Entrepreneurial Spirit on Display at Rio Opening Ceremony

Making much out of little is nothing new to the entrepreneur who is creatively bootstrapping his venture. Brazil’s political and economic woes created serious financial constraints to executing what is typically the most lavish part of hosting an Olympic event. According to the event directors, they got used to makeshift improvising and being “MacGyver” and out of this MacGyver-ing came what was basically pure creativity.

I thoroughly enjoyed the opening ceremony. It was bold, creative and I felt, authentic to the Brazilian experience. As I watched the opening event I could see the true entrepreneurial spirit at work. I could only imagined the behind the scene negotiations, bartering, robbing Peter to pay Paul deals that transpired to pull off this impressive opening event.

Like the directors of the Rio opening ceremony, entrepreneurs who don’t have a lot of extra cash are scrappy and are able to find ways to make little go a long way. According to Zach Cutler of Cutler PR, not having funds to throw at problems forces you to come up with cost-effective, creative ways to solve them. It makes you a better problem-solver. It makes you look for less conventional answers to conventional problems.

According to Donna Fenn “Bootstrapping keeps you lean and focused, teaches you how to allocate resources creatively and prevents you from being wasteful or taking anything for granted. These are skills and traits that make great entrepreneurs.”

I think we can all agree that Brazil’s design team definitely took a page from the bootstrapping handbook in putting together an amazing opening event on a relatively small budget. Maybe the Brazilian government can take a few lessons from these amazing entrepreneurs.