The cost of Entrepreneurial-ship

Business launch
There's a whirl of thoughts going through my mind as I type this post. When I recently attended a Columbia Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting I thought it was just that...a ribbon cutting.  Ribbon cuttings are just normal events, right?   But it was more than I expected.

This ribbon cutting featured the lovely Caroline Leemis and her new business Caroline Leemis Design.  Make sure you check out her work! On top of this business launch, it was also the first ribbon cutting in the League of Innovators downtown space.

In the space of that new business incubator entrepreneurial-ism had a grand opening, too.

At the ribbon cutting, as I talked with my friends Karen Mickey of The Sensible Group and Heidi Fuhrman with The League of Innovators, another friend, Jan (someone I follow on Twitter) happened to be posting a link about the cost of not recognizing entrepreneurial-ism in our world.

Cost of our ignorance
By the term cost I'm not using a play on words, I'm talking about financial cost here. Furthermore, these costs depend on where you are in this world; numbers differ between Europe and the United States. But over all, we're talking about a loss of millions and millions of dollars for our economy when we fail to recognize and cultivate our talents.

There are estimates that one in three business entrepreneurs are dyslexic. Generally it's recognized that anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of the population is dyslexic, so why the increase when it comes to business?

Two things are happening
First-- a large number of people fail to recognize their own dyslexia. They discount their strengths and weaknesses, and do not recognize the actual reasons they have differences in the way they do things in life.

Secondly -- overall in the business world a large number of people are dyslexic.

So what does this mean? It means we have to be more aware.

In the UK it's estimated that 1 in 5 people in the business world are dyslexic. But the lack of recognition for dyslexia in the UK costs them over $1 billion a year.

Here in the United States the estimate for the number of dyslexic people in the business population is even greater: it's 1 in 3.  So what does that translate to in financial terms for the United States?

Let me know what do you think!