26 March 2010 by Sophie
I've just come back from a two-week holiday in India. I read
Aravind Adiga's brilliant novel The White Tiger while I was out
there. It's the rags to riches story of a Delhi-based entrepreneur.
But this is no fairytale. His success depends on taking the gritty,
bloody, corrupt or dishonest path at pretty much every junction.
The novel suggests this is the only way to make it to the top, if
you start out at the bottom. It pokes uncomfortably at many of the
misconceptions we tend to have about the exciting new
entrepreneurial scene in India, and highlights a lot of corruption
and unfairness going on behind closed doors - and a crushing number
of barriers to those of lower 'castes'.
Reading the book, and being able to see small examples of its
truth, made me really take a step back and think about the state of
entrepreneurialism in the UK. It made me feel a totally refreshed
sense of appreciation for how incredibly lucky we are as people
doing business here. Sure, we might grumble. But starting up and
running a business in the UK is actually pretty great. And it's
well, well worth a shot if you're not doing it already. Here are a
few reasons why:
1. We don't have to bribe
anyone to be able to run our businesses in
peace. Not the police, not politicians, not bigger
businesses.
2. We can make things happen for
ourselves, regardless of our social-economic background.
It doesn't matter whether you grew up in a council estate or a
country mansion - you can still start up an incredible business,
and people will respect you for that no matter what.
3. We have charities and social
enterprises like The Prince's Trust and the Bright
Ideas Trust to help out those without access to
finance from elsewhere. Everything can be within our reach here if
we're willing to work hard enough for it.
4. We have access to more than 600,000
grant schemes to help us on our way. (Find out more about
how to win a grant or search for
small business grants.)
5. We understand that the traditional
model of education isn't for everyone. So the government
offers traineeships and vocational qualifications and
apprenticeships to help us get the skills we need to run our
businesses.
6. We have a thriving entrepreneurial
community who are always ready to help each other out,
rather than step over each other in a scramble to the top. The
Smarta community is a prime example of how willing business owners
are to help each other.
7. We have amazing access to free
business resources - whether that's books from your local
library, market research reports from the British Library's
Business & IP Centre, your local Business Link centre, or
Smarta itself - there is always free resource there for you.
8. We can trade with almost any country
on the planet we like, and the government's UK Trade
& Investment department will be there to help us
every step of the way. And we don't have to bribe them for
assistance!
9. We can outsource like crazy to slash
costs. Even though the pound is struggling, it's still
stronger than the vast majority of currencies out there. That means
we can outsource all our boring functions or IT or development work
or phone-answering systems to countries where labour is much
cheaper.
10. Our legal system is very
reliable compared to the rest of the world's. It's not
perfect, obviously, but if a dodgy business partner or supplier
screws you over, you can do something about it, and usually get
your money back. Read this case
study to see what we mean.