Why Adelaide needs an Entrepreneurs Week

We need Entrepreneurs Week to celebrate the role of entrepreneurs in building value for our economy and for our community.

Paul Daly. Picture: May Media - Real Estate Photography Adelaide.

IF we are to consider Entrepreneurs Week to be the answer, then what is the question?

SA has a deep history of innovation and enterprise. Adelaide’s Lord Mayor Martin Haese often refers to Adelaide as a ‘city of firsts’. We were often among the very first in the world to change the rules.

The colony of SA itself was founded on ideals of equality and opportunity. It has continued to attract people willing to make a new start a world away from their birthplace — people that had self-selected for an entrepreneurial future.

However, the ‘Greed is Good’ mantra of the 1980s created an environment of excess that led to a global recession. Some of the celebrated ‘entrepreneurs’ of the 80s were indicted as criminals and the word entrepreneur became a synonym for ‘crook’. In SA, we saw the collapse of the State Bank closely followed by the loss of the Australian Grand Prix to Melbourne.

Our collective consciousness suffered a crisis of confidence. There followed a period of introspection and intense conservatism. How could this happen? Our pedigree of innovation was overlooked, almost forgotten.

We became comfortable, complacent and conservative. These were three of the prevailing attitudes that were identified as holding us back when the new State brand was being developed. We could no longer afford to be any of these things. But even then, the seeds of a new era were being planted.

SA invested in a series of new events to replace the Grand Prix — the Clipsal 500, the Tour Down Under and a range of new festivals emerged to take its place. We no longer had all our eggs in one basket.

We have had a further challenge with the decline in manufacturing, underlined by the closure of the General Motors Holden plant. There was widespread recognition that we needed to be, once again, bold and innovative.

We embraced renewable energy and we enabled a renaissance of city vitality with more festivals and an infusion of small bars and coffee shops driven by creative entrepreneurs. In short, we had to adopt an opportunity mindset and an entrepreneurial spirit.

When we looked at the ingredients we already had, we realised that Adelaide and SA were very well positioned to build a new economy around innovation in defence, water technology, renewable energy, health, advanced manufacturing, information and communications technologies, value added food and wine, education and tourism.

I consider an entrepreneur to be someone who sees an opportunity and assembles the resources needed to address it. Entrepreneurs build businesses and create jobs.

The new breed of entrepreneurs are not driven by greed — they are driven by purpose. They want to change the world for the better. Entrepreneur is not, and should never have been, a dirty word.

We need Entrepreneurs Week to celebrate the role of entrepreneurs in building value for our economy and for our community.

We need Entrepreneurs Week to draw attention to the support that exists here for people wanting to create new ventures and to take on the world. If the answer is ‘Entrepreneurs Week’, then perhaps this is the question: What is the best way to celebrate those brave people prepared to dream of a better future for SA and take the steps to create it?

Paul Daly is Convener of the Adelaide Entrepreneurship Forum.