigger success. Babson has create such an environment where all perspective entrepreneurs can feel enlightenment and inspiration of being an entrepreneur who benefits our society through their ventures from different aspects of our lives.
When Eric Johnson gave his speech, he talked about the importance of giving back to community for all of the entrepreneurs. He indicates that there are three kinds of people in this world: the ones who truly need help, the ones that are self-sufficient, and the ones who have responsibility to take care of others during their lifetimes. We, as students who are educated at Babson, a caring and supportive college, have a mission to be the third kind of person. We are given this opportunity to take roles and help people in need while we are making economic values. “It’s a blessing, but also a responsibility,” said Eric.
It was a great night with all of these remarkable entrepreneurs. I hope their stories will lead more future entrepreneurs to be prepared on their entrepreneurial paths when encountering numerous difficulties, and to take responsibilities in order to make positive social impact.