Make Your Mark Blog

At Make Your Mark, we’re very interested in what exactly spurs people on to become entrepreneurs. Is it nature or nurture? Are there certain qualities that all or almost all entrepreneurs have in common? And how might these typical features have changed? As this article suggests, some of the assumptions people might have made 25 years ago about the features of a ‘traditional’ entrepreneur-type figure look totally outdated now. (Not that I’m suggesting that ‘typical’ entrepreneurial 35 year old, male, only-child engineering graduates whose fathers owned hardware shops aren’t relevant. If you are reading this and you are an entrepreneurial 35 year old, male, only-child engineering graduate whose father owned a hardware shop: keep up the good work!)

Last year the number of new start-ups actually rose by 1%, according to figures from Barclays.

Interestingly it was female-only start-ups leading the way - with a 9% increase on 2007 - compared with just under 1% growth of male-only start-ups.

Even though the credit crunch only got properly underway in September 2008, its still an encouraging sign that people are wanting to and are start businesses. Over the past few weeks I’ve seen a lot of negative speculation about how aspiring and fully-fledged entrepreneurs have been, or will be, responding to the recession - often based on flimsy research. A little bit of optimism is a good thing at the moment.

It’s 9:30 in the morning in Kansas city and I am sitting between Virginia from Argentina and Jolia from Singapore. This is the Global Entrepreneurship Congress, generously hosted by our Global Entrepreneurship Week co-founders, The Kauffman Foundation.

Hosts of last November’s Global Entrepreneurship Week joined together from far and further away, battling the elements to make it to this truly global gathering. The storms have followed us from Chicago to Kansas City but the wind and the rain have been no match for the thunder and lightening unleashed by the 60 nations united in this room - 25,000 events and over 3 million participants during one Week - a stunning achievement by any standard, but when it comes to inspiration (for me)- it’s all in the detail.

So, a couple of weeks ago everyone’s favourite world leader said in his inaugural address to the nation from congress, “The answers to our problems don’t lie beyond our reach, they exist …. in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs”. An amazing endorsement of the purpose of Make Your Mark’s work. For a man elected because of public confidence in his ability to bring change to the United States to say that this change is going to come from entrepreneurs is surely brilliant.

Our US founder buddies of Global Entrepreneurship Week, the Kauffman Foundation, have published their annual Thoughtbook. It’s sort of like an annual report… if annual reports were thought-provoking, profound, engaging and creative collections of essays, with contributions from Nobel Prize laureates and jam makers extraordinaire.

If you’re interested in learning vs education, the evolution of capitalism, visionary science and big entrepreneurial ideas, not to mention jam, you’ll find loads of stuff that’s worth a read. The Thoughtbook takes a broad definition of enterprise as innovation, action and passion. There’s a line I really like in Gordon Brown’s essay on Building Enterprise Cultures Worldwide. The PM quotes John Stuart Mill’s definition of enterprise as “the desire to keep moving… to be trying and accomplishing new things for our own benefit or that of others.”

A new research report from our friends in the US, the Kaufmann Foundation, suggests that men-owned business are more successful that women-owned businesses. After two years surveying 5000 businesses they found that women-owned businesses had lower survival rates, lower size, growth, earnings and profits. They suggest a few reasons why this might be the case;

- Access to credit (62% of women-owned businesses started with less than $25k, compared with 55% of men-owned; a higher percentage of women have low credit scores)

- Lifestyle businesses (women may be starting businesses as a lifestyle choice)

If the economic gloom is getting you down, why not whistle a jaunty tune, sing everything for the rest of the day, or go to a CBI conference on accessing finance in the recession.

Although it might sound a little dry, if you’re an entrepreneur you really shouldn’t have missed some top speakers answering:

(1) Is there money still available for businesses?
(2) How do you get it?

First up, Anthony Clarke, Chairman of the British Business Angels Association.

Angel investors are a bit like Dragons’ Den – they take a stake in the business for an injection of cash. Unlike the TV series they are usually very nice.

There’s a major business networking event and exhibition at the Hilton Metropole Hotel, London on Monday 17^th November from 6:30pm. The organisers are holding it in support of Global Enterprise Week 2008 and are expecting up to 1,000 businesses to attend.

This event brings together many networks and business communities and offers the opportunity to meet other high calibre business delegates, openly network in a relaxed and friendly environment, build strong business relationships and gain valuable information about the issues that most affect business.

As I struggle to start writing my first EVER blog post, one of the central messages of the seminar I went to on Tuesday really resonates – what did I actually learn in school?

I’m really not sure.

Richard Gerver, world-renowned education expert, wasn’t sure either. For those still thinking that Britain’s education system is the envy of the world and you haven’t forgetten a jot, try the short pop quiz that Richard sprung upon us – and yes, these questions are all in the national curriculum (answers at the bottom) -

Apparently there’s an English disease that makes us think that ‘vocational learning is less worthy than academic learning’.

New Diploma qualifications for 14-19 year olds have been prescribed in an effort to cure us all.

Will Diplomas be the shot in the arm that our economy and education system needs? Or are these new qualifications a clever wheeze to make us feel better? How will enterprise education feature within Diplomas?

Engineering is amongst the first five Diploma subjects to be taught to 14-19 year olds. The fourth annual Owers Lecture will bring together those interested in technology, engineering and manufacturing to explore the potential of this new Diploma

• More than 1 billion people today are between 15 and 24 years of age
• Nearly 40% of the world’s population is below the age of 20
• The International Labour Organisation (a UN agency) estimates that half (47%) of all unemployed persons globally are young people
• The world’s population is growing at a time when traditional, stable labour markets are shrinking.

This figures are staggering and demonstrate the need for Global Entrepreneurship Week (www.unleashingideas.org), which brings together young people from over 70 countries providing them with access to more people, more ideas, more markets and more resources.

“A snail could crawl the entire length of the Great Wall of China in 212 years, just slightly longer than the 200 years it will take for women to be equally represented in Parliament”

This is the tagline for a new report by the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights released today. And it contained some interesting stats….

• Only 11% of directors in FTSE companies are women
• Small business do a little better, with 14% having a majority of women directors
• 17.6% is women’s average representation in media and culture

Who generates economic impact? Luke Johnson writing for the Financial Times (“All of the effort with none of the impact”, 6^th August 2008) set out a proposition that the entrepreneurs that really matter are the tiny proportion who ultimately generate the bulk of economic benefits for the economy. Evidence indeed suggests that these high growth companies or these so called “gazelles”, often defined by their revenue growth, account for only about 3% to 4% of new ventures.

John Bird, creator of The Big Issue, told us that “Social entrepreneurs are caught in a tricky situation. In a sense, they’re just financial entrepreneurs displaced by the fact that it’s no longer right or sexy to be a greedy bastard. Their drive comes from a desire to make their mark in social change. But, as always, it’s a question of demand and supply. Creating a company is simple in the UK. Funding the project is the complicated part.”

We asked leading entrepreneurs and experts what they thought (see the Future Face of Enterprise). A lot of them described a fundamental transformation in the way that businesses deal with issues around environmental and social change through new partnerships and attitudes.

The approach to commissioning services to get people into work has been re-vamped and social enterprise companies will get a greater share of the contracts.

The market for contracted employment provision is fragmented and driven by process and short-term objectives which don’t deliver the result required. The Department for Work and Pensions has launched a new commissioning strategy with more strategic relationships with providers. There will be stronger links with local delivery mechanisms such as Local Area Agreements and the City Strategy Pathfinders.