It seems to me that there are an awful lot of enterprise coaches/outreach workers/community motivators /enterprise enablers out there all of whom are tasked with the similar roles:
- to promote an enterprise culture in the community that they work in, and
- to help individuals to start their own businesses by providing 121 support and signposting them to specialist service providers
The roles are beset with many and varied challenges, including how to:
- engage individuals in using the enterprise service that they offer
- help people to move forward and to be more enterprising
- effectively help people to access specialist support
- recognize when progress is being made and when it is not
- develop a service that provides a demonstrable return on investment to funders and other stakeholders
- manage the diversity of people, ideas, interests and motivations
If you are in one of these roles what other challenges are you facing?
If you have been a customer what other challenges do these enterprise workers need to consider and work on?
I think it is true to say that no-one has yet really bottomed out all of these challenges and that we need to find a mechanism for sharing what works.