Some thoughts about entrepreneurship

I work with entrepreneurship education because it is urgently needed. Our aging society needs entrepreneurs or at least people with an entrepreneurial mindset. I have not been engaged for too long with this subject as I looked at the aging society from another angle, namely the lack of marketing skills targeting elderly consumers. Fortunately I can use the methodological skills I developed researching "elderly consumer talk" also in the way we are talking about entrepreneurship. I haven't got so far yet but there are some themes that I think that are already stronger than others. Some themes express how wonderful it is to be an entrepreneur (through success stories), some themes want to tell why it is so difficult (and it sure is in Finland) and some themes talk about entrepreneurship as an identity. Sometimes it is all about finances and I would really like to know if today's success stories are made by people who already have stable finances through heritage or something else. Everyone has to eat and pay bills so when creating a business you have to figure out how you should have your monthly income, that's a fact. Usually talk about entrepreneurship addresses young entrepreneurs and at the same time there are a lot of middle-aged persons who start their own businesses. Could be interesting to see who will be supported in the future.

When policy-makers talk about entrepreneurship they could talk about facilitating market creation for those who have new ideas. Often healthcare entrepreneurs with terrific ideas see many barriers and this is something that should also be addressed. Maybe you don't have to be a registered nurse to take the blood-pressure of someone?

Last Thursday I listened to a workshop addressing entrepreneurship education (within the nordic entrepreneurship education). One presenter (whose name I cannot remember and it can't be found on the website of the conference either) had researched entrepreneurship education on different levels and came up with four different ways of impact in entrepreneurship education: It's either declarative, functioning, creating or discovering. I hope that I find this research (I think it was someone from Norway and I will find out). I hope that the impact our entrepreneurial education will have lie within these four themes :-). At the moment we are emphasizing the declarative part mainly.

Can I really be cured through a virtual service?

We are living a period where there is a hype about delivering health care services online (monitoring chronic conditions, providing technology to enhance remembering, meeting with your eNurse etc.). It is of course wonderful that I can get assurance by being informed about my health condition and so on. But at this point of time I want to stop this tech-hype a little bit, although I have been an eager fan of being able to stay virtually in contact with my friends and my loved ones. I think that we all know that machines can never replace the physical contact. But how many of you have really tried to be alone and the only caring, is coming by meetings online? When the only real caring love is skype meetings every mornings and evenings? And text messages and phone calls in between? Well, I am in this situation and one day when I was really ill, having backpains, and worried about having something serious it didn't help to talk about that online. When I made an appointment with a doctor who examined my back and put the "finger on my pain" I was in a better shape straight after. So please, you policy makers and technology-based service providers who want to robotize our homes so that we can stay there longer, please remember that we truly need the presence of another person in the same physical space. Nothing can replace the energy of human touch. Or anyway, not in my life.

When do we see elderly as consumers?

When discussing ageing today we usually concentrate on issues about fragility and passivity. Old age is only about sickness and loss and of course this means a financial burden especially in societie's with a welfare-model. At this point of time we want to talk about older people as people that should be taken care of although we also use a rhetoric exclaiming activity as long as we live. This activity discourse is a good path towards empowering and choice but we still have a long way to go. If we see elderly as consumers this brings more action and another voice to elderly. I am sorry to say, but I think that we have to bring consumption into the context of services to elderly to finally give a real voice to them. Other discourses are so easily passivating and although you talk about activating you use a different voice when addressing elderly.

Active and Healthy Ageing

I will soon visit the European Parliament for the first time in my life and I am pretty excited about it. Or maybe I should only pretend that this is something I do every day? Anyway, the theme is Active and Healthy Ageing and I decided that I would like to prepare myself by imagining what I will hear on Thursday. I suppose that we will hear how important it is to create an atmosphere and discourse of activity. No-one should be passive in the future. The mindset is steered towards an active attitude to everything. No-one should say that they just sit and meditate or look at the birds flying around in the garden. With this comment I want to address the danger with talking too much about active this and that, although I know that it is a way of keeping people up and running for a longer time. To age in a healthy way is everybody's goal and we should not even have to write it out. Somehow I feel that within the word healthy there is a nuance of success. If you age in a healthy way you are a successful person. Just think about a person who could be defined as a passive and unhealthy ager....