The Lean Entrepreneur: How Visionaries Create Products, Innovate with New Ventures, and Disrupt Markets

Chapter 5

Diving In

King Sisyphus angered the Greek god Zeus with his hubris and avarice. His punishment? To roll a boulder up a steep hill, only to see it roll back down before he reached the apex and to be forced to begin again. For eternity! This is what they do with those more concerned with creating wealth than value in Greek mythology!

Albert Camus, leaving aside the nature of King Sisyphus and what got him into his predicament, believed the struggle of rolling the boulder uphill to be life affirming and believed the King, in the end, found contentment. Perhaps the King had learned his lesson and was forced to find comfort in the act of hard work, rather than merely the accumulation of materialistic rewards that one can’t take to the afterlife.

“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! . . . Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

—Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

There is, perhaps, an entrepreneur story we can pull from the Greek tale. Like the King, the job of an entrepreneur is to roll the boulder up a steep hill. Those whose sole commitment is to the riches that await are doomed to see the boulder roll back down. Those who are committed to creating value, may see the boulder crest and roll down the ...