Credit Mark Adriane

Yes, I’m a computer scientist turned businessperson. Yes, I like the objective, the tangible, and the quantitative. But, as I’ve grown, I’ve come to appreciate the impact the qualitative has on the quantitative, the abstract on the tangible, and the subjective on the objective.

As students of business, we think of the economy as a complex and intertwined ecosystem of producers and consumers of goods and services. We quantify and measure the size of an economy, its growth rate, the number of people it employs, the profitability of its businesses, and on and on.

But even this most quantified of systems has a qualitative side, a side that is much more within reach and within our individual control. At the heart of any economy is not businesses and employees, not credit and investments, but a singularly powerful source of all activity: the consumer.

It’s simple, really. If “the consumer” is pessimistic about her prospects and future, she’ll consume less. Equally importantly, she’ll relay her negative sentiment to other consumers who, over time, will likewise consume less. As aggregate consumption declines, so does the economy built around producing products and services for those consumers.

Thus, an important question is: who is this ethereal consumer we speak of? The answer is equally simple: it is each of us; it is all of us. Employees are consumers, business owners are consumers, government workers are consumers, homemakers are consumers, and, in fact, every citizen of society is a consumer.

And that is incredibly powerful.

Because it means that a lot of non-quantitative, non-objective elements of the economy are within our control. Having a positive and optimistic attitude based on gratitude is and infectious force: optimism begets optimism. Optimism permits each of us to continue living…and consuming to the extent we can afford; optimism causes business owners to retain their team and partners for better days ahead; optimism allows us to have hope for a brighter future and, more importantly, to spread that hope and positivity to others.

I encourage each of us to appreciate and harness the #PowerOfPositive thinking. It is far more infectious and far more powerful than #Coronavirus.

OK, OK…I’ll turn in my computer scientist card after writing this :-).