While politicians focus on macro-economic financial statements, producing papers most likely to prove embarrassingly wrong or irrelevant in hindsight, entrepreneurs are quietly taking the future into their own hands and embarking upon real practical initiatives to change things.
Entrepreneurship is not for everybody - it's a hard-knocks school, but an excellent way to learn how to survive (and sometimes prosper) on very little. Just like boxing champions often emerge from the ghettos, rarely do people start a company if they are entirely comfortable in their previous position. You do it when you have nothing to lose, no position to defend, and everything to gain by changing the game.
An entrepreneur friend who recently started his own ad agency likes to say: ‘imagine if the world economy was 5% more efficient - there would be no crisis.’ Actually, many entrepreneurs I know are bringing 5%, 10%, or 50% efficiencies to their field. However we need to co-opt and support each other if we want to jump start things. Successful entrepreneurs need to lead and seed future entrepreneurs.
Alongside our own business of cross cultural marketing consultancy - translating advertising for global brands around the world - we're making a difference at Textappeal by providing free work space to start-up entrepreneurs. We have selected two entrepreneurial businesses to share our beautiful office space in Battersea, free of charge.
Why? To encourage creative business development and to use the financial downturn as an opportunity for innovation. Greater London Enterprise has offered active support and we were inundated with hundreds of applications, including from The Conservative Party of Poland in the UK and referrals from The Office of the Mayor of London.
Entrepreneurship creates leaps of efficiency and drives future growth all around the world. We have spacious offices in South London by the heliport. Instead of renting out extra workstations that are not occupied at the moment - which would make minimal difference to our bottom line anyway - we put our workstations where our mouth is.
We’re sharing our office space, phone lines, internet, kitchen facilities and meeting rooms with Toffee Jar (an integrated marketing agency) and Xcite Digital (a digital marketing agency), who moved into the premises this month.
We have carefully chosen some very enterprising individuals and are simply giving them a boost – not only is London office space notoriously expensive but entrepreneurs are naturally struggling to finance their new businesses. It is not only the right thing to do, but it is incredibly fun and stimulating for our whole team. I’d encourage any energetic consultancy firm like ours with some extra space to try it out.
Elliot Polak is the founder and CEO of
Textappeal