Twitter – or X, if you must – can be brutal. It’s one reason most entrepreneurs use it sparingly. That, and the fact they’re too busy building a business. (Whatever you think of Elon Musk, his ability to post cringe while running half a dozen world-leading companies defies logic.)
Think tankers have to get used to the brutality of Twitter. Sebastian Payne, director of the centre-right Onward, got ratioed yesterday, after tweeting (no way is it Xing): “We have a major crisis among Britain’s young generation: they’re unhappy, unskilled and unmoored. It’s time to look at what a new Great British National Service would look like to reengage them with society.”
I was ready to dust off Milton Friedman’s destruction of Congressman McCloskey, before realising that he is just calling for more opportunities to volunteer, rather than forced labour. As Onward's polling makes clear, the majority of people oppose a mandatory scheme, including nearly two-thirds of young people. However, Onward is calling for young people to be auto-enrolled unless they opt out, which is a bit of bureaucracy we don’t need.
To the extent that Payne is right that Britain's young people are particularly “unhappy, unskilled and unmoored” than previous generations – evidence not cited in this report suggests we should at least be selectively concerned – I doubt more government is the answer? Surely the state already has plenty of time to help make young people happy, skilled and moored.
I think the late, great management thinker Clayton Christensen presented a vision of the future that the government realise. Disrupting Class calls for disruptive innovations in the classroom. It argues that a "one-size-fits-all" approach is ineffective and that education should be customised through technology to fit the pace of individual students, helping reduce educational inequality. It would also free up teachers' time to support young people in the way politicians often claim to want.
Entrepreneurs have the technology to deliver this if the government could get its act together. Check out ArborBridge, an online tutoring company co-founded by Tim Urban of Wait But Why fame, or Beauhurst’s list of 25 top edtech companies for innovations happening in the UK.
Over the years we’ve built up a large and growing corpus of work on entrepreneurship and enterprise education. We’re planning a roundtable to discuss what we should do next. If you want to register your interest, get in touch.
Taking Care of Business
We’re hosting a private tour and drinks reception at the Migration Museum in Lewisham for champions of migrant entrepreneurs. Their exhibition, Taking Care of Business, is set to end on 30 September 2023, so this is one of the last chances to see it. It is an immersive exhibition shining a light on the central role that migrant entrepreneurs have played in shaping our lives – and Britain. I hope to see some of you there.
Kir Royale
In other Onward news, they’re joining forces with our friends at the Startup Coalition and Tony Blair Institute on a project supporting policies around AI startups. Kir Nuthi has written about the project here:
“How policymakers harness and guide the development of AI will be key to our success or failure. Government has made a good start – from the entrepreneur Ian Hogarth’s appointment as Chair of the Foundation Models Taskforce, leading research into AI safety – to the UK’s hosting of the Global AI summit this winter. But there’s also been a lot of confusion, noise and chaos that threatens progress. Startups can sense this. And while all work on the big meaty topics – like safety – is welcome, the shared vision for what progress looks like should come from everyone in the market, not just a minority.” If you want to be involved, you can get in touch with Kir here.
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