I was recently honoured with the Clunies Ross , so it’s time to turn my musings to being an Entrepreneur.
An Entrepreneur is someone who initiates a new enterprise or a new activity within an existing enterprise. I have always been an entrepreneur throughout my career, but much of it within big organisations.
The hardest thing I have ever done was to spin-off a company from an existing big organisation. In general, I think that when you are within an organisation, you are probably seen to be creating a useful initiative, or not even being seen at all. Once you engage with the outside world, or try to set up a new entity – it has the potential to activate all sorts of emotional reactions from jealousy and competitive concerns to risk aversion.
In their 1997 book Entrepreneurship, John Legge and Kevin Hindle wrote “Some people…feel a powerful urge to build an organisation that will do something or produce something that has not been done before. When they put these urges into practice, they become Entrepreneurs”
Whether that’s a definition of me or of an Entrepreneur, it’s spot on.
Entrepreneurs are usually innovators and agents of change, so of course we face barriers. Being in an Entrepreneurial team requires personal characteristics of courage.
The Entrepreneur must be determined and be able to inspire and influence people to come on what may be seen as a risky, and perhaps uncomfortable, adventure fraught with uncertainty.
Being an Entrepreneur has always been tough
The West Riding of England was predominantly agricultural until the 16th century, but things changed over the next two to three hundred years.
The agricultural workers started to take up cloth making as a cottage industry, which put them outside of the control of the guilds.
Whilst the role of the guilds was, in theory, to maintain quality, they became enforcers of a mass of restrictive rules, which were enforced by inspection committees by marking flawless goods with a special mark or symbol.
Some modern writers (such as Ogilvie, 2011) believe that, the guilds negatively affected quality, skills, and innovation. Ogilvie says that industry began to flourish only after the guilds faded away.
In the 16th century there were other reasons to become an Entrepreneur and take up cloth making. A peasant worked his Lord’s lands, and paid him certain taxes in return for use of the land. The dues were usually in the form of labour, so by moving away from dependency on his Lord’s lands, the peasant had more time to generate a cash income and independence.
Their success eventually propelled them into the Industrial Revolution, and the Entrepreneurship mantle then moved to those who saw the next opportunity as one of mass labour.
The West Riding cloth weavers example can be seen as people seeing an opportunity for an enterprise, and establishing it.
They found opposition, not from their past (the Lords) or present customers, but from the regulators and peak bodies, acting like Trade Unions. Then the world, not only catching up but going forward with new momentum — and more appropriate regulation, be it skewed to product quality, rather than employee welfare.
Forging forward in the face of opposition
During my most recent Entrepreneurial journey, I wanted to make top quality hearing aids more accessible, in both convenience and cost, whilst simultaneously improving the industry’s distribution and service model.
The IHearYou system was launched in 2011 with fanfare, and the reactions I got from the audiologists was very unpleasant. I gained a strong collection of hate mail.
The Peak Body declined to endorse or promote a seminar I ran in conjunction with a leading University, called Audiology in the Connected Century. It was fully booked, but not surprisingly, only two audiologists only attended.
The IHearYou system allows people who can help themselves to do so, whilst, those who need help are supported by our tele-audiology service, overcoming barriers of access and cost. The Academic sector is now looking at self-fit hearing aids and tele-audiology.
We have become on trend, although we are several years ahead.
I care most about helping people hear, and we will continue to perfect our hearing aids and services, but things will change. That is where being a serial entrepreneur may come in handy.
Ogilvie, Sheilagh (2011). Institutions and European Trade: Merchant Guilds, 1000–1800. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-50039-5.
Comment: What obstacles have you faced along the way to achieving your goals? How did you overcome them?