5 movies that African business owners can learn valuable lessons from

The easiest form of sensitization is frequently through movies.

Since its inception, media has been used to disseminate propaganda. This was especially true for movies, as some of the most offensive and provocative movies were out after the kinetograph’s creation.

Since then, censorship organisations around the world have successfully controlled what can and cannot be depicted in movies.

Thankfully, great thought-provoking stories may still be shown on screen, and movies still have the power to affect how people live their lives.

Entrepreneurs are no different in this regard. There are many movies that, in varied degrees, capture the subtleties of the business world.

The five movies listed below are relevant to the African entrepreneurial struggle and can help any African entrepreneur make sense of the motherland’s challenging business environment.

The Social Network
This biopic is based on the real life experiences of Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook. The narrative immerses the audience in Mark’s process of building the massive social media site Facebook. This movie is an instant classic due to the personal struggles and nail-biting legal battles, but Africans should not place as much value on formal schooling.

The fact that Mark, one of the richest and smartest people on the globe, is a school dropout is well known. But it only tells part of the story; instead of waiting for academic tutors to determine his true worth and what he can offer society based on a faulty grade system, his leaving out became an endearing path toward self learning and self growth.

Many young Nigerians, especially those who have been compelled to stay at home due to university strikes, can benefit from this.

The Founder
The Founder is a film that admirably highlights Ray Kroc’s economic acumen, who is credited with inventing McDonalds, the largest fast food chain in the world. The movie shows how Ray combined his real estate and food businesses, controlling an entire chain before eventually buying it out.

Diversification, or side hustles as we’ve come to know them, is the lesson for any African reading this that we are all too familiar with. It is crucial to own a variety of abilities because you might be able to discover the large notion circling in your head if you comprehend a different part of it.

Ray Kroc finally controlled everything because he was able to recognise that food was useless without a place to consume it, thus he concentrated more on obtaining dining-related real estate than on developing food ideas.

The Billion Dollar Code
This Netflix series demonstrates how the biggest technology corporation in the world, Google, came to be. The show dramatises the actual court battles over Google’s patent as a hacker and an artist created a ground-breaking technological advancement. Years later, they rejoin to file a patent infringement lawsuit against Google.

The lesson here for Nigerians is one that is all too obvious but sometimes disregarded: you must always patent any business ideas you have. People frequently lose their game-changing ideas due to a lack of protection. Even if it’s simply a catchphrase, this series serves as a reminder to the public, especially new entrepreneurs, to copyright their ideas.

Padman
This movie also uses actual events as its inspiration. The real-life “pad guy,” Muruganantham Arunachalam, resolved to address the issue of expensive sanitary pads.

Being from a low-income area, he is aware of how marginalised women deal with menstruation hygiene. He instantly starts working on raising money for the cause and developing a workable solution.

The takeaway for African business owners in this situation should be very obvious: buying solutions. The message that your firm must solve an issue in order to be successful to be conveyed in this movie.

Pursuit of Happyness
A biographical play called “The pursuit of Happiness” is based on the real life experiences of successful businessman Chris Gardner.

The narrative covers a man’s path from being mediocre to destitute to prosperous. He achieves this by purchasing mobile bone-density scanners with the entire amount of his life savings. After that, he works as a stock broker before opening his own business. Along the way, he has a number of catastrophic setbacks, such as having to live on the streets with his son and his wife leaving him.

The lesson in this case is more of a combination of a life lesson and an entrepreneurship lesson than it is primarily an entrepreneurship lesson. The most crucial lesson that any entrepreneur should take away from the film is to never give up and to never give in to despair.