First class women – The Prowess Awards 2008

Prowess holds a lot of events. We pride ourselves on our ability to bring our members together, combining professional development and a good time.  The team puts a huge effort into what we call X factors to make our events extra special. 

 

Occasionally we make mistakes – but only once – we’re fast learners!  On rare occasions, our events surpass excellence.  The Prowess Awards ceremony 2008 was such an event: succeeding in generating an extraordinary synergy which touched almost everyone there. 

 

We got a lot of the basics right.  There was general approval for a lunch event – much better for women: no need to agonise over evening wear/ finding a baby-sitter/ booking a hotel.  Birmingham was popular too – easier to get to for those coming from the North and not bad for the South.  And Friday – the weekend starts here: everyone was ready to relax and enjoy themselves! 

 

Welcoming speaker, awards judge Joy Nicholls, set the tone by urging everyone to be confident about being a ‘first class woman, rather than a second class man’.  No problem in such company: and a great mantra to hold on to.   

 

Finalists included role models, support providers and thinkers: all at the top of their game and all committed to supporting other women.  Winners had us laughing, crying and awe-struck with their acceptance speeches.   All of them stunned to have won and determined to make an impact as a result.  I have no doubt they will and that their resolve is considerably strengthened by the associations they made at the ceremony.

 

A full list of finalists and winners is available at: http://www.prowess.org.uk/awards/aboutawards.asp

On the cusp?

Spring is (nearly) sprung and it’s time for prowessblog to come out of its winter hibernation. What’s happening in women’s enterprise? The annual Prowess conference – arguably the biggest event in the women’s enterprise calendar –  – is taking place at Peterborough this week. What’s the buzz? Well its theme is ‘Fit for the Future’, and there’s a general, though guarded, optimism that women’s entrepreneurship is shaping up for the future and that its role in economic growth and wellbeing is being more readily recognised by regional and central government.

With an Enterprise White Paper due for publication later in March, seen as a long-term blueprint for the growth of enterprise in the UK, it was important to ensure that women’s enterprise was firmly on the agenda. Support from the Ministerial team at BERR, John Hutton and Stephen Timms, and useful input from Prowess members, the Task Force and others at a number of consultation meetings, ensured that WE was core to early white paper drafts. The reshuffle in late January, following Peter Hain’s resignation, led to Timms’s premature departure (to Work & Pensions) and a new face, Baroness Shriti Vadera, in BERR. It’s too early to say how much of a champion Vadera will be, and the draft White Paper has gone through radical changes since her arrival, but it seems likely there will still be a gender focus across its key themes. 

In the regions, some significant developments, including the establishment of a Women’s Enterprise Centre of Expertise in West Midlands (partnership between AWM and Prowess) – a strategic initiative to change attitudes and influence mainstream economic development and business support. Congratulations to Her Business in London following the launch of its new women’s business centre in Newham, and to Sue Stockdale for launching a London chapter of the US-based Women’s Presidents Organisation  in London. And, of course, the formal launch of WEConnect (linking women-owned businesses with corporate contracts) is also taking place this week (www.weconnect.org.uk)

So no lack of activity on the ground, but we still need to see that major ‘scaling-up’ of women’s enterprise, supported by a robust strategic framework and resourced at the right level by government (and, where appropriate, the private sector). The White Paper can provide that framework and ensure that the UK is truly a world leader in women’s entrepreneurship – but it needs to be bold and innovative – and not afraid to differentiate what really works for women. The impact of central policy initiatives for women’s enterprise in the US is well-documented. 20 years after the passing of the Women’s Business Ownership Act, it’s worth noting that the national Women’s Business Centre initiative has now been confirmed by the Small Business Administration (SBA) as a permanent government-supported programme – acknowledging that women-focused support is a mainstream requirement and not a temporary sticking plaster.

Are we truly ‘on the cusp’ of a similar stepping-up of the agenda in the UK? Quite possibly – if government, and particularly BERR,  is courageous enough.

Watch out for post-conference blog at the end of the week.

Happy Women’s Enterprise Day

The comment piece below, by Prowess’s Exec Director, Erika Watson, has appeared in the FT today. Please let us know what you think about the issues she raises.

Women’s Enterprise Day is here again today. Around the country women will be encouraged to “go for it” and start their own business. It appears to be working. For the first time more than 1m women in the UK work for themselves and the numbers of self-employed women are slowly growing, against a broader trend of male stagnation and decline in enterprise.   Scratch the surface though and you can start to feel uneasy.

The growth in new businesses owned by women is not being sustained. There is strong evidence that women’s businesses are not surviving as long as those of their male counterparts and not making it through to the next level. There are brilliant success stories but also tales of human misery and dashed dreams.   New research* from Prowess finds that exposure to enterprise through promotional campaigns and role models could actually be deepening fear of failure and feelings of anxiety, rather than generating entrepreneurial dynamism. National policy is driving short, sharp, quick-fix business support by public agencies and one-off conferences and workshops. Women are told they are “naturally risk averse”, drenched with inspiration, then left to get on with it. Is it any wonder so many are confused or giving up?   Yet, the gender gap in enterprise accounts for a significant proportion of the productivity gap between the UK and the US. Women are also the most significant group when it comes to market failure in business support services. So the public sector has an important role in driving change and it is too important to get wrong.  

Sensible solutions abound: the UK is regarded by the rest of the world as a leader in best practice in women’s enterprise development and we have top academics and researchers in this area. UK business support delivery should reflect the fact that women start businesses at a more gradual pace and are more likely to use and value business training, mentoring and networking. There are often issues of confidence and self-esteem and problems accessing finance. Supportive relationships are essential, whether that is business counselling, mentoring or peer support circles, so that when confidence and experience grow, women can be supported to take the next step to start or grow their business.  

So why the resistance to changing the model of business support? Lack of budget? I do not think so. The government is serious about changing enterprise culture and has poured hundreds of millions of pouinds into enterprise in schools, young enterprise, disadvantaged areas etc. Discomfort about promoting women in such a male-dominated arena? More likely. Sadly this agenda has usually only progressed under the leadership of female ministers, who come along rarely in key business and Treasury roles. But there are also male champions who see this as the economic issue that it is. Remember, we used to have a school system that worked better for boys, based on information and exams.   Male and female learning styles are different and we are wasting huge amounts of latent productivity in a refusal to support enterprise development that enables women to develop new and fledgling businesses in their own way. Regional development agencies and other partners are working hard to ensure that women are included in mainstream support programmes. For many women that service is more than adequate. But others want a more holistic approach, which integrates specialist advice with an understanding that when you start a business you are also changing your life and relationships, and which stays with you along the journey.  

The government is consulting on a new strategy for enterprise fit for the changing global economy. It is an economy where female attributes are increasingly becoming a competitive advantage. In a fast-moving, highly networked, niche-focused business world, women are innovative and adaptive, empathetic and responsive, great communicators and jugglers. As social responsibility, ethical reputation and environmental concern become essential, Prowess’s report also finds that women are more likely to have social and ethical aims for their businesses.   Women are leading the way in the way they do business. If government policy and systems of support could catch up: now that truly would be inspirational!The writer is executive director of Prowess, the UK alliance that supports the growth of women’s business ownership* State of Women‘s Enterprise in the UK. Nov 2007. www.prowess.org.uk 

Goodbye to Anita

For a generation of female entrepreneurs, there was only one role model – Anita Roddick. Anita died at the age of 64 on 10th September from a brain haemorrhage. For the last three decades, whenever anyone’s been asked to name a well-known businesswoman, the Body Shop founder and campaigner was usually first on the list. She cared passionately about her business, the environment and many good causes – but perhaps her greatest achievement was changing the way people thought about big business. The City didn’t understand her, but we’d like to think its denizens eventually came to respect her achievements and what she stood for.

prowessblog has a few memories of Anita – the first way back in 1985 when Edinburgh had its first Body Shop franchise. It was owned by a likeable guy – Peter – who perhaps didn’t quite ‘get’ the environmental motivations behind the brand. When he’d made a bit of money from his (unexpectedly) lucrative franchise outlet, he treated himself to a green Rolls Royce. And when Anita arrived at Edinburgh Airport one day on a company visit, he turned up to collect her in his ‘Roller’. She was none too impressed and made much of her own mode of transport at the time – an old CV. She took some persuading to get into the car and Peter got a lecture on environmentally-friendly transport for the journey. Apparently she was much more careful vetting the ‘eco-credentials’ of her franchisees from then on.

 Another memory is meeting her in Glasgow more than a decade later when she was helping to promote the Inner City 100 initiative. A whirlwind of energy, passion and unwilling to stick to any script.  A few years later, a conference in Armagh in Northern Ireland. A trickier encounter, chairing Anita and having to tell her that her time was up!

Her impact on women’s entrepreneurship has been immense and her start-up story of persistence, commitment and ingenuity will have inspired thousands of women across the UK and beyond. She provoked strong views, not always favourable, but she was a feisty operator and a great communicator. The challenge now is to ensure that we have a few dozen more ‘Anitas’ – inspirational female entrepreneurs who will encourage the next generation of young women to dream of business success and changing the world in the process.

Fusion & WBEC – raising the bar

The first conference for women-owned businesses in science, engineering, construction and technology – Fusion – was held in Birmingham last week. Chaired by Maggie Philbin, a real champion for women in SECT, and facilitated by UKRC (the resource centre for SET gender issues – http://www.setwomenresource.org.uk/) and Prowess, it was a lively event. Dawn Gibbins, CEO and Chairman of Flowcrete, inspired and energised the audience with her success story.  Since introducing Feng Shui to the business, turnover has increased by more than 30% and when you listen to Dawn’s passion and genuine enjoyment of her business, you don’t doubt that Flowcrete will continue its worldwide manufacturing success. UKRC & Prowess launched two new publications at Fusion – ‘Under the Microscope: Female entrepreneurs in SECT’ and ‘Women-Friendly Incubators and Managed Workspaces’. Both are downloadable in pdf format from: http://www.prowess.org.uk/publications.htm

The conference was also attended by three of the founding members of the Women’s Business Enterprise Council (WBEC UK) – Gwen Turner of Pfizer, Sarah Bates of New Technology Steel and Marianne Schoenig of Accenture. WBEC was announced formally on the 12th July in Birmingham – it aims to generate business partnerships between women-owned enterprises and private sector corporations. Based on a successful supplier diversity model in the US (WBENC – http://www.wbenc.org/), the UK body will be fully launched in partnership with Prowess in November. Even in the States, less than 5% of corporate and public sector procurement contracts go to women or minority-owned business and, although its difficult to uncover the stats here, the UK equivalent is probably less than 2%. Apart from Accenture, NTS and Pfizer, Bank of America and Microsoft are also founder members of WBEC UK and they’re all clear that diversifying their supplier base is about increasing their market share and shareholder value – ie its good for business and reflects their targeted markets.

These are exciting developments for the development of women’s entrepreneurship in the UK and we hope our new Government Ministers will support and assist us in ‘raising the bar’.

Political winds of change………

We shouldn’t really be surprised at the extent of Gordon Brown’s changes to the faces of government last week – but it means that everyone we’ve got to know, and who have supported women’s enterprise development over the last few years, is now in a different place. Margaret Hodge, who in her short tenure was an energetic and committed champion, is replaced by Stephen Timms in the re-named DTI – the Dept of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR). Patricia Hewitt is out altogether and with Ruth Kelly’s departure to Transport, we have yet another Minister for Women team – Harriet Harman and Barbara Follett.  A former women’s enterprise Minister, Jacqui Smith, has been elevated (with a baptism of fire) to Home Secretary.

Other points of interest: an all-women team in the Treasury (apart from Chancellor Darling of course); a new department for innovation, science, universities and skills (and an all-male ministerial team); Ed Miliband in overall charge of Cabinet Office (good news for his former colleagues in the Office of the Third Sector (OTS))?; Hazel Blears in charge of Communities & Local Government.

So a few challenges ahead but we have confidence that a combination of Stephen Timms (who ‘gets’ the enterprise agenda) and the Ministers for Women will ensure that women’s entrepreneurship is still a priority issue. Barbara Follett will sit in the Dept of Work and Pensions, and with Harman’s cross-government reach, they will bring passion and commitment to the role.

The big disappointment has been the formation of a new ‘Business Council for Britain’ – with only one female business member – Marjorie Scardino of Pearson (FT etc) – and the remainder mostly representing the pale and the grey. See full list at: http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page12224.asp. Am I being too pessimistic? Let me know what you think of the list.

More from San Francisco

Back from SF now, and it’s good to reflect on the trip’s lasting impressions. A lot of the delegate feedback centred around the quality of the initiatives we’d visited, not just the professionalism, energy and commitment of the people but the physical environments they were working in. It’s particularly noticeable that projects and organisations dealing with the lowest-income clients and often targeting specific socio-economic problems ensured that their working conditions were high quality. No more so than the aforementioned  Delancey Street Foundation – whose buildings reminded us all of an expensive Mediterranean resort, complete with pool and jacuzzi – along with a first-class conference centre, restaurant/cafe and business premises – all built by the Project’s own community. (www.http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/grassroots/delancey/)

Something else that was evident from all our discussions, and seemed even more prevalent in SF than previous visits to the Washington DC area, was the involvement of the private sector. Few of the organisations we visited received Government funding – and those who did, complained about the disproportionate bureaucracy attached to it. Corporate giving and philanthropy is the norm (undoubtably influenced by the Community Reinvestment Act but also much more integral to business life) and one of the many useful soundbites we took away was: ‘Ask for what you need, not what you think you can get’.

We spent a couple of hours with Sharon Vosmek of Astia (formerly the Women’s Technology Cluster) – www.astia.org,  Sharon’s profound belief in her mission – to increase the number of high-growth women-led technology businesses – made her presentation one of the most compelling we heard. She has more than 250 mentors, none of whom get paid, on hand to help her client businesses. In addition, a high level ‘Champion Circle’ and additional Board of Advisors provide professional expertise and guidance. In 2005, 72% of participating companies in Astia’s Venture Conference received funding (Venture Capital). Inspiring stuff.

We collected memorable soundbites throughout the visit and here are some which particularly resonate:

 – Philanthropy is written into the business plan.

 – What would it take to pull it off?

– To change your thinking, immersion is better than exposure

– Learn   –  Earn  –  Return

We heard a lot about San Francisco being a place people could reinvent themselves and where previous failures are almost a necessity before you’re seen as a success. At the Entrepreneurship Center in SF State University (www.sfsu.edu/~cfe/), Connie Gaglio told us that ‘we repeatedly expose our students to situations they’ll fail in’.  And guest speakers are only invited if they’re willing to talk about their failures as well as their successes. After this intensive 2-year course, more than 80% of graduates go on to start a business (it’s only been going 5 years so they don’t yet have meaningful long-term survival stats). I think we all came away wishing Connie and her colleagues could inject some of their passion and innovative teaching methods into equivalent UK courses.

This is just a taste of the SF trip – we also visited the Women’s Initiative in Self Employment (www.womensinitiative.org) and BUILD Peninsula (a great enterprise/education project – www.build.org). And we met with impressive and well-organised groups of women such as the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives (www.fwe.org), National Association of Women Busines Owners (NAWBO), www.nawbo-sf.org, Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP), www.wipp.org, Invent Your Future (www.inventyourfuture.com). And many others, including our hosts, Quantum Leaps (www.quantumleapsinc.org).

Prowess will produce a full report on the visit with more details on each of the organisations and companies – if you’d like a copy, drop a note to Jackie at: j.brierton@prowess.org.uk.

San Francisco and women’s entrepreneurship

prowessblog has been in San Francisco this week with a UK delegation on the Prowess study trip on women’s entrepreneurship. Previous US trips have focused on Washington DC – so what’s different about SF? An even more overwhelming sense of entrepreneurship being a ‘way of life’ – heavily influenced by Silicon Valley.

We’ve visited a wide range of initiatives, some targeting very low-income clients and others high-growth, technology enterprises. We were blown away by the Delancey Street Foundation – which only deals with people who have had significant problems with drugs/alcolohol/crime. It uses a business model to help them get back into society and over 500 people live together in a ‘village’ they’ve built themselves. At the other end of the spectrum, we spent time with the Women’s Presidents Organisation – members have to be turning over more than $1million to join – and it’s obviously a very  powerful peer support model. More from SF later. Time for prowessblog to see more of the city!

Women & Blogging

Prowessblog attended the first European Women Business Blogging conference in Leicester last week. Organised by NLab at De Montfort Uni, speakers were great: Meg Pickard from Guardian Online spoke eloquently about the development of blogging in the UK and her own blog experiences. Eileen Brown from Microsoft talked about MS’s rationale for encouraging staff to blog – mostly about humanising the organisation – and Jory des Jardins from the US, one of BlogHer’s founders gave an interesting insight into how blogging has developed in the States. Apparently adults are spending an average 36.4% of their ‘media time’ online now – yet only 5% of the total advertising spend is allocated to online activity. All fascinating stuff and delegates seemed genuinely interested in prowessblog’s mission to use the blog to raise policy issues around female entrepreneurship.

Eileen from Microsoft had ’10 Lessons’ for good blogging which I’ll repeat here – don’t necessarily agree with them all but useful tips all the same.  Prowessblog is going to be in San Francisco for the next 8 days (the Prowess study trip) and will try to post some live US news when it’s there.

10 Lessons of Blogging:

– blog frequently (easier said than done)

– answer every comment (don’t agree with this one)

– don’t sell (ideas?)

– Link, Link, Link (must expand blogroll)

– be authentic

– traffic isn’t the goal (interesting one)

– expect criticism – be humble

– don’t blog when down/happy/drunk (wise words)

– blog smart (Microsoft’s blogging policy apparently)

– never delete a post………………….

Political changes – impact on women’s enterprise?

It’s been three weeks since there was a new post on this blog – which is too long – so this is a general catch-up on recent women’s enterprise developments, along with some thoughts on the impending changes within government. Our last blog discussion was on the Strategic Framework – and whether we need a refreshed version. The comments were split between those who felt it was necessary, and those who recognised its value but didn’t think it was necessarily the most urgent priority.

A few weeks ago, we met with Margaret Hodge , the DTI Minister, and discussed a number of issues, including the Framework. Her view was that it would be useful to have a refreshed document, particularly if it engaged effectively across government. And she thought the Task Force should take the lead in its development. It was discussed at the Task Force’s second meeting on 11th May and there was general support from TF members. The DTI’s SBS policy team have now been asked to come up with an implementation plan. Prowessblog will keep you posted on developments (and thanks for all your comments both online and offline).

We discussed various other issues with the Minister including the need for improved data and disaggregated statistics on gender and ethnicity. She’s very keen to see more happening in this area and has been pressing within the DTI to ensure all government-funded business support and financial schemes provide gender information. As blog readers will know, MH is also behind the new drive to recruit 1000 women’s enterprise ambassadors across the country. This seems to be meeting with variable levels of enthusiasm but a London-based event for the ambassadors is now earmarked for 25th June. 

Even if you don’t agree with her approach, Margaret Hodge has been one of the most enthusiastic and committed Ministers for women’s enterprise that we’ve had – and it’s almost certain that we’ll lose her when Gordon Brown announces his new Ministerial appointments at the end of June. In fact, the future of the DTI is in question, with a widespread belief that GB has plans to break it up and give a re-vamped Treasury responsibility for economic development and enterprise. Whether or not this happens, we will inevitably be dealing with a different set of politicians and the job of promoting women’s enterprise will have to start all over again. In five years of dialogue with government on WE, we’ve dealt with six different Ministers – and that’s just within DTI. There must be a better way to run the country!