Entrepreneurial Discipline: You have stolen what is exclusively ours in the Private Sector!

You have stolen what is exclusively ours in the Private Sector!

Someone accosted me last week and asked why, I have insisted to use the term “Entrepreneur” to describe what some of us now call New Public Management – which is what I seek to achieve in engaging governments. For example, I consistently advocate for Entrepreneurial Government as a description of a set of practices that Government Executives, Public Leaders and Managers must apply to create High Performance Government Organisations that are focused on results and impact. Or when I call myself a “Policy Entrepreneur” – I mean finding the most effective and efficient policy solution to our most formidable national development challenges.

Anyways, my dear colleague and assailant then insisted that I was “stealing” a term that was the exclusive preserve of the Private Sector. He was very furious! I told him I was sorry he felt that way, but his position was part of the problem. I pointed out to him that the French economist, Jean-Baptiste Say, who first coined the word entrepreneur in about 1800, said:

“The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.” 

In these times of intense global competitiveness and complexity, the emergence Entrepreneurial Culture in the Public Sector is an imperative.  In fact, it is of the highest priority of governance and the administration of the commonwealth of any nation. I insist that unless a new calibre of Government Entrepreneur emerges that have mastery in the “Stateprenuership”: shifting economic resources from the areas of lower productivity (and in many cases zero or negative productivity, as in the case of corruption) to strategic national interests and areas of higher productivity, the inevitable decline and fall of the nation is certain.

The fact is while a lot of some nations are behind, the Government Entrepreneurial Movement is almost two decades old. In a season of global and national economic decline, it is worth reminding Citizens and Business that we must vote into office more than just politicians, we must elect men and women that have a Spirit of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, as today’s challenge will test even the most prepared Public Leader.

So, if there was ever something Government could steal from the Private Sector this is it, “Entrepreneurship”, and I would do it with all pleasure.