MESSAGE FOR WEEK BEGINNING 22nd January 2001

Council of Young Enterprise - Europe...

As chairman of the Council of Young Enterprise Europe, I am conscious of the superb job done by that organisation in developing entrepreneurial skills in youngsters at school. Youngsters set up there own mini-businesses while still at school. There are about 500,000 youngsters involved in Europe and Israel and possibly another 1,000,000 in Russia..

Youngsters at school are taught information, analysis, judgement and argument. All this is part og the 'what is'culture. There is usually very little attention to the 'what can be' culture. That is the culture of design, creativity and value creation.

Youngsters are fascinated by the process of putting things together to create a new value. They rarely get a chance to develop that fascination into useful skills. Recently Gordon Brown ( the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer ) wrote a piece in the Sunday Times (London) asking that the UK produce more entrepreneurs. He expressed the hope that education would help in the matter. There is no harm in hoping - but not much practical value either.

Edward de Bono nmt
21st January 2001
Sydney

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