The big want to be small. The small want to be big. In the world of business it seems that everyone has size envy.
Large corporations worry about becoming slow moving beasts that can’t adapt to change and are increasingly taking lessons from start ups (or buying them) to inject entrepreneurial ideas and pace into their companies.
Small entrepreneurial companies on the other hand have ambitions to be big but often struggle with the processes and controls necessary to cope with size.
So where’s the middle ground? Well, I would say this wouldn’t I as a sponsor of RAW, but Brother is a great example of how blending global scale with entrepreneurial empowerment can strike a happy medium.
Brother in the UK is a dynamic company that’s full of ideas. We help start hundreds of thousands of businesses a year by doing the boring stuff (really well) - supplying printers which do the work in the back office, and give entrepreneurs the freedom to be entrepreneurial. No hassle, no fuss. Solid, reliable performance day in, day out.
But we also spend a lot of our working time being highly creative as a business. Finding new customers is a major task; the industry we’re in is highly competitive and customer acquisition/retention is everything. We have to be highly entrepreneurial in our style. I spend a lot of my time personally working in the market, networking, learning and observing entrepreneurs in order that we can focus our time and effort on being unnoticed in your business, the way it should be. I don’t expect you to be excited about what we do, more what you do (that bit makes us excited as it means we may benefit from businesses that you start).
What’s more, we started out in true entrepreneurial style 101 years ago when two brothers had a simple idea, which subsequently evolved into a multi-national company. We’ve seen off not only recessions, but World Wars too. How? By continuing to stretch ourselves as a business, by listening, re-inventing ourselves and being expansive in our thinking. In fact, we’re very “unmulti-national” like. That’s why I thought there was a good fit with RAW and why we’re excited about supporting its goal of inspiring business leaders to achieve even greater success.
So, whilst it may not seem obvious at first to you about why we’re involved and why we’re passionate about entrepreneurs and growing businesses, perhaps this short blog explains things. I did a video log which you can watch here. In it, I describe what I view as a “Corpreneur”. That best sums us up.
I’ll be speaking at the event and hope that I’ll get to meet many of you. My chosen topic is “megatrends” in the “think” stream. This should give you some real big picture perspective on the things we think are important in the years ahead.
