How quickly small and medium enterprises fade in to and out of popular economic discourse!
A few months back, as the UK economy crawled, everyone agreed that SMEs, and not corporate giants, were key to recovery.
But as a growing number of weekday restaurant diners point to the first signs of an SME-powered recovery, it is the corporate big boys, not SMEs, that are hogging the headlines.
More worryingly, small businesses seem content to stick to a familiar pattern: pondering tough economic conditions, lobbying for tax reliefs, grappling capital and credit shortages, and wondering how to succeed in spite of the high costs of technology and overheads.
When will SMEs realise that they are free to write a fresh script for the 21st century?
SMEs could emerge more effective and influential than business behemoths in this globalised world. All they need to do is develop a collective will, and recognise that a proactive quest for community-sensitive business opportunities, and an open mind would yield rich dividends.
How? Former market leader News of the World (circulation: 2.7 million; readership: 7.5 million) is history. Suddenly, there is a big hole in the Sunday newspaper market. There is no law that only rival rags published by media majors can aspire to fill that hole. In other words, SMEs are free to jump in.
There is one more reason. Some believe that media-minors publish numerous local sheets that do no more than celebrate neighbourhood mediocrity. Such 'newspapers' lack credibility and are an apology for genuine journalism. Not many pick up these free sheets as they pile up at vantage points like local library entrances.
Isn't there an opportunity here for SMEs? Why can't SMEs launch, say, 20 small-to-medium scale local Sunday newspapers? Why don't they espouse the cause of value journalism that the 'big society' seems to crave?
Asked about the Czech Republic's transition from a totalitarian regime to a free market economy, national hero and founding president Vaclav Haval is quoted in the book 'Conversations with Power' as saying:
"The restoration of civil society represents a very successful self-structuring from below. And another success story would be all the small businesses that have popped up, small shops, services of various kinds. There are thousands and thousands of small business people who offer different services. Life is more colourful now compared to life under the communists, where everything was gray and uniform."
South Sudan, the world's newest country, will probably desire a Czech-style colourful life. It requires all the help and guidance from the rest of the world. SMEs could play a decisive role. If each SME adopts practices like knowledge management (what works, what doesn't, so on), such information could help other start-ups a great deal. What's more, one-to-one knowledge-sharing could even generate new revenues and potential partners, besides serving the greater good of the global community.
The whole SME approach to business needs a fresh outlook. For example, it's a struggle to get real-time train information on any London tube platform. The loudspeaker announcements are incomprehensible and electronic text-boards are not exactly ubiquitous. Likewise, when a local library branch is closed for refurbishment, I don't get any advance email alert.
I can cite several such annoyances, but the point is, I think there is much small firms could do in this regard, by being proactive and sensitive to potential opportunities. I, for one, would love to see British SMEs proactively study the business practises of other races and communities.
For this, they don't even have to travel the world: just interact with ethnic communities here in the UK. Such cross-cultural knowledge could only help SMEs in an 'equal-opportunity' world of cosmopolitan cities, towns and villages.
For instance, Sindhis, Marwaris, Tamils and Punjabis are highly entrepreneurial Indian communities that have turned huge enclaves in and around London into virtual Little Indias. Be it Wembley, Neasden, Southall, Ilford or East Ham, whole streets buzz with thriving SMEs offering wide-ranging products and services. Surely, there are some success secrets out there worth learning?
SMEs' impressive forays into green markets (solar energy, home insulation, climate change industry) suggest that, more than governments and mega-corporations, small companies could make a big, new difference.
As the world hurtles toward a post-capitalism business ethos, SMEs can and should redefine the paradigm, one in which survival and profit are incidental, and where 'CSR' means not just Corporate Social Responsibility but Community-Sensitive Reconstruction.
If only SMEs comprehend the larger context and their own significant place in it, they would realise that it's time to reimagine their role in the 21st century.
