Make Your Mark Blog

Did you know that it’s no longer sexy to be greedy…?

Since last year’s Enterprise Week, we’ve been asking different people about the things they think will shape enterprise culture in the future. We’ve just released a report with Demos called the Future Face of Enterprise http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Demos_FutureFaceEnterprise_web.pdf

The report summarises some of the views we gathered and brings together some more detailed chapters from a range of experts.

Lots of interesting people contributed their views. John Bird (Big Issue), Martha Lane Fox (founder of lastminute.com), Sir Ronald Cohen (Bridges venture), Tim Campbell (winner of the Apprentice), Gordon Frazer (Microsoft’s UK’s Managing Director), Gita Patel (Stargate Capital), Rebecca Harding (founder of GEM), Jamie Murray-Wells (Glassdirect.com) and loads more. Check out the views here. http://www.makeyourmark.org.uk/policy/future_face_of_enterprise/who_else

So what does the work say?

 Some of the interesting things coming from this collection include:

1.      The overwhelming feeling that “it’s no longer sexy to be greedy.”(John Bird). Entrepreneurs can make a positive difference to the world and there is a need for big businesses and social entrepreneurs need to work together to scale up the impact of social and environmental ideas.

2.      Workplaces of the future need enterprising employees. Yet enterprise is often missing when we talk about employability, and companies are still reluctant to recruit and hold onto employees they perceive to be ‘risky’ entrepreneurial individuals.

3.      Local places also need to build enterprising cultures to be able to support the national drive to build enterprise culture. Local government should see their role in identifying and inspiring local enterprise talent

4.      The future of enterprise education should focus on making practical enterprise opportunities and on building ambitious, forward-thinking mindsets.

5.      If we are to make enterprise more inclusive, we should break down stereotypes of what makes an entrepreneur and focus on individual aspiration and passion. As Iqbal Wahhab (founder of the Cinnamon Club) observes, “Society must embrace diversity in enterprise and not pigeon hole people with stereotyped expectations…we should encourage the unexpected.”

6.      Entrepreneurs need informal access to business ideas, mentors and networks yet it can be overlooked by formal business support models. We need to do more to celebrate the people who enable alternative informal types of support

Have a read of the work if you’d like to know more. But what do you think is changing about entrepreneurship and enterprise culture in this country? 

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 5:17 pm and is filed under Entrepreneurship, Future Face of Enterprise, Policy, Social enterprise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.