Cultivating entrepreneurs with vision

摘要

Among the many changes to the way public services work now and in the future is the new commercial reality they must embrace. Last week's The MJ contained a number of articles discussing this, including an interview with the new chief executive of Cornwall Council, who described the challenges of developing private sector partnerships that ensure the community truly benefits from the arrangements. In another thought-provoking piece, Hawkins and Randall discussed the need to commercialise opportunities, the increasing prevalence of council-owned trading companies and the critical importance of effective, sustainable commissioning. In addition to this, the seismic reduction in local government budgets mean that in order to continue to make communities great places to live with significantly fewer resources, councils need to be innovative and entrepreneurial at every level internally in how they achieve their aims. Which dovetails somewhat with the reality of business rate localisation - in that it requires councils to be able to support the growth and retention of businesses in their local area by, perhaps fundamentally, understanding their world and being able to talk their language.