Issue141[Jet]secondhomework

zhxj1985UID: 2353169

TOPIC: ISSUE141 - "Most people recognize the benefits of individuality, but the fact is that personal economic success requires conformity."
WORDS: 444          TIME: 01:16:47          DATE: 2008-3-3 21:22:27

In this era of rapid social and technological development, individuality is worshipped greatly all over the world, from the style of management of a mogul in a corporation to the garment of our youngsters, almost everyone need his/her own individuality to get an identity. In the business world, especially some emerging industries, individuality sometimes is regarded as headspring of economic success. However, in some traditional industries or even every respect of our daily lives, conformity is still performing an actively role and even essential for personal economic success as the speaker contends.

With the rapid development of our society, demands of the public nowadays are full of individuation and diversification, non-conformists with enough venture consciousness and patience tend to reap higher profits than those who follow the crowd from their risky investments, especially in technology and consumer-driven industries. For example, forced by the impetus to realize his dream, Bill Gates left Harvard University, one of the most notable universities in the world. However, with his wisdom and efforts, he created the most famous software company in the world--Microsoft, which won him not only large amount of money but also worldwide respect for his individuality. Without such a spirit in taking risks, it is hard to imagine that he could have achieved such an enormous economic success. Similarly, the success of Herry Ford, Ted Turner could also be attributed to their individualities.

On the other hand, conformity which to a large extent means obedience and cooperation is also indispensable for economic success, especially in large economical entities with great complexity, most of which are in traditional industries and have developed for a long time. First of all, personal economic success might lie on the acceptance of the society, conformance with economical rules, and obedience of the current laws and regulations etc. Only with such a commitment of conformity, could the economic success have substantial foundation. Those who don’t follow the conformity might probably lead to the failure of the pursuit of economic success, such as Enron’s fraud. In addition, with the development of globalization, we are living an interactional world. A complicated project could not be completed by only individual's effort no matter how talent he/she is, especially in the business world where profits and efficiency are crucial to enterprises.

To sum up, although it is widely accepted that individuality is prerequisite for one's economic success, conformity should also be cherished. In fact, the two contradictory traits are not exclusive to each other. We should call for a balance on which both development of our individuality and conformity to certain basic rules are needed for our economic success and the endurance of our success.