Steve Parks

Enterprise White Paper: Culture of Enterprise

This weekend I'm continuing my summary of the Government's publication "Enterprise - Unlocking the UK's Talent", which sets out it's research into enterprise in the UK, and it's plans for encouraging and supporting enterprise in the future.

The document is divided into five key areas, and I'll do a blog post looking at each. The first looks at how to encourage a culture of enterprise in the UK.

This is something where the UK seems to lag far behind the USA:

• We fear failure, while they boldly go (spot the gag on enterprise?)
• British women, the over 50's and some northern regions have a particularly low sense of self-belief when it comes to enterprise
• We don't seem to admire entrepreneurs as much as the Americans, and we seem to punish honest failure just as badly as crooked behaviour - which has the effect of increasing the fear of failure mentioned above

So the government's strategy to improve this situation is:

Over the next 10 years, to improve attitudes to enterprise across the UK so that many more people feel they can use their talents to start and grow businesses. In particular:

• the Government will help more people to obtain accurate information on the returns from and opportunities for enterprise, based on relevant role models and not on myths that lead to misplaced risk aversion
• through the steps we are taking, many more women will feel that they have the ability and confidence to start a business, and women owning businesses will feel more confident in their ability to grow their business
• young people will be made aware of their potential to be enterprising and encouraged to exploit this in later life
• the Government will address the stigma of business failure across society

The paper identifies that there is a great need to encourage and support female entrepreneurs, because they appear to have much lower confidence and aspirations when it comes to enterprise.

Women

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