Entrepreneurship!
Fourteen-year-old Fraser Doherty, of Edinburgh, Scotland, certainly understands the meaning of Entrepreneurship and Innovation—he won first place in the Global Student Entrepreneurship Award competition at the 2008 Global Entrepreneurship Week. Fraser’s company, SuperJam, makes fruit jam from natural products, and sells it globally.
Frasier is a serial entrepreneur in that this is not his first venture into entrepreneurship. He has even tasted the sting of failure—his first enterprise failed because a fox ate his assets. But, like any true entrepreneur, Fraser came back with an idea for his next venture, and turned it into a success. One can only wonder what his next enterprise will be.
This story is in sharp contrast to one of my recent posts, Scandals, Innovations, and AIG, which presented the dismal picture of the high rate of school dropouts in the U.S. Instead of trying to train our students to get high scores on their SAT tests, we need to prepare more of them for entrepreneurship.
Fortunately, there is one place where aspiring young (and old) entrepreneurs can connect and begin to turn their dreams into reality—Global Entrepreneurship Week. Seventy-five countries will hold thousands of events during this week, where entrepreneurs of all ages meet to share and learn. The short video below presents a brief montage of typical events that are held around the world during this week.
(email subscribers, view on blog)
The next Global Entrepreneurship Week will be celebrated November 16-22, 2009. What can each of us do to make entrepreneurship a goal for more young people, instead of the world of the dropout?
“…in a rapidly changing world that demands new ideas faster than ever, young people must not only embrace their prevailing tendencies toward entrepreneurial thinking—they must be inspired to act on them.”
—Jonathan Ortmans
President, Public Forum Institute
Innovation 101
“There is an almost inevitable institutional drift toward Centralization & Complex Processes & Hierarchy…at the expense of Innovation & Adaptation.”
—-Tom Peters
It is this “…at the expense of Innovation & Adaptation” that has plunged the U.S. down the list of innovative nations. If what Tom says is true–and I believe it is–then it is definitely up to small businesses to be the innovators who brings the U.S. (or any country) back up the list.
Typically, when someone thinks “Innovation,” they immediately think of electronic gadgets, the Internet, social media, Silicon Valley, or any new invention that may change our social status or the future of mankind. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, those things mentioned certainly are innovations, but they are not what innovation is all about. Here is Webster’s definition of Innovation: “the introduction of something new: a new idea, method, or device.”
Innovation can, and should be, everywhere…in our businesses, in government, and in society in general. Here is an example of a basic form of innovation:
Justin Esch and Dave Lefkow were having drinks with friends when they came up with the idea for “Bacon Salt.” They quit their successful jobs at a Seattle technology company and set out to perfect their idea. Working out of Esch’s garage, with zero marketing budget, they sold “Bacon Salt” products to 25 states and 12 different countries, and are expanding worldwide as rapidly as they can.
They also continue to innovate by expanding their “Bacon Salt” concept to other products. Their current hot seller on their web site is bacon flavored lip balm…they’ve sold 10,000, and many sales are to repeat customers.
Esch and Lefkow are a worldwide phenomenon, and last year raked in $1.4 million in profit–just from a combining bacon and salt. Not what one would call “high tech.”
(Justin and Dave will appear on Oprah Friday April 24).
How does the U.S. (or any country) develop and promote a culture of creative thinking–Innovation–in jobs; in society; and in the lives of their citizens? It is going to take changes in education, in family values, in governments, and in individual entrepreneurs. Can we do it?
Talk About Customer Service!
Just read Seth Godin’s blog, and watched a video he made three years ago, titled “This is Broken.” If anyone has any interest in customer service, customer communication, or customer relations, this is a must watch video. Check it out here:
Scandals, Innovation, and AIG
It is interesting, and also sad, to watch the public fury unfold against the big bailouts, especially the AIG scandals…while an even bigger scandal goes unchecked in our own neighborhoods every day.
What is this scandal?
Author, blogger, & Political Commentator, Keli Goff recently published an article in the Huffington Post describing the costly scandal of the high school dropout. In her article she points out that:
- A 2008 study found that high school dropouts cost the American public more than $100 million per year.
- A 2009 study found that one high school dropout in Ohio will cost the state’s taxpayers $200,000 from the time they drop out until they reach age 65.
- Every 29 seconds another American student becomes a dropout. (How many kids dropped out while you were reading your email today?)
- Four out of every 10 young adults (age 16-24) lacking a high school diploma received some type of government assistance in 2001.
- A dropout is more than eight times as likely to be in jail or prison, as a person with at least a high school diploma.
So, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year supporting high school dropouts without batting an eye–but we turn out with protests, signs, and marching, when AIG does something stupid.
Even worse than the high cost of our high school dropouts, is how this situation is contributing to the downfall of the United States as the world leader in Innovation. We are losing our best young minds because our educational system is broken and needs to be totally restructured. Trying to prepare students just to score high on their SAT tests no longer works.
Our educational system needs to teach and encourage young minds how to dream, how to visualize, how to question, how to search…and they need to know it is ok to try something and fail. Unless we start to teach “outside the lines” we will continue to lose brilliant young minds that could make a difference in America’s future.
Of course, we cannot put this entire burden on teachers–we need mentors, sponsors, participating businesses, civic leaders, and the like. When school lets out is not when education stops–life is what happens after classes, and it is up to all of us to make sure every young person in our community learns how to use that time to make the best life.
America is no longer the Innovation leader of the world, and I am afraid if we don’t change the way we educate our young people, we will never regain that role.
Any agreement or disagreement–or, is everyone still too worked up over the bailouts and executive parties?
For Want of a Nail…Redux
Back in October, I posted an article titled “For Want of a Nail…” where I described a bad customer experience I had at a nearby coffee shop. I described the poor management of the business, and intimated that the business would not survive under its current management.
Well, guess what! Last month I drove by the coffee shop and saw a large banner over the door that read “Reopening Soon–Under New Management.” Since then, I have stopped in a couple of times and have been pleasantly surprised by the eager greeting, the good coffee, the great service, the offer to set up a frequent coffee card, and the visibility of the manager. All the things that drove me away before have been eliminated and replaced with an attitude of wanting to make me a loyal and happy customer.
Any small business that relies on repeat business to be successful, needs to concentrate on building a loyal following…or “Tribe” as Seth Godin would call it. Now, I predict that as long as the present manager continues doing the things he is currently doing, this business will do well. I am now one of their tribe.
How are you doing with building your “Tribe?”
A New Capitalism?
After writing the post on “The Nationalization of Big Business,” I received a number of emails and comments that made me take a closer look at this issue. Since I’m not a futurist, economist, nor academic, I rely on the following definition of capitalism, which pretty well spells it out for me.
Capitalism is an economic and political system characterized by a free market for goods and services and private control of production and consumption.
Princeton University’s Wordnet defines capitalism as an economic system based on private ownership of capital…antonym of socialism.
To me, capitalism means that if the market (we consumers) likes what a business has to offer, we buy from that business and it becomes successful and continues to grow and prosper. If the market does not like what the business has to offer, we don’t buy from that business and it fails. That is the simplest form of capitalism. Capitalism is totally market driven, and it has worked well for American companies for a very long time–until now.
Now, although we have over 30 million American businesses that fit the basic definition of capitalism…Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, has pointed out in a recent article, that we also have companies which operate outside our capitalistic system, because they are no longer accountable to the market. If they were accountable to the market they would close–with mass loses of jobs, which would heavily impact our entire economy. Therefore, they cannot be allowed to fail, because they are too big to fail.
So, if we have companies that are not accountable to the market, and operate outside our capitalistic system, who should they be accountable to? If some of these companies can only survive by living on taxpayer’s money, shouldn’t the taxpayers hold them accountable? Unfortunately, that would mean the government would become involved in the operation of these companies, and does anyone think the largest bureaucracy in America can better manage them?
There are no simple answers, but lots of questions-for instance:
- When is a company, no longer accountable to the market, and becomes too big to fail?
- Should large, unaccountable, businesses be forced to break up into smaller, more manageable (and accountable) units…similar to the former Bell system breakup?
- Should the government take control of these large “too big” companies and dictate who should manage them, and how they should be run?
- Or, should these large unaccountable companies simply be allowed to fail–putting 10’s (maybe 100’s) of thousands of people out of work?
These are pretty heady questions for just a street guy, but I would really like to hear the opinions of anyone out there who wonders what is happening to our capitalistic system–and should it be happening? Better yet, how can it be made more successful in our global economy?
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