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Archives for November 2010

Frugality, smart cities and social justice….I really should apologise

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I really should apologise…

Last night at TEDxLeeds we had some really excellent presentations including one from IBM’s Rashik Parmar on Smarter Cities that included a great little video on the stupidity of food supply logistics…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DAR5wW19Eg]

Rashik then went on to talk about how ‘sustainability’ and an era of ‘frugality’ will  impact on how we might build a smarter city.

Which is where I lost it.  A little.

We are in the throws of an investment of £1.25bn into a two new shopping centres and an Arena for Leeds.

Sustainability?  Frugality?  Localism?

An additional million square feet of retail space,  and 13500 seats to be sold at least 100 nights a year at an average ticket price of perhaps £30?  And a further £15m is to be invested in a southern entrance to the station (pedestrian only) when the existing 2 entrances are shambolic.

Now the shopping centres will be funded entirely out of private money I believe.  And investors have no doubt done the research to suggest that even in times of frugality they are an investment that will pay off.  Because the frugality is not for all of us.  We are not all in frugality together.  Nor sustainability.

The southern entrance to the station will be paid for by money from central government and local transport bodies (don’t ask me if they are public or private – but I suspect it is either our taxes or our fares one way or another).  But it is an investment that will reduce travel times for an estimated 20% of the stations users who need to access  Granary Wharf, Holbeck Urban Village or the City Inn.  Now I would be gobsmacked if those destinations counted for 20% of station passengers – but I will go with it.

And how will it reduce journey times?

By meaning that passengers will no longer have to walk for perhaps 5 minutes and pass through the recently refurbished Neville Street and under the Dark Arches to get south of the river.

This at a time, and over a timescale, when 1 in 6 council workers will be made redundant to save £150m over the next 4 years….

1 in 6 council workers being laid off and we spend £15m so that those who can still commute to a job have a shorter walk.

So I asked a question.

I asked whether this sounded like it was smart strategy for a city facing challenges of sustainability and frugality?  Apparently that is a political question….one on which Rashik would not be drawn.

Perhaps  now is not a time for ‘political’ questions….

I think that it is.  But, perhaps I am the minority.

Now where was that Derek Sivers video on starting a movement?

The E in LEP is for ENTERPRISE

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Not Economic.

Not Entrepreneurial.

ENTERPRISE.

If LEPs really focused on encouraging enterprise rather than economic growth how would things change?

If LEPs looked at how they create a culture where enterprise (the ability to act boldly in pursuit of progress) was the norm rather than the exception, a mass participation sport, something that was seen as cool and for everyone, not just those smart ‘entrepreneurial types in suits’ what sorts of things would they be doing?

How would our communities change?

What would happen to our economy?

Yorkshire Musician’s Social Media Surgery

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This was yet another event pulled together by John Popham and inspired by the social media surgery format.
It was a great example of a peer to peer support mechanism with everyone getting something from the event.  The Round Foundry who provided the room, got to showcase their wonderfully flexible building and to prove once again how great they are as people.  Social media bods got richly entertained by musicians.  Musicians learned a bit from social media bods. Event sponsors  http://get-ctrl.com get to raise awareness for their service,  local business Out of the Woods get to sell a few platters of wonderful canapés and it seems that everyone is a winner.
No evaluation forms, no sign in sheets, no evidence of GVA created, jobs retained or any of the usual nonsense to be sent to a funder for rubber stamping to release funds.
No event management teams handing out name badges and ticking  lists.
No pop up banners reminding everyone how great we are in providing this service and ramming an expensive, publicly funded brand down their necks.
Just a great experience shared by people who might not otherwise have met, networks built and strengthened, opportunities uncovered, smiles on faces, tunes in hearts and I suspect some really talented people who now have ideas about how to get their music heard and perhaps some more revenue too.  We have known for a long time that conviviality matters.  But mainstream business support rarely manages to achieve it.
No ‘gurus’ or accredited advisers either!  There is a debate about the future of business support in which I advocate for a greater emphasis on peer to peer networks and problem based learning as more cost effective ways to support enterprise than a model based on professional business advisers and brokerage.  And the main criticism of what I am advocating is that ‘we can’t assure the quality of the advice given’.  Well apart from not being entirely true (we use an informal peer review to check out the quality of our work in social media surgeries) it also shows a lack of faith in the ability of lay people to help other lay people make progress.  Information is offered on a caveat emptor, or ‘you might want to think about…’ basis, and people are advised to talk with more than one surgeon to get a different perspective.  In short, people are taught how to get value from ‘would be’ helpers.
And when we look at advisory regimes that are fully quality assured, supervised and regulated – like the finance industry – are we really supposed to think that this is a model that provides guarantees of quality?
Let’s just open every single event with a reminder from Buddha – “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

A Community Ecology of Enterprise

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Enterprise is not just about ‘entrepreneurial types’ and ‘business ideas’.
It is not just about business and commercial endeavour.
If I want to make something happen to improve things in my community I may start a business, but I may start a campaign, or a festival, or a local action group.  I have worked with many people whose motivation was not to develop a business, but to make a difference, and in some cases setting up a business has been a means to that end.  No more than that.  It is simply a means to an end.
Well managed and run these kinds of community based activity all contribute to a more enterprising community and provide the kind of community ecology and practice ground from which commercial endeavours may spring.  They also help to build the social capital that is essential to building a sustainable and resilient local economy and community.
If LEPs were to think more about the kind of community ecology that supports enterprise and how this can be developed I suspect they would get a much greater ROI than on more traditional approaches of advice, managed workspace (we are awash with these in Leeds, mostly under-used and inappropriate for the communities they were built in) and access to finance.
Yes the web matters.  But it won’t be primarily because either a LEP or the national Business Link site offer generic advice and guidance (which to be frank just replicates what is already out there in most cases) but because local sites and sites of shared interest will provide highly specific and contextual advice – usually in the form of dialogue and conversation rather than factsheet.  The web will provide a platform for conversations that cannot easily take place face to face.
We have to start to think differently.  We have to innovate. We have to be prepared to try new approaches.  I hope LEPs are up to the challenge.
For me this means getting away from thinking about one to one advice for high growth, one to small group for lifestyle and start-up (in deprived areas) and one to many (content led websites) for the rest, and instead seriously building the networks, social capital, self belief and self-reliance that will allow our communities to become much more enterprising.