The End of (Enterprise) Education?

My eldest daughter came home from school last week with something like 10kg of university prospectuses.  She spent much of the week-end browsing the frightening range of courses available. 
And it got me thinking about whether the compulsory education that she has experienced so far, all 13 years of it, have really provided her with an excellent [...]

Teaching Enterprise and Entrepreneurship (or any other Significant Learning)

When I did my teacher training back in 1986 I remember having my world rocked by a book called ‘Teaching as a Subversive Activity’ by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner.   They make reference to a piece by Carl Rogers in ‘On Becoming a Person’.
“Rogers concludes:

My experience has been that I cannot teach another person how [...]

Creative Business in Mumbai – Swami Art

Thanks to Patrick Burgoyne, editor at Creative Review for pointing me in this direction.  A wonderful profile of a small creative business in India with a very honest story of how they have evolved.

I’d love to know what ‘take-aways’ you get from this.
For me it is about skill, style, creativity, knowledge [...]

Why Making It Easy to Start a Business is a Bad Idea

Not so small fortunes are being invested to encourage people, especially those living or working in areas of deprivation, to start their own businesses or to go self employed.  This makes lots of sense to economists, especially if people were previously ‘economically inactive’ or on benefits.  The ‘tax take’ goes up and the cost to [...]

How Bizaar!

This is the name of a new initiative introduced by the Sharing the Success team as part of the Leeds LEGI endeavours to produce a more enterprising culture.  Notwithstanding the awful pun it may prove to be an interesting and potentially useful scheme.  ‘Bazaar’ is a Persian word meaning a ‘permanent market area’.  It will [...]

Should Enterprise Education Be More Than Business Literacy?

I was approached by a young woman in the Holiday Inn in Garforth yesterday.  She tugged gently at my trousers and asked me if I was interested in buying.
She was clutching a beetroot plant in a wonderfully hand painted plant pot, with a colourful and neatly laminated label saying ‘BEETROOT’.  She must have been six [...]

E-mail to an Enterprise Professional

If I said enterprise not entrepreneurship then I was too strong.
It is just that we can help people to develop their enterprising soul in so many more and varied arenas – many of which are more intrinsically attractive and powerful media than ‘business’ – especially to young people.  Musicianship, sports, art, food, writing, [...]

Enterprise as Place Maker

While the physical features of spontaneous cities could be traced to complex histories of families, businesses, and organizations, the physical features of planned cities owe their origin only to the act of planning and speculation. This has severe consequences towards the sustainability of place as there will not grow any particular attachment by the residents, [...]

Why We Must Develop People and not Entrepreneurs

Economic growth is supposed to deliver prosperity. Higher incomes should mean better choices, richer lives, an improved quality of life for us all. That at least is the conventional wisdom. But things haven’t always turned out that way.
An even stronger finding is that the requirements of prosperity go way beyond material sustenance. Prosperity has vital [...]

Enterprise does not mean Business, stupid!

‘Enterprise education is about the next generation of entrepreneurs’ claimed one of the speakers at the LEGI conference in Leeds yesterday.  And judging from most of the contributions that is a widely shared belief.
Which is bad news for me – because I think it profoundly wrong.  And it is bad news for our economy too [...]