Learning about successful transactions
Business schools are about teaching successful transactions. Being academic centers, they should not be orthodox about where they learn some good stuff. Studying good stuff in bad places could not be entirely bad right? Specially if that can be put to good use by entrepreneurs?
As an example, a crime syndicate is bad but they might have a thing or two about a successful operation that may be part of academic study and learning from them could help adopt these processes in productive positive operations could be good right? Again, to learn and study after such stuff will not need to be involved in the crime syndicate. They can be studied afterwards when a syndicate has already been successfully dismantled by law enforcement. Again, I am using this as an example not suggesting learning from crime syndicates but arguing that there could be something of good use learned from bad places too when they no longer exist.
What I am about to talk is learning transactions from religious cult leaders. Often the religious cult leaders be in US, South Africa, Japan or India are able to put their cults on such a massive scale that they become visible. Surely, such visibility also involves a lot of economic transactions of some kind. Consider James Warren Jones of People Temple cult (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones). His mass suicide led to coinage of term “drinking Kool-Aid”. All operation of Jonestown of People Temple must be costing a lot of money aka economic transactions. The fact that they were able to sustain such transactions for such a long time means there is something to be learned about this that could be useful for real businesses. It is unusual place for learning and business school could structure some academic exercise and bring some ideas to light.
Some archbishops’ have been known to stay in lavish palatial homes (https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/08/us/american-archbishops-lavish-homes/index.html). Some pastors make good income and their property values run in hundreds of millions dollars (https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/8-richest-pastors-in-america.aspx?p=2). Much better than some biotechnology start-ups that learned people do not succeed making despite all their knowledge and smarts. So these archbishops and pastors must do something that works that may be beneficial for entrepreneurs’.
In India in some cities, you will find the small and medium religious leaders of all types. Some wear skull caps and some wear saffron. Many make their leaving, while some others are well to do. They must do some economic activity to sustain them! What works and what do not?
India recently carried out demonetization (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/demonetization.asp). This was described as unprecedented. What struck me recently that a religious cult “Dera Saccha Sauda” was carrying out daily transaction (https://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/gurmeet-ram-rahim-singh-led-dera-sacha-sauda-earns-whopping-rs-1644833-daily/820804/) of $25K (USD), all in cash because they have no bank account. A $10 million (USD) yearly transactions, all in cash is no small feat! Hundreds of learned and smart people would be happy if they can make that kind of a company in USA. How could a religious cult do that kind of transactions, without bank accounts. They had multiple expensive cars, made videos but had no bank account. They sold many things: sermons, videos, milk, sport events but without a bank account and apparently escaped the wrath of a massive demonetization endeavor.
There must be something to be learned about economic organization and transactions of these religious cults that businesses and entrepreneurs can benefit from learning to make success in their positive, legal and constructive efforts.