Small businesses are usually all about the individual entrepreneur - pursuing their vision in a way that they feel most appopriate and comfortable with.
But increasingly (and as reported in The Times) these small firms are forming co-operatives in order to better trade, better meet their needs, and ulimately prosper - are we therefore seeing the start of the end of the individual entrepreneur and the emergence of the 'group entreprenuer' using models forged with the social and co-operative economy?
It used to be that we looked to private business for tools to better 'raise our game', feels a bit strange that they're now looking to us for inspiration and supportive ideas and models...
Good start-ups are nearly always team start-ups Adrian. Just about every really successful business on the planet started with a team - Hewlett AND Packard, Jobs AND Woz,Gates AND Allen, Page AND Brin, Marks AND Spencer, Daimler AND Benz, Rolls AND Royce....
ReplyDeleteWe just like to promulgate the myth of the heroic rugged, individualistic entrepreneur who does the deal, creates the jobs and brings home the bacon. It is just a myth. A damaging myth.
Organisations are groups of people who band together to make common cause. Sometimes the common cause is to make a shedload of cash. Sometimes it is to make better planet. Most times it is both....Entrepreneurs who understand this are likely to do much, MUCH better than those who think they run the show and the rest are simply hired hands.
Yet much of our business support is predicated on working with the individual entrepreneur at start up - trying to teach them to do it all. We should of course be teaching them to build teams who can do it all.
This is not about 'for profit' or 'social enterprise'. It is relevant in all sectors. This is about the personal predispositions of people and the need for different personalities and passions to build a well rounded organisation.
So let's keep busting the myth of the heroic entrepreneur.