Entrepreneurial employees are vital for keeping the UK competitive

For the UK to stay ahead in an increasingly competitive global economy, businesses need to employ highly skilled, creative, ambitious and enterprising staff ñ people who can spot opportunities and have new ideas. Yet enterprise is often missing from employability debates and companies are often reluctant to recruit entrepreneurial individuals who they perceive as ëriskyí, the Make Your Mark campaign warns today.

The Future Face of Enterprise is a collection of essays and viewpoints from business leaders, opinion formers and high profile entrepreneurs, published by Demos and commissioned by Make Your Mark. In it Gordon Frazer, UK MD of Microsoft, says: ìThe future face of enterprise in the UK is a partnership based on imagination [and] one of the most effective ways of endorsing this is by keeping entrepreneurs engaged. The ability to stay ahead of the curve, to have new ideas, and to create new opportunities has never been more important.î

In their chapter, Duncan OíLeary and Paul Skidmore of Demos argue that enterprise should be embedded within the teaching of employability skills, for both young people and adult learners. OíLeary says: ìCommon debate centres around literacy, numeracy, and communication ñ all of which are valuable and potentially life-changing skills. Yet these may not necessarily be the skills that will equip our nation to be enterprising go-getters in the global economy.

ìThe Leitch review made clear the huge challenge of the skills deficit in the UK, but he may have overlooked the point that future economies and communities may well require different skill-sets than those obtained through current qualifications.î

Placing enterprise at the heart of debates around employability is just one of six major challenges identified by the report. It suggests that, if overcome collectively by education, business, central and local government, these six challenges could be the key to creating an enterprising UK fit for the 21st century:

There is an urgent need for big businesses to be scaling up the environmental and social ideas of entrepreneurs. As Big Issue founder John Bird says: it's no longer sexy to be greedy.

Workplaces of the future will need enterprising people with global ambitions. Enterprise must become more important to debates on employability and companies should recruit and hold onto employees they perceive to be 'risky' entrepreneurial individuals

A national culture of enterprise must be backed up by local opportunities and the shaping of communities as enterprising places. An enterprise culture should form part of any vibrant place and local government across the country has a responsibility to identify and inspire local enterprise talent

Enterprise education should focus on practical enterprise opportunities and the appropriate mindsets - such as a can-do attitude and ability to take managed risks - rather than teaching business theory which will be tired when today's students become tomorrow's entrepreneurs. Educational expert Howard Gardner says: The world of the future will demand capacities that, until now, have been mere options.

Certain groups of people in the UK have untapped enterprise potential. However, there is a danger that by approaching them as a demographic, rather than individuals with aspirations and passions, we will fail to fully include them. As Iqbal Wahhab observes in the report, Society must embrace diversity in enterprise and not pigeon hole people with stereotyped expectations...we should encourage the unexpected.

Entrepreneurs need informal access to business ideas, mentors and networks, yet this can be overlooked by formal business support models, which can struggle to encourage collaboration and innovation. We need to do more to celebrate the people who enable alternative informal types of support

Harry Rich, Chief Executive of Make Your Mark, said: ìThe UK is full of inspirational people who, whatever their background, have great ideas and the desire to drive positive change. Recognising enterprise talent should be an essential feature of recruitment strategies, and then the challenge to employers is to find opportunities within the workplace to allow this to talent to grow. This report makes it clear that entrepreneurial people are the source of future business growthî.

Alessandra Buonfino, Head of Research, Demos, added: ìEach generation defines enterprise according to its own needs and priorities. The future face of enterprise is characterized by new places, new technologies, and new skills. For enterprise to really leave its mark, it will need the right terrain for it to thrive on. Building an enterprise culture that is fit for the twenty-first century depends on exploiting these new emerging possibilities. Much will need changing: from whatís in our textbooks to how society incentivises risk-taking.î

The Future Face of Enterprise is available from the Make Your Mark website, where the campaign is asking people to contribute to the debate by adding their reactions to the themes emerging from the report and post their own views:

www.makeyourmark.org.uk/futureface
www.demos.co.uk/projects/thefuturefaceofenterprise/overview