Seven Years of (Social) Enterprise

Sam Conniff is a Social Enterprise Ambassador. (Thanks for the correction Nick) That means he talks about what it is like to manage a social enterprise. The funny thing is how much it is like running ANY enterprise.
He has just written a blog posting fuelled by his reflection s during the process [...]

Engaging Communities in Enterprise

‘I just wanted to say thank you very much for the workshop, I thought it was absolutely brilliant and made me think on a deeper level of what community is all about. The book is great and very inspiring so thanks for that too. I had a lot of fun and it wasn’t one of [...]

Connecting with a Vision

Our Vision for Leeds is an internationally competitive European city at the heart of a prosperous region where everyone can enjoy a high quality of life.
Leeds Initiative Vision for Leeds – 2004 2020
That must seem like a pretty distant vision for many Leeds residents.  For the tens of thousands that are living on incapacity benefits.  [...]

Enterprise and Community Development

Peter Block has been an incredibly powerful writer and thinker on development and change for decades, primarily in the context of business and organisation.  I am a big fan of his work.
His latest book is called “Community – The Structure of Belonging” and from the publishers blurb it looks like it  provides both practical and [...]

Some Great Enterprise Lessons

This 7 minute video from the US has some very powerful lessons about enterprise and entrepreneurship.
Especially when they talk about the nature of their business plan!
Enjoy!

A Sirolli Primer

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 [...]

Business Pimps – Managing Perceptions

Rob Greenland over at The Social Business has written a strong piece about his perception of a new breed of enterprise adviser.  {Rob has now unpublished this post}
While I don’t agree with all that Rob has to say I can see elements of truth in it and it certainly demonstrates the challenge that faces enterprise [...]

Weasel Words – enterprise and community

Weasel words are tricky.
We all think we know what they mean – but in fact their meanings are fluid. While two people may think they are talking about the same thing – often they are not. This is just one of the reasons why trying to make progress on ‘engaging communities in enterprise’ [...]

Engaging in Enterprise – phew!

Yesterday I helped to run the first of a series of development workshops for people working on the delivery of the LEGI programme in Leeds under the ‘Sharing the Success’ banner.
The theme of the day was about ‘How can we go about engaging communities in the enterprise agenda’ and was very well received.  We explored [...]