Business incubation was a concept that started in the United States in 1959 when the Batavia Industrial Centre was opened. Incubation expanded in the US and spread to the UK, then Europe.
The following graphic shows a “potted history” of business incubation.
In Australia, business incubation was supported by governments in the 1990’s but since then, the term has been
somewhat debased by “fashion” and carpet-bagger consultants trying to ride a
catchy phrase transformed it to become an offering of its parts rather than as
a total concept.
Hence many consultants now offer “Business Incubation services” to Indigenous organisations, to the extent that in
Indigenous organisations today the term “Business Incubation” means to offer
community members some form of support to help them start business, whether
this be micro-financing, business planning services, or book-keeping services.
While these individual services can help Indigenous small business owners, taken as individual services they cannot
holistically help develop a start up business invariably conceived by someone
in the community who is starting up from ground zero. Business services provided
singly do not provide the support and tailored tutoring and mentorship to
ensure the business aspirants are taken on the whole journey of business
start-up and establishment. What is an aspirant going to...
I'm about to insult lawyers.
The rest of you - you needn't cheer quite so raucously. I only choose to use lawyers as an example of a highly trained group of professionals, skilled and experienced in what they do and good at their multi-faceted jobs, but because of that, think that they can self-handle other aspects of their business where different specialist skills and experience are required.
I could have chosen accountants, or doctors, or engineers (there, some of you are not so comfortable now are you?).
One of my clients is a firm of commercial lawyers specialising in insolvency. In their business they run the constant risk that their clients cannot pay. To give them their due they always perform at their best and never stint on service, despite this possibility, but now and then, they get caught.
In one such instance they worked for an owner of advertising billboards scattered around the suburbs. Having satisfactorily won the case for their client they found that the client is cash strapped and unable to pay them, asking for a payment plan over a year or so. Clearly not a good situation. The senior partner, true...
Harvard Business School change management guru John Kotter outlines the fundamental differences between Leadership and Management as follows:-
- Establishing direction vs Planning & Budgeting
- Aligning people vs Organising and staffing...
- Motivating & inspiring vs Controlling & Problem-solving.
In Kotter's view, while management produces an order of predictability, order, and the capacity to attain desired short term targets, the qualities of Leadership prodeuces change, often to a dramatic degree and often potentially useful change to create a future vision.
In my consulting, I use my own process called vision-driven planning, first creating a vision for the group (in great detail, to the degree that it is internally viable and credible) which is then quantified through a Balanced Scorecard approach ("If we were to achieve our vision, how must we look and behave in the area of..."). The quantification of the vision is converted into Performance Measures, and then these are redirected as Strategies.
It works exceptionally well for SME's in creating what I call a "POP" or Plan On a Page. However the obstruction I usually see is lack of "Leadership" in that often the SME owners and managers are extremely concerned with the now...
He believes that can only be achieved if the organisation and its leadership demonstrate some fundamental behaviour that point to resilience.
Resilience is not only important in the hard times or during change. It must also be demonstrated when business is going well. That can be a challenge for many leaders, who Oh says are generally suited to only one style of an economy.
Many perform well when the economy is also doing well. Other leaders rise to the challenge when the economy does badly; Oh points out that it is relatively easy to think of great leaders who have turned companies around. However, they may not have been so successful when the business was back on track.
Oh says resilience needs to be a constant, rather...
