Australian Winner
has own
Enterprises Culture, and
can help to establish your own
enterprises culture, and provide online
promotion
Working definition of enterprise
Enterprise is a broad notion that is
relevant to a wide range of activities.
Enterprise Insight’s working definition
is: “An individual or team engaged in
growing their own idea, exploiting an
opportunity or developing a new way of
doing things”. This can be in terms of
business start-ups, social enterprises
or employees being enterprising within
businesses and organisations.
Developing enterprise capability amongst
young people
Enterprise qualities are critical to
thrive in the 21st century. This means
we need to develop enterprise capability
amongst all young people. Enterprise
capability is: “The capability to handle
uncertainty and respond positively to
change, to create and implement new
ideas and new ways of doing things, to
make reasonable risk/reward assessments
and act upon them in one’s personal and
working life”.
Promoting an enterprise culture
This requires changing mindsets so as to
inspire and mobilise young people to be
more enterprising in their lives. The
change in mindset needs to be ‘deep’ and
significant enough to trigger a change
in behaviour, not simply in attitude. A
strong belief in one’s own capability to
be entrepreneurial and the cultural
value placed on enterprise by society
are both important.
Catalytic campaign
The campaign aims to stimulate demand
and grow the national pool of
enterprising talent, as well as generate
debate and discussion about enterprise -
how to nurture it and its significance
for us as individuals and a society. The
huge task of both generating a
fundamental shift in attitudes and
reaching a large audience means that the
campaign must use cost-effective,
catalytic methods which act in a
self-replicating, snowballing manner at
grassroots level.
Enterprising habits can be encouraged,
discouraged or reinforced at many other
levels beyond the individual. For
example, the degree to which society
rewards and recognises enterprising
behaviour can influence in several ways
the willingness of individuals to be
innovative or start promising ventures.
We need organisations that are prepared
to change as well as a local, regional
and national climate supportive of
enterprise.
Young people in the driving seat
The present generation of young people
is not receptive to top-down, didactic
messages. They need to be engaged in
participatory ways which enable them to
“own” the transformation. The campaign
will therefore only achieve its vision
if young people pick up this agenda,
interpret it for themselves, and run
with it. In other words, enterprise
promotion can start as a campaign but it
must become a movement.