Ripples Out – Reflections

First of all congratulations to everyone involved (Lippy Films, Yorkshire Forward, Together for Peace and local residents) in creating a powerful, provocative  film.
I sincerely hope that it helps disturb the comfortable equilibrium in Leeds (and beyond) that exists between the controllers of the public purse and the developers.  There maybe a brief window for reflection [...]

Social Participation and Enterprise

One of the key themes explored at the recent Future Gov Work Better Together event was the promise that ’social participation gives people the power to self-actualise’.
I am sure it does.
However ’social participation’ has also been the technology of choice for us human beings to make progress at all stages of Maslow’s Hierarchy – not just [...]

Ripples Out Screening Invite

I hope to get tickets for the October 7th screening!

Enterprise Coaching is Being Broken

I get so frustrated when I see a 4 day enterprise coaching course being commissioned that pays little or no attention to what makes the role of the enterprise coach different from the business adviser.
I witnessed one recently, delivered by an Enterprise Agency (so they MUST know what they are talking about) that started with [...]

Knowing ‘Bugger All’

I spent a very pleasant afternoon recently in the offices of New Start Magazine researching what makes for an inspirational or transformational relationship and I came across this wonderful quote:
In my ethnographic work, with a head full of American methodologies and theory, I thought I knew a bit about local government, urban and social policy [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

Never Discourage Anyone…But Don’t Motivate Them Either

Never discourage anyone … who continually makes progress, no matter how slow. – Plato (427 BC – 347 BC)
Never.  NEVER!  NEVER!
I wish the judges of enterprise competitions would understand the importance of this.
At the grand finals of a recent dragon’s den type event (which included the usual cocktail of local business people, ‘would have been’ [...]