“When you compare South Africa to the rest of the continent, it is clear that we are well below the African average in terms of entrepreneurial intention and activity.”[i] This is very disconcerting. Why is it so? The guys at Heavy Chef decided to find out what was at the root of the problem. They wanted to …
Entrepreneur education in South Africa — We got it all wrong Read More »
I read so little that you’d be forgiven for thinking that I’m barely literate. I mostly read snippets of news about business, tech and politics. Harry Truman stated: “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers” So, if I want to be taken seriously as a thought leader in the world of small …
“How’s business?” I asked. “Fine” he smiled. “Is it profitable?” “I think so: I’ve still got some money at the end of the month.” Some small business owners know where every cent is coming from and going to. Others just don’t have a clue. Which means that they have no idea if their business is …
Why are so many SMME owners serial incubates? Why do so many small business people leave enterprise development (ED) and supplier development (SD) programmes feeling that it wasn’t worth the effort? These disturbing realities gave rise to the title of this article. Here are some useful pointers: Know your business development programmes Make sure that …
What a revelation. Delegates and government officials at the 2018 Southern Africa Business Incubation Conference (SABIC) quibbled over whether our incubators and their skills transfer processes positively impacted our ecosystem sufficiently well enough to get them out of the starting blocks. By contrast, in advanced economies like Sweden’s, where there are over 120 incubators, their …
SA Entrepreneurs are Naïve, Lazy and Self-Centred Read More »
What a revelation. After all these years – no – decades; I had thought: maybe I’m stupid. At school, they told me I was lazy, so I compensated by working like a demon. That didn’t help enough, so maybe I really wasn’t all that bright; maybe that’s why I battled to succeed. To confuse me …