An Alternative Approach

Abstract

The previous chapters in this book have looked at current assumptions about the factors which might influence enterprise and entre-preneurship and the apparent inability of current models, based on those assumptions, to explain the poor results of much entrepreneurship policy. This chapter presents an alternative model in the hope that it might provide a better understanding leading to better policy. It does not, however, present a definitive conclusion because, while the case for a lot of current strategy appears to have been disprove, the case for this suggested alternative has not been proved. Indeed scientific method suggests that such theories can never be proved: only accepted as apparently workable until such time as they may eventually be disproved. So there can never be a final conclusion to such arguments and this model, having only just been advanced, has not yet been tested.

A long habit of not thinking something is WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom.

Thomas Paine in Common Sense

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insanity.

Attributed to Albert Einstein

The only question is how much resources the US will commit to its ‘war on drugs’ before trying something that works.

A newspaper comment on the US approach to its drug problem¹

The UK government is committed to evidence- based policy but … often the available evidence base is only partial, and [it] can easily revert to ‘opinion-based’ policy.

Senior Researcher in Enterprise and Small Business, UK Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform²