Tom McMahon picks up a question originally posed by Rodney Balko: If we could clone a thousand Jack Welches and/or Mother Theresas, and drop them into Bombay with some start-up money, which of the two options would do more good for more people, a thousand Jack Welches, or a thousand Mother Theresas? I’d say why not both, but that doesn’t respect the spirit of the question. So if I’m forced to chose, I’d have to say Mother Theresa. She’s already proven she could do a lot of good in India. People like Welch are a dime a dozen; Mother Theresas are far more unique.

Since I consider myself a Hayekian (Freiderich, not Salma) when it comes to political/economic systems, I think the system here made Jack Welch, not the other way around. GE was a thriving concern when he arrived, and it’s a thriving concern after he left. There are very few indespensable CEOs (Herb Kelleher and Steve Jobs are the only two who spring to mind) and they are almost always the founders of a company. The problem with India isn’t a lack of entrepeneurs, it’s the quasi-socialist economy. Indians in the US thrive. A thousand Jack Welches would just disappear without a trace. Instead of Jack Welch, you might consider the founder of GE and great inventor, Thomas Edison, but again the problem with India is it’s political/economic system, not a lack of brain power.

So if I had to pick someone who I’d clone and send to a bunch of countries (if I can clone people and provide them startup money, why limit them to Bombay?), it would be Benjamin Franklin, grandfather of the United States. Not only was he a successful business man (he started with nothing, unlike Jack Welch) and inventor, he also was a philanthropist and a political innovator. Franklin would agitate for the needed reforms both through writing (he was a famed satiricist and top author) and political action and be able to take advantage of them, and yet retain a sense of charity and love for his fellow man.

Tags: entrepreneur, India, Jack Welch, Mother Theresa