Small Business - Engine of Social Change
By Andrew Ferguson
There is no better way to introduce this topic than the famous quote from C20th Anthropologist Margaret Mead who said:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens cannot change the world: indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Every new initiative in our society has started with a small group, often several small groups, each gathered round an unlikely visionary, but all with the passion and fascination that breeds commitment. Entrepreneurs and their half-brothers the inventors are all slightly mad and should probably be committed. Years ago I facilitated the original home-working project for Rank Xerox; a participant said “I thought I must be mad giving up my huge salary with Xerox to go self-employed; then I sat in a room with a whole bunch of people who were clearly far madder than I was.” See how reassuring training is!
I’m thinking of Karl Benz riding his bicycle and imagining a horseless carriage as he sweated up hill;
of Frederick Henry Royce teaming up with Charles Rolls to market the Silver Ghost; of William Morris, who motorised the bicycle and built the Bullnose Morris; of Henry Ford, driven by his commitment to “world peace through consumerism” and the revolutionary $5 daily wage.
Each had their own route; each burst the bounds of the insular village and created the Global Village we take for granted – most of them also built aircraft.
I’m thinking of William Lever, who first realised that a bar of soap it took 2 men to carry could be improved; he cut it into small bars and wrapped it, and called it Sunlight – it washed your face ... and it washed the floor. Generations of bright-eyed Unilever marketing executives have been dreaming up product developments ever since (myself included). Like so many ... all ... entrepreneurs, Lever was also a Social Entrepreneur in the tradition of the Quakers (Cadbury, Rowntree, Southall).
I’m thinking of the City of London, the world’s financial centre which had its beginnings in the smoke-filled rooms of Mr Lloyd’s Coffee House (1688).
More recently, Mary Quant revolutionised fashion (and wall paper as it happens).
Anita Roddick single-handedly re-invented ethical enterprise, starting with a small shop in Brighton, next door to an undertakers ... who took a very dim view of her ‘Body Shop’!
Peter & Eileen Caddy in Findhorn created the Personal Development movement in Europe, taking it out of the esoteric territory of Blavatsky and the Rosicrucians, and building a community that has reached out around the world ... healing the rift between Germany and Britain, testing organic agriculture to destruction.
Henry Doubleday didn’t know he was starting the organics movement when he filled his garden with comfrey. Eve Balfour picked up on it and The Soil Association was born (1946) ... and Jonathon Porrit’s Ecology Party ... and the environmental debate today.
Who created the open all hours 7 day retail week? The Asian shopkeeper – copied 20 years later by Tesco etc.
We don’t always get the credit for the changes we set in motion – heard of Nicola Tesla for instance? Well he invented radio, electricity (AC current), computers, robotics and the death-ray (actually he died, before he completed that one ... allegedly).
Who invented photography? George Eastman – Kodak – 1884? No 58 years earlier Niepce took the first photo, using a technique discovered in 1724 by Schultz. Hercules Florence coined the word Photographie, and where would Eastman be without Daguerre, Fox Talbot & Herschel?
We all move it on and we are all a “work in progress”. And often an invention/idea only takes off when it becomes a business and is popularised. All (honest) enterprise is Social Enterprise. And we all start in a garden shed like Steve Jobs, or a back bedroom, like Anita Roddick surrounded by her 700 urine sample bottles ... or round the campfire with Fred Flintstone.
Notice it’s bloody-minded individuals like Tesla, flying in the face of convention, breaking all the rules who start things; politicians only catch up decades later, having resisted all the way (Nicholas Ridley, Tory Minister of Agriculture, rubbished organics and single-handedly destroyed British Farming. Zero-energy houses were rejected as irrelevant by the DTI in the 1980s).
Checking my facts for this talk, I noticed that few famous pioneers started out on the right track:
- Edward Lloyd wasn’t in banking, or even shipping
- Henry Ford repaired watches
- Karl Benz was a locksmith
- Henry Royce ran an engineering business for 20 years before he built a car
- Godowsky, half of the Kodachrome team was a pianist, whose brother in law was George Gershwin
So find your place – it could be something you’ve not even thought of yet. You could be the next big thing, or the giant whose shoulders a Newton will walk on. Either way you’ve made your contribution.
Never doubt whether your work will change the world – it already has.
Andrew Ferguson - Author and Business/Life Coach
www.lifeshift.co.uk
020 7473 5544
This article was posted by Andrew Ferguson
