"Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled."
Howard Stevenson, Harvard Business School
You'll know by now that I curate a series of events for Google designed to facilitate different thinking and debate around some of the more interesting issues facing planners today, and I'm delighted to say that our first event of 2012 (the first of four quarterly events this year) is going to focus on the subject of entrepreneurship. As we've said in our description of the event:
"With the current movement toward maker culture, and learning to code through services such as Code Academy, there is real appetite amongst planners for more making, doing, creating and just playing around with stuff. Might this be where the real entrepreneurialism in agencies will come from? With technology empowering people like never before, how do we use it to tell great stories for new projects? How do we make room for innovation? What makes someone take the leap into the unknown?"
Part of this is all about understanding what this means in the context of agencies and building on the themes of the events that we had running through 2011 on Agile Planning, Design Thinking in Planning and the New Operating System for Agencies which have each seen some brilliant speakers and some fascinating debate. Another part is about how technology is empowering entrepreneurs in new ways and the growth of 'professional amateurs'. But another very important part I think, is about what this means for us as individuals. Whether we can make room for starting our own fires, what it takes to bootstrap a business and build a brand with very little money, and the value to us and our employers of our own side-projects.
It's a lot of ground to cover but we have two exceptional and inspiring speakers to help us do it: ad-man turned serial entrepreneur David Hieatt (founder of The Do Lectures, and Howies which became one of the most influential sports brands of the last decade, and now founder of Hiut), and the very smart Toby Barnes of Chromaroma and Mudlark.
The event is on 21st February at Google's HQ in London and is strictly invite only (limited on space I'm afraid). But as before, I have a few guest passes to give away, first come first served, to readers of this blog. If you'd like one, please do drop me a line (please note I won't be able to respond to everyone but will notify the successful applicants).
