Professor of Enterprise and Director of the
Leeds Enterprise Centre
at the University of Leeds.
A long standing love affair
The seemingly ever increasing love affair with or passion for chocolate dates back centuries and takes many forms. Today, the industry is dominated by large companies, such as Mars, Cadbury Schweppes and Nestlé yet supports a range of more specialist chocolate confectioners, such as Green & Black’s, now owned by Cadbury Schweppes (www.greenandblacks.com), Thorntons (www.thorntons.co.uk) and Hotel Chocolat (www.hotelchocolat.co.uk).
In such a well established and crowded market it might seem difficult to create a new way of exploiting our passion for chocolate. Hotel Chocolat (formally ChocExpress) was founded by in 1993 as a catalogue-based company in the UK. The company provides an excellent example of creativity for business idea generation (the tasting club), opportunity recognition (used to support its existing catalogue-based sales) and exploitation in an enterprise (developing a complimentary brand and new income stream within the main business operation). Interestingly, Hotel Chocolat has developed, what they call, a unique ethical approach with cocoa plantations in St Lucia and Ghana (http://bit.ly/7UcbLU).
Is there no end to the courting? Kraft’s lasted overtures to Cadburys would suggest not (http://bit.ly/5bDH1N). But remember it’s our passion for chocolate that is fuelling it all!
Just of to buy a Wispa ….
Best place to be a small business?
Perhaps the US isn’t the best place to be a small business after all. According to research by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (http://bit.ly/4DES0T). The US has long seen itself as the home of entrepreneurship – ignoring GW Bush’s gaff ‘The thing that’s wrong with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur’ – with low tax, low regulation and more flexible labour market. But how does the US compare with other nations? Self-employment and small businesses is one way to measure entrepreneurship. The US has 7.2% self-employment compared with 13.8% in the UK and a staggering 26.4% in Italy. Does this really mean that Italy is more entrepreneurial that the US?
What is clear to policymakers in Europe is the need to promote entrepreneurial behaviour as a means of economic growth but also as a means of achieving sustainable enterprise – ‘Inspiring young entrepreneurs to build a better tomorrow’ (http://bit.ly/4ofCfb).
