Enterprise, Community and Complexity

Enterprise, community and complexity.  Slippery words.  So slippery that I wonder what can be meaningfully written about them.  But I will have a go.
Having worked on these ideas for many years I hold my beliefs tentatively.  But they offer the possibility of a very different direction for both promoting enterprise and building ‘harmonious and cohesive’ [...]

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!

Mentoring for Enterprise

Thinking of setting up a mentoring scheme?
Here are some top tips to improve the chances of success:

Educate mentees in how to choose and use a mentor – this will provide a better return on investment than training people in how to be good mentors
Offer a mentor matching service – but always encourage people to look [...]

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 [...]

Hunger for Inspiration

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I think this offers us some powerful, but largely ignored, clues as to how we should design our enterprise development services.  We need to offer a service that helps people to seek, find and, crucially, act on [...]

What Inspires and Transforms Us?

I have had several conversations with a range of professionals in regeneration and enterprise in recent weeks to explore what specific skills, qualities and behaviours are likely to help to ‘transform’ or ‘inspire’ a client.
I am interested because:

I have witnessed the power of personal and transformational relationships myself and think it would be useful 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, [...]