“Don’t waste a good crisis”

The spirit of enterprise is beneficial for economic growth. Institutions in charge of education should therefore play a greater role and act as catalysts inspiring entrepreneurial drive amongst the young. This was the consensus of the workshop on young people and entrepreneurship which took place during the 6th World Chambers Congress in Kuala Lumpur in June this year.
Kevin Smith, Chairman of Young Chamber UK, declared that employers are globally unsatisfied with the literacy and numeracy levels of young recruits. Furthermore, Graham Hanlon, President of the Junior Chamber International specified that the current education system in Ireland does not offer enough activities for promoting entrepreneurship, though millions of dollars are spent on educating and training young school leavers. For Andrea Tomat, President and CEO of Lotto Sport Italia and President of the ICC (International Chamber of Commerce) Italy, there is no doubt that numerous innovative products are the fruit of university research.
However, on the world scale, it is not only the blatant lack of drive towards entrepreneurship in teaching that is to blame. In Pakistan, for example, Mian Waqad Masud, Chairman of the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry Youth Committee, considers that bureaucracy and discrimination represent the main obstacles to entrepreneurship in many other countries including Pakistan.
Could equality be a vector of growth? On this topic, the 6th World Chambers Congress organised a workshop on strategies aiming to strengthen the presence of women in business. Irene Natividad, President of the Global Summit of Women, believes that increasing the number of women entrepreneurs in the world may well accelerate economic recovery. “Governments and corporations need to start looking at women not as economically vulnerable but as economically viable,” she declared. Beatrice Booth, President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Queensland regretted that despite the sound health of companies managed by women, their representation on the boards of large companies has dropped. “There is no doubt that we need to educate women to be more forceful, and break down the barriers to success,” she stated.
The idea of a need to transform leadership emerges from each workshop, and this was also the central theme of a working group that met during this international event. In the face of crisis, what strategies are best? According to Seelan Singham, Managing Partner of Malaysia McKinsey & Company who chaired the session, recession leads to a deep reshuffling of leadership as well as the emergence of new leaders. “Don’t waste a good crisis,” he advised. This principle is seconded by Idris Jala, CEO of Malaysian Airlines who considers that “vulnerability is a virtue”. “Leaders must have ethics and not be solely motivated by money. Good leaders have fundamental traits that include a passion for business and a desire to work as part of an organisation that does good things in good ways,” concluded Kimble Chen, Chairman of the American group Energy Transportation.