THE AGE OF ENTERPRISE

Recently I was passed in the street by someone uttering some rather depressing words.

“It’s so hard. I have to spend my time keeping tabs on my people making sure they do things properly.”

It must be fun working for him. But he, the joyless administrator,  is one reason the Start-Up revolution is gaining so much momentum.

The other is we live in a world of increasing uncertainty where economists and leading opinion makers  say with equally great conviction “we’re on the edge of a cliff” or “things will settle down quite quickly in reality”.

Few of us comprehend the macro-economy but we understand our own small world quite well. We know that big companies are not to be entirely trusted when it comes to “downsizing”. We are tired of being a number not a face. Better to strike out on our own in a rowing boat than stick with Titanic Limited.

Today I’m focusing on the middle aged entrepreneur.

George Clooney is 58. He recently sold his Tequila brand Cosamigos for $1billion. 

In a paper in the National Bureau of Economic Research middle aged start-ups are shown to grow faster and survive longer. The FT says over-50s now account for 43% of those who start their own business.

So what’s going on?

What I call the Start -Up Revolution is being fuelled from three sources – Millennials, who don’t want to work for the people like that lugubrious joker on whom I eavesdropped, women – many post maternity-leave to whom the thought of returning to office politics is too awful and the disenchanted, redundant over 50s loaded with experience, skill and enough surplus cash to fund a start-up.

David Rowan has written a book “Non-Bullshit Innovation” in which he explores the mindsets of global tech start-ups and their disruptive, white-sheet-of-paper thinking. He rightly criticises the British government’s constant postponement of decisions about strategic priorities.

It’s ironic we have so many assets to play with. Here are just a few:
- English is the world’s lingua franca
- We are huge in gaming technology
- We are big in film production
- Our creative industries are booming

- We are still dominant in financial services
- Climate change is giving us the agro-friendly climate of France in the 1980s
- We have become accomplished at customer service (about time)
- Our recent record in innovation from luxury goods to food to technology is impressive.

We don’t blow our own trumpets but as the middle aged increasingly flex their innovative muscles a fanfare is becoming more noticeable. Take gin where a generation of middle aged entrepreneurs have introduced the most exotic, interesting variety of new gins imaginable. Sales of gin have doubled in the past five years.

We hear a lot about Silicon Valley. It’s time we started to think regardless of Brexit of ourselves as “Innovation Island”. Driven by the ambitions, skill and independence of spirit of the experienced, as well as the young and hungry, we are in good shape.

Government won’t help us (they seldom do)  but they can at least get out of the way.

“Start-ups Pivots and Pop Ups” by Richard Hall and Rachel Bell is published in October by Kogan Page. The antidote to doubt and gloom.

JE NE REGRETTE RIEN

As I look back on my life I realise how lucky I’ve been. I’ve a lot of nice, clever and kind friends. My wife keeps a sharp eye on my best interests and is a constant joy. I even get to write a bit which I like especially having discovered that as you get older you may lose some mental agility and memory but one faculty improves and that’s the linguistic one of putting words together.

Recently, when in the course of researching a new book, I’ve been interviewing a lot of young entrepreneurs. They are all so hopeful, energetic and smart. At their age I was; a director of an advertising agency modelling myself on John Thaw’s role as Jack Regan in “The Sweeney” swigging whisky and saying “shut it! You’re nicked.”  It was great fun but I was just an employee.

Now I suddenly have this restless urge to start a new company – not for heaven’s sake an advertising agency which seem hell-hole, data driven places – no, a disruptive, ideas-driven business selling something better, cheaper and faster and tearing apart sleepy, traditional market sectors trapped in traditional supply chains. Think of Harry, Purple Bricks, Casper the mattress people and dozens of others. What they call “Digitally Native Vertical Brands” - brands which start on line and are maniacally focused on consumer values.

I keep on coming across new brands like Ugly Drinks, the Sussex Peasant, Sandow’s cold brew coffee and the Grown up Chocolate company, all bustling pioneers of joie de vivre and a fascination with shifting mindsets. Their owners are typically people around 30 who are not being anchored down by mortgages but are driven by an appetite for life’s possibilities.

Two such – rather older now -  Charles Rolls and Tim Warillow – founded Fevertree 13 years ago  promising the “end of dismal mixers” and have so far trousered over £300 million from share sales. They understandably look pretty happy to have re-imagined a market dominated drearily by ‘Schh…you know who’ for so long.

Money is not the key motive to wanting independence. The constant desire is “I want to make a difference”. Human beings want to look back on a legacy perhaps rather more exciting than a Jack Regan impersonation.

Talking to start-up counterparts in the USA their ambitions are larger, the stakes are higher and the focus is clearer but so too is the sense of reality. “It’s a good idea, we’ve done great work on the product and the brand so it really should work. But it might not. There are factors beyond our control. So if it doesn’t work we’ll do something else.” Like Henry Heinz who went bust and struggled along at first. Persistence and good humour pay off ultimately.

We live in times unlike those that have gone before where entrepreneurialism and innovation are inspiring more and are accessible to more and more people. Back in the day it was harder, slower and seemed more dangerous.

DON’T EXPECT RESEARCH TO SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS

The late Dame Anita Roddick said “trying to use research to manage your business is a bit like driving using the rear view mirror”.

In the current world situation many people are reflecting on the sheer impossibility of forecasting. Anatole Kaletsky thinks we live in a world without radar. So good luck Chancellor.

At the end of March the RSA have a table of experts debating the following at the Encyclopaedia Britannica/RSA debate on “The Economic Crisis and the Age of Uncertainty” in which panel members will discuss the crisis if confidence in our previously trusted sources of knowledge.

So the left brain has let us down and it’s over to the intuitive entrepreneurs who have dreams, visions and insights.

These are people who do not use research in the conventional sense.

Look at the link below and you’ll see why.

Produced by an innovation company in the States it deals a mortal blow to old fashioned market research.

And about time too.

http://frontendofinnovation.blogspot.com/2008/03/old-idea-evaluation-habits-die-hard.html

THE ARTS HAVE IT

It’s what happens when the economy zigs; we zag back to cheap live theatre.

The West End will have a horrible time as we sniff out good value pre-runs and small theatres. This will be a golden age for low-cost young talent. Check out what is going on locally in churches, small theatres or town halls.

You can have a great evening out for the fraction of what you normally spend. Or go to the Cinema which is still cheap for the experience.

Next - something about Sport

http://www.richardhall.biz/

INNOVATION

New stuff that matters will be on what we should focus. Things like improving water purity, reducing pollution, creating better educational aids, getting mosquitos under pressure (we’re doing it!), innoculating more widely, getting HIV under control and making communication free – people power and the web.

And finally finding new ways of fighting back.

Lord Rutherford (Scientist) once said “we have no money so we shall have to think.”So think. Think about how life could improve. Think about what’s missing.

Maybe in 2009 you’ll become an inventor or mini entrepreneur just doing this.

Something tomorrow about consumerism

http://www.richardhall.biz/