Many of us spend years of our short lives sat at a desk dutifully listening to a speaker telling us all the things we are supposed to know. It is all to easy to reach the ripe old age of 21 without ever having considered that Education might not be the answer. I am currently in my fourth year of University Course and I lose count for how many years I have been in the Academic wash. Frankly I am still undecided.
A recent Russel Group directive (http://tinyurl.com/6cy9g5n) got me thinking. Students already struggle to choose their A-levels and a career route through what is an increasingly unforgiving job market. Why are we upping the stakes of what is already a confusing and perceivably rigged game of employment roulette? By saying to young people that they must put themselves through the mill of traditional disciplines at A-level and University we seem to think we are grooming a generation of scholars, but my suspicion is that we might simply be preparing a very expensive fleet of librarians and Professors. After all, research becomes more than a little "Academic" if no one ever leaves University to put it into practise.
Now I do appreciate the value of training your mind to perform mental arithmetic, or look critically at the world around us, however I have concerns about how certain key skills are compartmentalised in Modern Education and some Graduate training schemes. Is it really sensible to partition basics such as IT, Accounting or even Citizenship into neat little packages that are to be squirrelled away onto a CV somewhere? It seems to me that there is a disconnect between the relentless hounding of Academic Certification, and real world personable skills which make people function well within a job or society as a whole. Is it really right or appropriate in an age of equal opportunities that people will often be relegated to a pay-grade for their entire life according to the degree they chose? (http://www.walletpop.co.uk/2010/05/18/the-best-and-worst-paying-university-degrees/)
Why is it that certification is needed as a passport to perform even the most basic of tasks. From food safety to Masters degrees in Corporate Sustainability, the sound of rubber stamping is frankly deafening. Ask many people in Business who they will go to when they actually need something doing and I would place a small wager that it is unlikely to be the person "most qualified". Far more likely to be the the practical person that has a red tape allergy and likes to get things done.
So do we really need teachers, lecturers and qualifications for the world to keep turning? Well the answer is of course we all benefit from our individual interactions with these people. What is alarming is that 'real world experience' is increasingly becoming the antidote to Academic learning. Many trade apprentices work their way into a tidy salary whilst their University going colleagues are left languishing with debt and sometimes bleak prospects. A prime example of what can be achieved from practical application and a resistance of prolonged Acedemia is WH Smith Prodigy Richard Handover who worked his way from Paperboy to CEO (http://tinyurl.com/4q2h5kq).
My advice is this. If you are a young person embarking on the thorny trek through Academic life then follow your instincts on what you are good at what you enjoy, you DO know best.
My plea to employers and the Academic industry is to recognise the gulf between preaching and practise, hopefully before the new fees structure starts to look like a bit of a rip off...
The strap-line of the day is "Economic Recovery". Be it stimulus packages or streamlining there would appear to be a singular nag uniting contemporary news stories. We are coaxed into recalling the blitz spirit and 'knuckling down' for the good of our nations economy.
Those in work are encouraged to spurr on British business, those at University are schooled to drive forward the next age of innovation, and everyone pays in the form of increased VAT and inflation. All this in the name of climbing from the trough of recession. Thankfully most of our stif-upper lipped population are on board. Dutifully beavering away to put a few more cherries in the GDP pie. But I am afraid to say that we are being let down, badly.
Not necessarily by the financial policy of the new Coalition, not even by the bankers who have been so villainized in the last few months. The shoots of recovery and the gardeners who tend them are being crippled by a frosty and frankly embarrassing UK transport network. How can people be expected to pour themselves into their employment or starting new ventures when they have to sit in 2 hours of traffic jams every day? How can anyone be expected to be optimistic about travelling the country to meet new business prospects when it costs a small fortune for the pleasure of a smelly seat on a smellier train with only space age sliding toilets to brighten the journey?
The folly of it all struck me today whilst walking 300 metres through a bustling research park after being unceremoniously ejected uncomfortably far from my destination. I turned back to see the bus parked in a line of traffic as far as the eye can see, single drivers in every car and even fewer occupants on the bus.
Freedom of activity is the lifeblood of business. By strangling our ability the travel the Government and travel operators of this nation run the risk of stagnating what could otherwise be a rather jolly climb back into prosperity. Couple this with a faltering yet ever-stifling green agenda and we have an unfortunate cocktail of travel woe which shows no sign of abating.
There once was a time where owning your own departments in every available business function was seen as a badge of honour for larger companies. With growth came new departments, and with new departments came biddable staff with skills in a certain field. The ultimate destination being your own tower block with tidy little packages of payroll, advertising, IT services, marketing and even tea ladies.
However in today's business world there is a rumbling tectonic shift. In my last job I was working at the sharp end of outsourcing with a UK IT services company. It opened my eyes to what is an increasing trend towards dissolving small, isolated components of a business which are not the core competency of the organisation and replacing them with a far more manageable alternative.
Now in many ways this makes perfect sense, why bother furnishing an office, recruiting staff, training them, and moulding them into the company "fit", only to find that 2 years down the line they aren't quite what is needed. In this case you will be left with a significant overhead that might not be pulling its weight. You wouldn't dream of trying to build your own mobile network to keep you in the loop, the result would be a horrible mess of cups and strings that would invariably be a waste of time. So this begs the question, why try to build your own IT department or marketing team from scratch?
No doubt the prospect of outsourcing whole business functions to specialist providers will put the wind up some business owners. Of course it can be a double edged sword, the providence of the provider is likely to be key to your success and growth and you have to be ready to put parts of your business in their hands. But on the flip side, that leaves both of your hands free to delve into the core competency of what your business actually does.
You probably already outsource things like telephone lines, maybe even data backup. What could be next for you and your business? This isnt just a persuit of big business either; BusinessWeek's Mohanbir Sawhney spins the outsourcing trend as an hourglass model with the majority of shift occurring at the top and bottom of the company size range. Some more savvy Entrepreneurs have coined the phrase of "Transformational outsourcing" where the somewhat stigmatised trend of outsourcing functions of Western organisations to India or China can infact be embraced in order to vastly improve efficiency, http://tinyurl.com/2t6qc3 (well worth a read).
I have been following CIO's trends for 2010 and looking back many of their suggestions have rung true (http://tinyurl.com/ycamjqo).
My guess is that within a few years we will see a good deal of consolidation into specialist areas with non-specialist business functions being pushed aside and picked up by someone else who cant get enough of delivering your tea or fixing your IT problems.
The real question is, will this shift bring a much heralded new age of efficiency, or will it stack a house of cards just waiting for a gentle breeze?
The traditional model of founding a technology start-up required huge capital investment in order to purchase premises, equipment and eggheads to work it all. Increasingly however such huge capital outlay is no longer necessary. With IT and technology expertise becoming more ubiquitous in our society and many premises laying empty with desperate land lords, the tide may be turning.
With the diversification of the available sources of capital it is just possible that we might be looking at an endangered species in the form of graying businessmen who perch lavishly on a personal fortune and threaten to transform a companies prospects with one foul swoop. Succesful venture capital investments dropped around 40% in the two year period up to June 2010 (http://tinyurl.com/67ul5q9). Now on the face of it this might spook some Entrepreneurs who have the idea of the century and need to get it off the ground. But my suggestion is that far from being restricted by a lack of Venture Capital, you are in fact being liberated.
Always remember: "If a VC fund can’t plan on getting its money out of a business, the money never goes in" (http://tinyurl.com/6xeo2qw). Now in many ways this makes perfect sense. How many of us have seen crackpot ideas on dragons den (cucumber condoms being my personal favourite http://tinyurl.com/ycm42yd) which benefit from having some spots knocked off them by a discerning business expert who is unlikely to part with their own money for a business idea which could never feasibly work. But this is an extreme example. If you have founded a concept, justified it with market research, and already started selling it, then maybe you should bypass the VC all together and save yourself the trouble.
A successful Entrepreneur whom I have a lot of time for told me recently that "If you can sell something to your friend, and then to your friend's friends without too much effort, then you have a business". He was saying that feasibly a good business idea will fund itself if you nurture it right (check out http://www.yoodoo.biz/). Another emerging alternative source of Captial is the "crowdsourcing" model. Websites such as GrowVC and IndieGoGo provide a means for an Entrepreneur to float their idea and gain lots of 'Micro investments' in order to reach their required capital level (more here: http://tinyurl.com/6zauhxn). You will all have seen a canny Entrepreneur try to secure two dragons for the price of one? Why not gain the backing and experience of 1000 investors instead?
Venture Capitalists are no doubt a good way to back your business, but only if they are right for the business and you are right for them. What we need to move away from is an individual's word being law. Most respectable VC's will have themselves been in the penny-less start-up position at some point in their life, and chances are they didn't use Venture Capital to climb the first rung of the ladder or wait for the stamp of approval from someone whom they had just met. No single person can lean back in their chair and hold the market in their hand, professing that their thumbs up or thumbs down will determine the ultimate fate of a fledgling business concept, and if that is how they base their investment then I would 'venture' the well know adage:
"A fool and his money are soon parted" - And I think it might just come true.
Every day I get emails telling me about the next amazing feature of X, or new release of Y. I like to dabble in some of the muddier ponds of technology available in this fine age so you could say that I am looking for trouble by continually scouring the internet for the next gadget or software trick to double efficiency. I'm sure many of us can relate to this in some degree, as it would seem that Business and Personal lives are inescapably governed by what technology allows us to do.
My question is, are we really working smarter and faster? Or does every auto-complete or keyboard short cut make us that little bit stupider?
The age-old head slap moment where you forget to attach a file to that all important email. I sat down to compose on my Gmail account yesterday and intended to send an attachment to a colleague. Upon clicking "Send" I was politely informed by Gmail that I "had used the word 'attached' in my email, but I had not attached a file". Now at first I was heartened by this gentle, if slightly condescending remark. Much like the firm reminder from a Primary School teacher that writing primarily in crayon was not going to cut it when I moved on in life. Don't get me wrong, I like this feature, what concerns me is that next time I will kick back and let the computer check for my mistakes. With nothing but a red underline or a last minute warning message screening us from professional embarrassment, how long before we fall foul?
The branding trend of slipping in the term "Smart" could be a bit of a misnomer. 'Smart cars' promise a revolution in city transport and assist those who struggle with space or parking (http://tinyurl.com/63a34b3). 'SMART' interactive whiteboards with interactive touch screens and virtual pens profess to aid presentation skills and bring media together to improve teaching effectiveness (http://tinyurl.com/5sfkxjh). Voice dialling on now ubiquitous 'Smartphones' claim to alleviate the tiresome need for us to use our hands. So the general consensus seems to be that if we bolt on certain technology, then we become smarter in the way we work?
Well my argument would be that we are wandering a fine line. There are 3 camps who I would suggest most people fall into. First your non-adopters and your technophobics. (Laggards, your elderly father who still doesn't trust radio waves let alone iPads). Second you have those who take what they are given and pick up gadgets and efficiency tricks as they become common place and not before (Late majority, your average mobile phone user who dabbles with apps and downloads). Thirdly you have your gadget hunters who go out of their way to find "Smart" ways of getting the job done (Early adopters, like your mate Dave who regularly presents you with something flashy and largely useless, but nevertheless admirable). The more you gravitate towards the third camp, the greater the risk of what I call Technological lobotomy.
If you are concerned about your rapidly declining IQ as you read this, fear not, simply perform this test: When you next write an email, turn off the spellcheck and see if you can still formulate basic words and sentences. If you are horrified by the results then a brief spell of Neo-Luddism might be in order (http://tinyurl.com/ycnj9n9)
**Update 2/1/11: Nukes and babies protected by AI: http://tinyurl.com/5rcs4vt
**Update 5/2/11: Good software = stupid? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11263559
