Sunday, November 07, 2004

Family Doctor of Small Business

Last week I was at Entergy’s Team City Conference in Conroe, TX. Over 60 cities and towns from SE Texas were represented with almost 500 in attendance. There was a great deal of passion shown for economic development by the participants. Unfortunately, I left my notes at the office and won’t get a full report on the various speakers until probably Tuesday.

On the plane to the conference I read Ernesto Sirolli’s book “Ripples from the Zambezi”, one of the speakers at the conference. His approach of a “Family Doctor for Entrepreneurial Businesses” makes a lot of sense and is spreading in use. Here are some of my favorite quotes from his book:

“The last 15 years have confirmed that governments and corporations do not create jobs. Jobs are created by small individual enterprises….Individual entrepreneurs are the powerhouse of the economy.”

“Passion is what propels us during our solitary journey….For fear of living is similar to death.”

“There are about ten million companies in Japan employing fewer than 30 workers each. Of these, nearly seven million are manufacturing companies.”

“No matter how rich Russia is in terms of natural resources…in the final analysis what makes a society proper or not is the collective quality of its citizens.”

There are other great stories in the book and it is a must read for anyone thinking of using local entrepreneurs as part of their economic development strategy.

No comments: