It falls in December 2023 250th Anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, one in all the most famous events leading as much as the Revolutionary War. On the night of December 16, 1773, the Colonists boarded three ships and threw it over £90,000 tea to Boston Harbor. No one died and the only injuries were tea leaves, but event helped precipitate A great war.
I’m AND Business school a professor who often passes by Tea Party website taking his wife to work. Every time I ponder what lessons this “party” has for business people. Many of them aren’t obvious. Here are 4 that come to mind.
1) Advertising is very important
They were actually 10 “Tea Party” protests in the 13 colonies in the late 1770s. However, just one made it into the history books. The others, including A the second in Boston just 4 months later, they were largely forgotten. Rapid dissemination of knowledge, which was the norm in those days taken by the newspaper, that is the key. Otherwise, it’s possible you’ll find yourself doing quite a lot of work that might be ignored.
2) Dramatic changes in the market could cause problems
The volume of tea imports into the Cologne had been increasing at a really rapid rate in the 4 years preceding the Boston Tea Party. They went with 55 tons in 1770, which was near the amount sunk in the harbor, to 370 tons in the 12 months the tea was sunk. This was an almost sevenfold increase. The population of Cologne was approx 2 million people in 1770 and hasn’t developed much in these 4 years. Basic economics tells us this this dramatic increase in supply without more customers meant that the price of tea needed to drop significantly.
We do not know of course leadership identity who convinced people to offer up tea. As a business school professor, I feel it’s clear that some protesters did just that protecting their industrial interests. Shopkeepers, merchants and smugglers who had supplies of tea he didn’t want one other 90,000 kilos of tea flooding the market. This would make them lose money. Dumping the tea into the harbor was a method to protect their investment.
3) Even relatively small dollar amounts make an enormous impression
Despite all the confusion surrounding the thrown tea, the damage was not significant. The British East India Company reported the matter 9,659 English kilos compensation. Estimates put it at around £1.2 million in today’s money Bank of England inflation calculator. At the current exchange rate of $1.26 per British pound, this implies the dumped tea cost roughly $1.5 million.
To provide you with a rough idea of how small this amount is, last 12 months Import from the USA tea price half a billion dollars. As for my favorite British import, the ruined tea was price about the same as three Ghosts of Rolls-Royce.
4) Time matters… but it surely’s not all the things
The tea party took place on the evening when the tide was particularly low, with only 2 feet of water under the ships. Because the tide was so low, most of the tea didn’t get wet. Instead, it landed in an enormous, mostly dry pile next to the boat. This meant partygoers needed to get out of the boat and splash around in the mud for hours, carrying their tea into the water.
Considering that the tea arrived at the end of Novemberthey may select a time when the task could be more easy. Nevertheless, this didn’t discourage the revolutionaries, because labor often overcomes the worst moment.
When it comes all the way down to it, history is greater than just the stories we tell children. The past holds many lessons for adults, including businessmen. This incident, which played a key role in sparking the Revolutionary War that liberated the American colonies from British rule, is greater than just animated image of men abandoning chests of tea to Boston Harbor.
