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item0062A 920, 921 920 2 February 2004 Teach "Foraging"...
For the last thirty years, respect has been growing for the entrepreneur, for those individuals in society who develop the ability to initiate new projects, both commercial and social, to structure and organise them and build them into self-sustaining firms and institutions. Gordon Brown has highlighted this process, and has correctly identified the strengths of American society on this front. Yet, important as it is, we have not yet found the best way of describing this process. We have chosen the wrong role-models, out of touch with daily reality. The language is stilted, conventional. I despair at the pompous advertisements of the big Banks and development agencies, trying to encourage "business start-ups", drafted by people who do have never done it themselves. The initiation of new enterprises, whether social or commercial, is a demanding, creative, untidy and mysterious business, demanding a range of different qualities and skills. I have wrestled with this language problem for 25 years, since I became Economic Development Officer for my home city of Swansea. I have always had a deep respect for entrepreneurial abilities at every level - from the opening of a new corner-shop to the launching of a new mobile phone, or designing new and successful products. And I know that the conventional processes of our school system, promoting "qualifications for employment by others" conceal from our children the kernels of creativity and self-starting initiative upon which all advances must turn. Our society simply does not value initiative, entrepreneurship - it's a s simple as that. The professions of medicine, accountancy and law straddle the ambitions of the UK middle-classes - all deadening, routine, professions where even creative souls (and there are some) have the creativity easily crushed out of them.What is to be done? I suggest that we should consciously encourage our children to avoid committing themselves to earning their living by serving a single-employer, or of operating (like the Bar or medicine) within a single imperious institutional framework. I recognise that the drive to "get a good job" is very powerful, almost too powerful to resist, particularly for those capable of earning high initial salaries in employment. But once a person becomes committed to full-time direction by others, the chances of developing entrepreneurial traits are very slim. The habits of working within a framework set by others rapidly becomes entrenched, and is destructive of creativity. Very few new enterprises indeed are "seeded" by the creatures of big corporations, let alone the learned professions. What, then, is to be done? We should offer our teenagers the alternative of learning to "earn by foraging" - remaining independent from the outset, picking up work here and there, living with uncertainty, juggling a life of part-time employment and self-employment, constantly on the look-out for those market opportunities which offer the prospect of developing into a self-sustaining "business". For individuals who can survive in an unstructured personal environment like that are precisely the ones who will cultivate entrepreneurial skills - always on the look-out for the next trading opportunity, always scouring the market-place, free to move quickly when an opportunity offers, and strongly motivated to do so. The entrepreneurs are not necessarily inventors or researchers themselves - they are the ones who spot the trading opportunity, and who have the ability to organise new processes so that a trading demand can be effectively met. These are rare and valuable skills. Gordon Brown is right: we should strive to cultivate them. I suspect they are possessed by only 5%-10% of the population, and are developed in a far, far smaller percentage. My suggestion is that we should promote foraging, targeting a significant increase in the number who forage in their 20s and 30s. Paradoxically, they are the ones who, even if they have not been successful as entrepreneurs, will become best big-firm leaders in their 40s and 50s... Would you have signed up for my Foraging Classes, when you were in the Sixth Form? Drop me a line
921 3 February 2004
My daughter Katharine has responded to my “post-Hutton thoughts”, just as everyone else is entitled to respond. While it lies outside the scope of Hutton, I share her judgment that the whole “spat” was a Campbell ploy to divert attention away from the underlying illegality of the Iraq invasion, and a spat in which Campbell had a keen, personal, vested interest. We see broadly eye-to-eye, she and I, on Hutton’s weaknesses, his total failure to address the human tragedy of David Kelly’s pivotal position, the noble Lord’s spineless subservience to Downing Street and the Intelligence establishment, his feeble criticism of Campbell’s evident bullying, and his formalistic and exaggerated critique of the BBC. But she does not share my criticism of the BBC’s “scoop journalism” – she thinks I am being “stuffy” about that, and that the Corporation should continue to respond to popular demands for more of Paxman, more of Humphrys. This is what she says -Hi Dad Read your piece on Hutton, and I think the points you make about Hutton failing to satisfy his primary task are very true and well articulated. My own dissatisfaction is with the simplistic, black and white approach taken, displaying Hutton's self-evident bias. That puts all his findings on a questionable footing, and renders the whole process a waste of time - except for the 'illuminating' exposure of the crass, belligerent nature of Alistair Campbell & Co, and the chaotic nature of behind-the-scenes operations - at a time of 'crisis'. Hutton consistently failed to analyse the 'human' aspects of the case - David Kelly as a proud, scared, suicidal man – Alistair Campbell as an irate, powerful media mogul about to make his long-awaited exit – Andrew Gilligan, someone who lived for the thrill of exclusive disclosure, desperate to share the news that could be profoundly important to a country going to war illegally. Hutton is clearly a proceduralist and a structuralist – “Did the Government have the right to do X, Y, Z?” Yes. “Did Campbell have the authority to...?” Yes. "Did the Beeb neglect to follow appropriate procedures....?” Yes. But he has shown no insight into the human beings who were the subjects of his inquiry (…) The crucial context for these events was the Government’s drive to persuade a suspicious and reluctant nation to go to war – and that conditioned all the decisions and judgements that were made, on both sides. That is the context both of the Government’s acute sensitivity to accusations of spin, and of the media’s desire to uncover plots and unveil spin strategies. While Gilligan and his Editors clearly made journalistic mistakes, I believe that their decisions should be located in the national mood at the time, the swirling sense that we were being duped into war, and thereafter their sense that they were under full-frontal attack from the Government for 'being the messenger' of bad news. On balance I would rather that Gilligan reported his
shaky 'knowledge' that shook the 45-minute claim, than for nothing to have
ever come to the surface. We would not now have such clear evidence
documenting the ways in which the Government attempted to manipulate
evidence - in making the case for a war that had already been decided upon. That audiences have developed a liking (indeed an
admiration) for Gilligan worked for a programme whose main aim in hunting out 'reports' was really to give John Humphries ammunition for taking Government representatives to task. The distinction between news analysis/debate and news reporting must be more clearly drawn, but I think it is stuffy to suggest that the Beeb should stick only with 'objective' reporting (a preposterous claim on anyone's part). 'Balanced' reporting is achievable - 'objective' is not. Let's not try and hold the Beeb to standards that no-one else could achieve, nor force them to drop editorial 'lines' that are, for many people, the only forum in which they see the 'spin-culture' being questioned. Yours Kathy Father's Footnote There is a real difference of judgment here, perhaps genuinely "between the generations" - I object to the cynical and trivialising style both of Jeremy Paxman and John Humphries as "hosts", when it comes with all the authority of the BBC - I think they carry a heavy responsibility for undermining public interest and confidence in the serious business of governance. And I would favour a clearer differentiation between "news" and "debate" - as outlined by Katharine. rwe What do you think? Drop me a line
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