Perhaps one of the biggest challenges will be to find a way of communicating
the enterprise message to the over-fifties.
Rich said: “The Make Your Mark campaign is an incredibly powerful brand with
young people and has great recognition and resonance for them. Whether it
has recognition for a 55-year-old Bangladeshi woman in Bradford is another
question. So we will have to get to people in the places where they are.”
He added: “This area is really a work in progress because the first stage of
it is to fully understand that market — can we have a real impact there? Can
we bring some benefit? We believe we probably can, or we wouldn’t be
starting the investigation, but we want to test the market first. The other
thing that niggles in my mind is if someone has reached the age of 50 and
just doesn’t understand enterprise, am I going to change their mind? I am
not sure, so that is what we need to test as well.”
Rich is, however, well aware of the pitfalls of encouraging everyone to start
a business. “It is certainly not just about saying to everybody go and start
a micro-business; it is also about saying you can go and work for somebody
else but in a way that really is enterprising and that contributes to the
business as well. The logical conclusion of encouraging everyone to start up
a business would be that we end up with 40m one-person businesses, which
would be ridiculous. I also personally do not believe that everybody has the
qualities that are needed to set up and run their own business. We shouldn’t
be encouraging people to do that if they can’t.”
Indeed, the message of the Make Your Mark campaign is that starting up a
business is only one way in which people can be entrepreneurial.
“We tell young people that there are three ways you can be enterprising — one
is setting up a business, two is setting up a social enterprise, and three
is being enterprising in your own employment by contributing, so you are not
a passive participant for your employer, you are actually adding value.
Those three things are equally important.”
He concluded: “It is about finding the people who have the ideas but don’t
think they are valuable, or have the skills but don’t know they have them,
and then uncovering them and giving them a push forward to get on with it.”
Do you have ideas on how best to reach these minority groups? Then Harry Rich
would like to hear from you. You can e-mail him at hrich@makeyourmark.org.uk
