OK the Young Chamber Team has been doing a lot of work to continue to support schools and young people with their understanding of 'enterprise' across the country.

Now we know that this is really important stuff assisting to prepare a young person for the world of work by using local employers to provide real and meaningful understanding of jobs and their  future career opportunities that can and do exist for them post education. Now you would think that what I am talking about is quite obvious and that this must be a part of the infrastructure that is supported by government and the educational establishment, it could not possibly be delivered in a random disjointed way across the country could it?

We currently as a country have more than 1,000,000 young people unemployed aged 16 to 24 and this I believe is a direct result of this random support that exists in some areas and not in others. This is no way to plan for future economic growth and development.

The future Human Resource that exists in schools up and down the country has to be better supported  to  enable young people to plan and dream from a young age about what they may one day want to do as a career or job. This needs to be built into the very fabric of the education system as well as encouraging 'possibility thinking' that appears to disappear at some stage between 11 and 16.

Young Chamber will work with any school and any business to give opportunity for all young children of all abilities and from every background to fulfil their goals and ambitions.  Who wants to work with us?   

Change the World, entrepreneurs and all that stuff....

I had the fortunate opportunity a couple of years ago to attend an event at Cambridge University called ‘Silicon Valley comes to Cambridge’, where some of the world’s leading entrepreneurs gave some illuminating presentations on how they made it in business. Many of these representatives were from huge global business brands Google, Facebook, Mozilla etc and I was particularly struck by three things: their youth; their energy; and that they all wanted to change the world, for the better.

Wow! I had never attended any event where you have the founder of ‘Linked In’ stand up in front of an audience that were predominately students and actually say ‘ I want to change the world’ this was just simply fantastic. And the great thing about such statements is that they are actually in the process of doing just that, changing and influencing the world for the better.  Now, as you get older and a little more jaundiced coming across individuals with new thoughts and philosophies on how this can be done is very inspirational, they are ‘possibility’ thinkers, they will have a go at new ideas and new ways of working and if one idea does not quite work out they will have a go at developing something else. This is I believe what entrepreneurship is all about which also includes one element which is probably not so common in many of us, the ability to take risks.

I find it very interesting, the ongoing conversation nationally, about how we develop the next generation of entrepreneurs in this country, as they are very special people. I wonder if we can really train individuals to become entrepreneurs, or are they born to be entrepreneurs. Now I say this, as the people I have met and would describe as being entrepreneurs have a natural drive and ambition to be successful in business or whatever they choose to do. These business people have usually used any asset that they have owned, investing in themselves and their futures including risking losing their homes! Now how many individuals are prepared to do that, risk everything for their business idea! This I believe is the difference between an entrepreneur and us mere mortals, that they are prepared to risk everything in pursuit of their ambitions, that is why they have so much energy, so much drive, as it is exciting and the rewards can be massive, their ideas can be wild, innovative and game changing for the world in which we live.

So, does that mean the rest of us cannot be entrepreneurs! Well, I do believe that we can all be entrepreneurial and enterprising, we might not want to risk everything, but we can come up with great ideas and great business concepts and run very successful companies or be great employees, but whether this will be enough to change the world, well that’s a question…