After viewing Oscar’s reflection on the guest entrepreneurs in our class, I thought he raised very interesting points. As Oscar stated, Janice, the CEO of Energy-aware, fully supports starting businesses with friends due to the advantage of building a trusting foundation. Yet he disagrees with this concept because he believes that ” it is impossible to treat the same person completely differently in a workplace environment and in a social environment”. Here, he argues that partnerships derived from friendships will most definitely turn sour. This may be true in some cases, but perhaps this assumption is debatable.
Although individuals generally enjoy detaching their work and social environment, some prefer this unity. There are successful businesses that originated from lifelong friends, such as “Ben & Jerry’s”, an international multi-million dollar ice cream company. Here, these childhood friends worked together to transform a small ice cream shop to a global brand. In my perspective, I believe a generalized negative bias should not be placed on friends that become potential business partners. Effective communication and positive attitudes are all personal choices. Therefore, it is a choice to remain friends or become enemies when entering the business world.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_%26_Jerry’s