And so we bid farewell to 2007, a year that ‘feels’ like it’s been a real success. Certainly, enterprise and the simple notion of starting a business punctured the nation’s consciousness like never before.

Dragons’ Den and The Apprentice are entertainment shows but no matter how removed from the realities of business, they still inspire people and generate interest.

Celebrity entrepreneurs are the new celebrity chefs. Feel free to dismiss celebrity as the shallow charade that it is, but celebrity makes role models.

YO! Sushi founder Simon Woodroffe said to me this week, ‘kids now want to be Beckham, a film star or an entrepreneur’.

Like millions of others, Simon’s inspiration was Branson. ‘He was more like a rock star, he had long hair and he made business exciting and mean more than just cufflinks and boardrooms’.

Role models are vital. In the US, entrepreneurs, particularly self-made millionaires who have risen from humble beginnings, are heralded as the icons of the American Dream. They’re respected. They’re heroes. They’re the protagonists in fairytales and Hollywood alike.

In the UK until now we’ve taken the opposite stance. Entrepreneurs if anything were given begrudging recognition, isolated from ‘the people’ and exposed wherever possible as fatcats.

Thank goodness it’s changing. How many entrepreneurs could the average person on the street or a 14 year-old name, say, two years ago? Branson, Sugar, Stelios maybe? I’d guess there’s a fair few others now that roll off the tongue.

There are lots of reasons for it of course but mainly because business suddenly ‘feels’ so accessible to us all.

I’ll stop short of praising the government – the abolition of capital gains tax taper relief and the present economic climate is why I think it’s perhaps more apt to talk about 2007 as ‘feeling’ like a good year.

But, that said, there’s been so much good work going on. The government-backed Enterprise Insight’s Make Your Mark campaign has been spreading the word within schools, youth culture and disadvantaged communities where it can make a real difference.

It ensured this year’s Enterprise Week was easily the biggest, best and most widely publicised so far and also contributed massively to 2007’s other major business milestone, the acceptance and promotion of social enterprise.

I’m a huge fan of social enterprise and think it’s going to dominate the small business headlines in 2008 – but that’s another blog.

Here’s to next year!