{"id":171,"date":"2008-08-18T10:14:10","date_gmt":"2008-08-18T10:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localenterprise.wordpress.com\/?p=171"},"modified":"2008-08-18T10:14:10","modified_gmt":"2008-08-18T10:14:10","slug":"what-the-policy-exchange-got-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/realisedevelopment.net\/index.php\/2008\/08\/18\/what-the-policy-exchange-got-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Policy Exchange Got Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weeks Policy Exchange report<\/a> that wrote off cities in the North failed to take account of what really makes the difference to the success of any community – social capital<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The success of any community depends more on the intelligence, passion and co-operation of its people than on the abundance of its natural resources or its geographical position.<\/p>\n

It depends more on its civic structures, the rules, norms, co-operation and reciprocity that enable individuals to support each other socially and economically, than the fertility of its soil.<\/p>\n

It depends more on the freedom and ability of local people to invent and create than on the beauty of its countryside.<\/p>\n

It is applied communal and individual intelligence, not natural resources, that separate successful communities from failing ones.<\/p>\n

Only those communities that develop social conditions favourable to enterprise can prosper no matter what other natural resources that community has.<\/p>\n

We also forget this lesson in much of our enterprise development work – the fact that enterprise is a social activity, a team sport and not an individual one.<\/p>\n