Despite the many hackneyed stereotypes in films and television, entrepreneurs, like most people, aren’t primarily driven by money. I think there are two better explanations.
First, most entrepreneurs genuinely want to make the world a better place. This manifests itself in many different ways – from a social entrepreneur supporting neglected people in a local community to a tech founder looking to revolutionise an entire industry. Both are people who see something in the world that they think could be done better, and instead of complaining or ignoring it, they try to fix it.
Second, entrepreneurs, like everyone, care about what people think about them. Admitting that we care about status is often seen as being a bit gauche. But I think that’s wrongheaded. We care about what others think about us because we want to be appreciated for what we do. The important thing is that we recognise and so incentivise people to do good, and have routes open to people to fulfill these ambitions no matter where they’re from.
Our focus is on entrepreneurs. This wasn’t a random choice. We do what we do because the role of entrepreneurship is critical to making everyone’s lives better. As we write in the ever-evolving Policy Priorities section of our website: “Entrepreneurial endeavours have taken humanity from subsistence to relative affluence and it is entrepreneurs who will raise the long-term living standards of future generations.”
The big question is therefore: how do we get more entrepreneurial innovation? On the one hand, we could focus on making it easier for current entrepreneurs to run and grow their business; on the other, we could focus on encouraging more people to want to become innovative entrepreneurs in the first place. We exist to do both.
When it comes to the latter, our Head of Innovation Dr Anton Howes and co-author Ned Donovan have a nifty idea. In Honours for Innovators, they make the case for establishing a new order of chivalry, specifically designed to encourage invention and raise the status of being an innovator in the eyes of the public.
They crunched the numbers and found that fewer than one in ten of the people recognised were honoured for services to science, innovation, technology, engineering, entrepreneurship, or even broader categories like business or industry in the established honours system.
We’re calling for a new Elizabethan Order to coincide with the Queen’s 2022 Platinum Jubilee. It would have equivalent ranks to the existing Order of the British Empire, with its own knights and dames. We even got a professional herald to design what the medals would look like.
We propose having 273 awards to reflect that -273.15 degrees Celsius is the figure for absolute zero, or 0 kelvins (Baron Kelvin was the first British scientist and inventor to be elevated to the House of Lords for his achievements). The entire order would cost less than the annual salary of a single MP, with the public able to nominate innovators and entrepreneurs, helping to elevate more role models for young people to emulate.
The report was featured in The Telegraph, but the best things to read are Anton’s overview here, and his background on the history here. Martin Vander Weyer of The Spectator also backed the idea, and so did Lord Bethell (a minister for innovation), John Penrose MP, Emma Jones CBE, Matt Clifford MBE, and Jess Butcher MBE.
Your Honours