I am a big fan of the work of Ernesto Sirolli. He has been working on encouraging enterprise, primarily in disadvantaged communities for over 30 years now and has built up a wealth of experience and knowledge on the field. He has also developed a proprietary methodology called Enterprise Facilitation® that is taught to communities by the Sirolli Institute. He has visited Leeds on a couple of occasions now and talked with members of the Sharing the Success programme and others interested in his work.
How much of what he teaches do we believe is relevant and valuable to our work in encouraging enterprise?
What aspects of his teaching do we choose to ignore? Why?
What aspects have we learned from and put into practice? What results have we got?
If you have not heard Ernesto speak there are several good places to start to learn about his ideas. One of the best is this web page from New Zealand.
BizzFizz which is operated by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) is a very similar type of programme. Links to both Bizzfizz and Sirolli can be found in the sidebar to the right.