Does grabbing opportunity make you opportunist?

I am reading “Opportunities” by Edward De Bono. I have no qualms in providing you verbatim account of De Bono’s opinion to the question above.

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The word ‘opportunity’ and ‘opportunist’ have bad connotations. They suggest a hovering vulture rather than a hovering eagle. They suggest someone who is hovering and waiting for an opportunity to emerge. Then that person sweeps down and seizes the opportunity ahead of anyone else.

The negative attitude is partly based on jealousy (‘why didn’t i spot that opportunity?’) but also on the feeling that an opportunity is only taken at someone else’s expense. There is a feeling of expediency and short term gain. Opportunity is equated with the activity of a speculative builder who builds and sells shoddy houses and then disappears from sight. There is a feeling of irresponsibility or even outright exploitation. The black marketer is known to be an opportunist. The fast buck merchant and the fly-by-night operator are also opportunists.

Even the entrepreneur is contrasted negatively with the established businessman because there is a tinge of exploitation. Any gains are automatically regarded as being at someone else’s expense. The go getter and the go-go operator are also opportunists.

It cannot be denied that the irresponsible, selfish, exploiting, short-term profiteering opportunist does exist. But it must also be acknowledged that if it were not for people who saw and developed opportunities the standard of living would be very much lower. The United States was a land of opportunity. Henry Ford saw a way of making motor cars that would enable every family to buy a car. Corporations were sometimes slow to see the opportunities turned up by inventors but in the end the developments came about: radio and television, telephones, artificial fibres, air travel, anti-biotics.

The opposite of opportunity seeking is not stability or conservatism, it is stagnation and atrophy. It is wrong to think of opportunity in terms only of new gadgets and expanded industrialization. It may equally be a matter of expanding food production, better methods of birth control, new sources of energy, redesigning jobs so that they are more enjoyable, increasing leisure time, improving education and so on.

We can seek opportunities in any direction we wish and for any purpose we wish. We may seek opportunities for the good of society as much as for the good of our corporation or ourselves. The trouble is that no one would believe such altruism. Society finds it difficult to believe that an organization like IBM can operate opportunities for its own benefit and at the same time serve society by developing and providing improved computers

Society may well need to change its directions, goals and values but that does not necessarily imply an abandonment of the need to progress or improve. And that is what opportunity seeking is about.