I’ve read with interest the debate over the last two weeks in the Sunday Times, “Entrepreneurs: born or made?”.  The debate centres on whether people with entrepreneurial skills are born with those skills, or can they be ‘made’.

Entrepreneurs seem keen to preserve their exclusive status. They believe they have innate skills, attributes and even, what Ken Burgess (of Sportsunite) describes as, a “special spirit”. Their view is that no-one else can simply learn these skills. Others, such as Nadia Finer co- founder of ‘More to Life than Shoes’, insist entrepreneurs are made. Andrew Hirst, senior lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University perhaps takes a more balanced view: he is quoted (Sunday Times, 11/7/10) as believing, “entrepreneurs are both born and made”.

What we notice in the organisations we work with read more »

Leadership: understanding your constituents

In The Next Generation of Leadership  Jim Clifton (Chairman and CEO of Gallup) believes that organisations and leaders, “must understand their constituents’ [i.e. their teams and customers] state of mind”. His view is that organisations have “maximised every possible benefit from process improvement …and these practices have hit a point of diminishing returns”. read more »