Thanks a lot for your insights and contribution to the enterprise manifesto – I hope the project continues to throw up good ideas

Thanks a lot for your insights and contribution

Thoughtful stuff and I am sympathetic. Change in our society is up to us, we all have to take responsibility for what we do, and make it work, but I do agree the media narrative tends to focus obsessively on figureheads in the form of senior politicians, but also bigger businesses more than they should given we live in a society where many people get through the day without worrying about either.

However, government, when deployed well, can make everybody better off and is important. While there is a legitimate debate as to where boundaries of it should be – we need it to work, and in some areas it is our only option.

I say this as a prelude to the value of politicians. Good politicians can help make sure the direction of travel is in line with one broadly supported by the public – and challenge those who actually need to deliver it to follow through. That includes us the wider public sometimes – I am sure I am not the only one who has been personally inspired to make small changes as a result of being challenged to do so by a politician.

We also really need to hold those with power accountable, and politicians should in theory have the skills and incentives to be good at that, but in the UK, it is way lower than in other systems. I always found it quite remarkable that I would work on a policy area, where members of the team, would debate amougst themselves which options would really work or be worth the hassle. And then once announced – remarkably little challenge from outside, or indeed even tricky questions, MPs don’t generally want to annoy ministers, opposition MPs for the most part seem to find getting stuck into much detail boring, interested pressure groups generally want to be seen as constructive, while academics tend to quickly go back to their research.

But it is amazing how often the media narrative simply ignores most of the substance. I have seen basic mistakes be corrected in the hundreds of millions of pounds, with no comment whatsoever, with front page drama over lobbying over much smaller sums. I’ve often seen papers, that took months of careful work by civil servants and ministers to produce, setting detailed plans for change, with the evidence for the options discarded as well as chosen, committing huge sums of OUR money – and get almost zero mainstream media coverage, outside perhaps of a small story in inside pages of the FT, which I think should get a partial honourable exemption from your comments, as it covers business quite well as well, at least the bigger fish, although it takes time to catch up with real innovation.

The only way the world will change is when its citizens make those changes, but too many want an easy out, and they want politicians to pass legislation that will fix all our problems.

We both know that’s not going to happen any time soon.

But those “in charge” are so busy covering their arse and attacking each other that it’s rare to hear words of encouragement. It’s clear that we are the ones who need to play the role of Sean Connery,.

had exactly the same experience at University of Nottingham earlier this year, spoke to 700 students who were all doing degrees in entrepreneurship/business.

A sea of people fidgetting, on mobile devices,laptops,whispering,making notes. It seems we are losing our ability to focus without constant distraction. As a result everything becomes superficial. Life lacks depth.

Have just finished reading Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. It has made me conscious of how often I am not 100% ‘in the moment’, mind in control, judging, controlling, distracted, resentful, angry, in fear of some future event occuring or thinking that happiness will arrive when I have achieved this or that.

Total surrender to the moment is incredibly liberating, and suddenly great things start to flow as if by magic.

We need to stop being Human Doings and return to life as Human Beings!

Rachel

Information is a good thing, by its nature it conveys value and power. What is not useful is meaningless data or content. The change we face is that a lot of traditional content has become meaningless and it increasingly fails to convey value.

For example: Traditional media now have sacrificed proper journalism and all run the same stories using PR’s and newswires that are out of date by the time they are read. Take the weather, we can get a free update what the weather will be like from numerous sources. It isn’t content anybody would readily pay for. On the other hand detailed long range forecasts are worth a fortune to retailers, farmers etc.. who can gain a commercial advantage from this information.

New technologies and behaviours mean we have to re-evaluate all the sea of data and content that is available to us. We need to use new technologies and learn new ways of managing to turn meaningless content into into information that we can profit from.

The people who rubbish Twitter or Facebook don’t understand that this is about a broader trend than whether these are good companies or services. The world’s content is being surfaced now it is just a question of whether you are going to drown or bathe in it.