For a long time now I have had real concerns about the focus of policy makers, and the projects that they spawn, on 'enterprise' and 'entrepreneurship' as being just too business oriented. It is as if the only fields of human endeavour that matter are commerce of some kind. Making money or fixing societies ills. This is especially un-nerving when you see it played out in our primary schools as 6 year olds are encouraged to wear badges that proclaim them be a 'Sales Director', an 'Operations Manager' or a 'Brand Executive'. Yuk! What about all of those other great fields of human endeavour? Climbing mountains, making art, having fun, playing sport, writing, cooking and so on. What if we encouraged our 6 year olds to wear badges that proclaimed them to be 'Footballer in Training', 'Ballet Dancer under Construction', 'Surgeon to Be' or 'The Next Michael McIntyre'? OK, so perhaps we don't need another Michael McIntyre.... but you get my point? Because what really matters is not exposing more people to the world of business and entrepreneurship. It is to get them imagining possible futures, and learning how best to navigate towards them. It is about developing people with a sense of agency and influence … [Read more...]
High Growth and High Start Up Rates: Why We Shouldn’t Chase Them
Colin Bell over at Winning Moves picks over this old chestnut in his latest post. Should we throw our limited resources at businesses that we believe have high growth potential or should we just go for lots of start-ups knowing that a minority of them will experience high growth anyway? The plain truth is that both are equally foolish policy goals. We simply can't pick winners/high growth businesses. So how do we know which to resource? And as Drucker said 'you can't have the mountain top without the mountain' . High growth businesses emerge from a strong and vibrant enterprise ecology. An ecology that is diverse, tightly knit and well connected (bridging and bonding, social and cultural capital). Focus on building the mountain and the top will look after itself. But please don't build the mountain by rushing to increase the start up rate. When we do this we just increase the failure rate too and that undermines aspiration and confidence. So start fewer businesses, but make sure they are good ones, team starts, well thought through and researched. Get survival rates into the 90%s after three years. Not just survival, but successful. Allow these small but significant success show the way to … [Read more...]
