Lessons to be learned from a Harvard dropout 

Maybe there is no place better than Harvard University for Mark Zuckerberg to give advice on start-ups. On the other hand, it is hard to think of anyone better to advise Harvard graduates about launching a start-up. What looked like a proper meeting between the two sides a few days ago also underlined a worldwide business trend enticing the young and ambitious to be more adventurous than previous generations.
The Facebook chief executive, who dropped out of Harvard in 2005, came back a few days ago to address the youngsters, who, unlike him, graduated. “If I get through this speech, it will be the first time I actually finish something at Harvard,” Zuckerberg, 33, quipped. The witty part aside, it was an inspirational address which urges the students to believe in true “equality”, albeit every person’s equal ability to make a difference.
His presence showcased another success story of a high-profile dropout. Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs, who left Reed College without graduating, took to Stanford University’s podium in 2005. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who left University of Illinois and University of Chicago, donned cap and gown at University of Southern California in 2016. On and on it has been, with both male and female dropouts coming back proudly to tell the younger generations how they did it.
What Zuckerberg did not say was his lot was the exception, not the rule. To add to his speech, start-up businesses require more than dream. The reality of the trend can bite hard at times, because of as insufficient funding, clueless spending and misreading of markets in a fast-changing world, which people like Zuckerberg have, ironically, helped create have hampered efforts by many daring young entrepreneurs emerging to challenge conventional empires or organisations.
The stories of Zuckerberg and the likes boil down to whether one is willing to err on the side of caution or take what looks like an impossible ambition to the extreme. His speech appears to encourage the latter. It was not unexpected, though, as he would have sounded very strange had he told his listeners to be super-careful every step of the way.
His Harvard presence, in a way, does underline the business world at a crossroads. Although he is by no means the owner of a “compact” business, Zuckerberg can be counted as part of an emerging new economic doctrine that foresees gradual prevalence of small yet successful entrepreneurs. Thanks to the Internet and changing attitudes toward “wealth”, “success” and “happiness”, future businesses will most likely be compact and satisfying. It’s these shifting attitudes that were not tackled much in Mark Zuckerberg’s speech. Simply put, he was revolutionary about the means but not quite so about the ends.
Nevertheless, he’s bridging the two worlds, being part of a transformation from a traditional one to a bolder outlook that promotes innovations and “equality”. Facebook has “equalised” people, empowering them and supporting or unearthing innovations that otherwise could have gone unnoticed. He showed that education was important, but when it combined with great ambition, the effects would be quick and unstoppable.
“The next world-changer could be that annoying student in the back row and working on [his or her] laptop – you just don’t know,” Harry Lewis, a Harvard computer-science professor was quoted as saying in a report on Zuckerberg’s speech. In other words, even a rebellious student or dropout can change the world for the better, but you don’t have to be them to change it.