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Feb 05
2010
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My favourite articles, etc. on Eterprise & Entrepreneurship in Britain from the last month or so...
enterprise
• noun 1 a project or undertaking, especially a bold one. 2 bold resourcefulness. 3 a business or company.
— ORIGIN Old French, ‘something undertaken’, from Latin prehendere ‘to take’.
"Carbon-Friendly Enterprise: The Kids’ Perspectives
September 29th, 2009 by Alex_Goldup
We spend a lot of time thinking and talking about enterprise and entrepreneurship, and, in particular, the importance that many small and new businesses attach to environmental awareness.
But we’re grown-ups. Let’s face: the fertile and colourful imaginations of children make us look deathly boring. So we asked the great kids from St. Matthew Academy to give us the real scoop on enterprise, climate change, and – nicely tying these both together – the Make Your Mark Challenge.
Here are some of their comments:
- “Just keep recycling and don’t stop”
- “I want to do my bit to stop global warming. I even walked to school today!”
- “My green enterprise idea is to build a new ozone layer (my personal favourite – Alex)”
- “I think the Make Your Mark Challenge is a fantastic idea. It gets your mindset focused on what you want to do and gives you ambition”
Thanks, kids." - from http://blog.enterpriseuk.org/2009/09/29/carbon-friendly-enterprise-the-kids-perspectives/
Small businesses: delivering the goods
January 26th, 2010 by Alex_Goldup
Islington. The home of well-heeled wine bars, left-leaning politicos, and chattering dinner parties round stripped pine tables. It’s also, as chronicled in yesterday’s Evening Standard, the scene of a new model of product distribution tailored towards local small businesses.
The concept underpinning Hubbub deliveries is simple – the service allows Islington residents to select food online from gourmet grocers across the borough and have it delivered to their door in one package. Yum.
It’s might one day shape up to be one of many answers to the question that confronts anyone starting out in business: how do you get your product/service to your customers?
“Open up a shop” is still the somewhat obvious answer, but the choice is no longer an automatic one. Having, to use the American term, a “bricks and mortar” store has its disadvantages: high overheads and prohibitive pricing (particularly when it comes to desirable high-street locations) being the two obvious ones. It also has its limitations - a physical store in a fixed location will only reach a finite number of potential, and often exclusively local, customers. Unless a business uses a postal order service as well, then perhaps they risk prematurely capping their sales and future growth.
But mail order is not an entrepreneur’s panacea. A mail order-only business might save on rent and other costly overheads, but it might have to work harder to develop its human face: the personality, the character, and idiosyncrasy that is often one of the big unique selling points of a fledgling small business.
So - what’s the answer? Perhaps a system that can combines the personality and warmth of a bricks and mortar store with the potential reach of a mail-order business is the way forward?
If you’ve set up a business or are thinking of doing so, it would be great to hear your thoughts. How are you going to get your products and services to your customers? Do you wish you’d set up your product delivery systems differently? Share your wisdom by commenting below.