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Translator: Joseph Geni
Reviewer: Morton Bast
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Everything I do, and everything I do professionally --
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my life -- has been shaped
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by seven years of work as a young man in Africa.
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From 1971 to 1977 --
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I look young, but I'm not — (Laughter) --
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I worked in Zambia, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Somalia,
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in projects of technical cooperation with African countries.
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I worked for an Italian NGO,
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and every single project that we set up in Africa
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failed.
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And I was distraught.
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I thought, age 21, that we Italians were good people
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and we were doing good work in Africa.
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Instead, everything we touched we killed.
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Our first project, the one that has inspired my first book,
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"Ripples from the Zambezi,"
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was a project where we Italians
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decided to teach Zambian people how to grow food.
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So we arrived there with Italian seeds in southern Zambia
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in this absolutely magnificent valley
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going down to the Zambezi River,
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and we taught the local people how to grow Italian tomatoes
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and zucchini and ...
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And of course the local people had absolutely no interest
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in doing that, so we paid them to come and work,
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and sometimes they would show up. (Laughter)
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And we were amazed that the local people,
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in such a fertile valley, would not have any agriculture.
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But instead of asking them how come they were not
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growing anything, we simply said, "Thank God we're here." (Laughter)
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"Just in the nick of time to save the Zambian people from starvation."
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And of course, everything in Africa grew beautifully.
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We had these magnificent tomatoes. In Italy, a tomato
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would grow to this size. In Zambia, to this size.
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And we could not believe, and we were telling the Zambians,
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"Look how easy agriculture is."
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When the tomatoes were nice and ripe and red,
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overnight, some 200 hippos came out from the river
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and they ate everything. (Laughter)
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And we said to the Zambians, "My God, the hippos!"
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And the Zambians said, "Yes, that's why we have no agriculture here." (Laughter)
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"Why didn't you tell us?""You never asked."
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I thought it was only us Italians blundering around Africa,
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but then I saw what the Americans were doing,
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what the English were doing, what the French were doing,
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and after seeing what they were doing,
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I became quite proud of our project in Zambia.
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Because, you see, at least we fed the hippos.
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You should see the rubbish — (Applause) --
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You should see the rubbish that we have bestowed
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on unsuspecting African people.
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You want to read the book,
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read "Dead Aid," by Dambisa Moyo,
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Zambian woman economist.
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The book was published in 2009.
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We Western donor countries have given the African continent
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two trillion American dollars in the last 50 years.
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I'm not going to tell you the damage that that money has done.
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Just go and read her book.
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Read it from an African woman, the damage that we have done.
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We Western people are imperialist, colonialist missionaries,
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and there are only two ways we deal with people:
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We either patronize them, or we are paternalistic.
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The two words come from the Latin root "pater,"
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which means "father."
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But they mean two different things.
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Paternalistic, I treat anybody from a different culture
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as if they were my children. "I love you so much."
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Patronizing, I treat everybody from another culture
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as if they were my servants.
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That's why the white people in Africa are called "bwana," boss.
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I was given a slap in the face reading a book,
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"Small is Beautiful," written by Schumacher, who said,
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above all in economic development, if people
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do not wish to be helped, leave them alone.
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This should be the first principle of aid.
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The first principle of aid is respect.
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This morning, the gentleman who opened this conference
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lay a stick on the floor, and said,
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"Can we -- can you imagine a city
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that is not neocolonial?"
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I decided when I was 27 years old
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to only respond to people,
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and I invented a system called Enterprise Facilitation,
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where you never initiate anything,
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you never motivate anybody, but you become a servant
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of the local passion, the servant of local people
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who have a dream to become a better person.
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So what you do -- you shut up.
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You never arrive in a community with any ideas,
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and you sit with the local people.
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We don't work from offices.
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We meet at the cafe. We meet at the pub.
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We have zero infrastructure.
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And what we do, we become friends,
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and we find out what that person wants to do.
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The most important thing is passion.
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You can give somebody an idea.
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If that person doesn't want to do it,
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what are you going to do?
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The passion that the person has for her own growth
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is the most important thing.
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The passion that that man has for his own personal growth
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is the most important thing.
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And then we help them to go and find the knowledge,
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because nobody in the world can succeed alone.
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The person with the idea may not have the knowledge,
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but the knowledge is available.
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So years and years ago, I had this idea:
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Why don't we, for once, instead of arriving in the community
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to tell people what to do, why don't, for once,
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listen to them? But not in community meetings.
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Let me tell you a secret.
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There is a problem with community meetings.
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Entrepreneurs never come,
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and they never tell you, in a public meeting,
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what they want to do with their own money,
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what opportunity they have identified.
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So planning has this blind spot.
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The smartest people in your community you don't even know,
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because they don't come to your public meetings.
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What we do, we work one-on-one,
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and to work one-on-one, you have to create
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a social infrastructure that doesn't exist.
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You have to create a new profession.
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The profession is the family doctor of enterprise,
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the family doctor of business, who sits with you
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in your house, at your kitchen table, at the cafe,
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and helps you find the resources to transform your passion
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into a way to make a living.
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I started this as a tryout in Esperance, in Western Australia.
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I was a doing a Ph.D. at the time,
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trying to go away from this patronizing bullshit
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that we arrive and tell you what to do.
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And so what I did in Esperance that first year
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was to just walk the streets, and in three days
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I had my first client, and I helped this first guy
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who was smoking fish from a garage, was a Maori guy,
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and I helped him to sell to the restaurant in Perth,
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to get organized, and then the fishermen came to me to say,
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"You the guy who helped Maori? Can you help us?"
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And I helped these five fishermen to work together
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and get this beautiful tuna not to the cannery in Albany
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for 60 cents a kilo, but we found a way
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to take the fish for sushi to Japan for 15 dollars a kilo,
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and the farmers came to talk to me, said,
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"Hey, you helped them. Can you help us?"
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In a year, I had 27 projects going on,
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and the government came to see me to say,
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"How can you do that?
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How can you do — ?" And I said, "I do something very, very, very difficult.
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I shut up, and listen to them." (Laughter)
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So — (Applause) —
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So the government says, "Do it again." (Laughter)
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We've done it in 300 communities around the world.
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We have helped to start 40,000 businesses.
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There is a new generation of entrepreneurs
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who are dying of solitude.
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Peter Drucker, one of the greatest management consultants in history,
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died age 96, a few years ago.
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Peter Drucker was a professor of philosophy
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before becoming involved in business,
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and this is what Peter Drucker says:
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"Planning is actually incompatible
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with an entrepreneurial society and economy."
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Planning is the kiss of death of entrepreneurship.
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So now you're rebuilding Christchurch
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without knowing what the smartest people in Christchurch
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want to do with their own money and their own energy.
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You have to learn how to get these people
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to come and talk to you.
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You have to offer them confidentiality, privacy,
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you have to be fantastic at helping them,
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and then they will come, and they will come in droves.
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In a community of 10,000 people, we get 200 clients.
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Can you imagine a community of 400,000 people,
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the intelligence and the passion?
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Which presentation have you applauded the most this morning?
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Local, passionate people. That's who you have applauded.
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So what I'm saying is that
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entrepreneurship is where it's at.
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We are at the end of the first industrial revolution --
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nonrenewable fossil fuels, manufacturing --
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and all of a sudden, we have systems which are not sustainable.
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The internal combustion engine is not sustainable.
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Freon way of maintaining things is not sustainable.
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What we have to look at is at how we
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feed, cure, educate, transport, communicate
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for seven billion people in a sustainable way.
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The technologies do not exist to do that.
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Who is going to invent the technology
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for the green revolution? Universities? Forget about it!
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Government? Forget about it!
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It will be entrepreneurs, and they're doing it now.
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There's a lovely story that I read in a futurist magazine
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many, many years ago.
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There was a group of experts who were invited
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to discuss the future of the city of New York in 1860.
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And in 1860, this group of people came together,
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and they all speculated about what would happen
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to the city of New York in 100 years,
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and the conclusion was unanimous:
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The city of New York would not exist in 100 years.
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Why? Because they looked at the curve and said,
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if the population keeps growing at this rate,
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to move the population of New York around,
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they would have needed six million horses,
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and the manure created by six million horses
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would be impossible to deal with.
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They were already drowning in manure. (Laughter)
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So 1860, they are seeing this dirty technology
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that is going to choke the life out of New York.
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So what happens? In 40 years' time, in the year 1900,
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in the United States of America, there were 1,001
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car manufacturing companies -- 1,001.
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The idea of finding a different technology
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had absolutely taken over,
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and there were tiny, tiny little factories in backwaters.
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Dearborn, Michigan. Henry Ford.
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However, there is a secret to work with entrepreneurs.
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First, you have to offer them confidentiality.
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Otherwise they don't come and talk to you.
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Then you have to offer them absolute, dedicated,
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passionate service to them.
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And then you have to tell them the truth about entrepreneurship.
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The smallest company, the biggest company,
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has to be capable of doing three things beautifully:
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The product that you want to sell has to be fantastic,
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you have to have fantastic marketing,
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and you have to have tremendous financial management.
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Guess what?
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We have never met a single human being
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in the world who can make it, sell it and look after the money.
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It doesn't exist.
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This person has never been born.
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We've done the research, and we have looked
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at the 100 iconic companies of the world --
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Carnegie, Westinghouse, Edison, Ford,
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all the new companies, Google, Yahoo.
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There's only one thing that all the successful companies
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in the world have in common, only one:
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None were started by one person.
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Now we teach entrepreneurship to 16-year-olds
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in Northumberland, and we start the class
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by giving them the first two pages of Richard Branson's autobiography,
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and the task of the 16-year-olds is to underline,
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in the first two pages of Richard Branson's autobiography
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how many times Richard uses the word "I"
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and how many times he uses the word "we."
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Never the word "I," and the word "we" 32 times.
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He wasn't alone when he started.
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Nobody started a company alone. No one.
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So we can create the community
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where we have facilitators who come from a small business background
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sitting in cafes, in bars, and your dedicated buddies
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who will do to you, what somebody did for this gentleman
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who talks about this epic,
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somebody who will say to you, "What do you need?
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What can you do? Can you make it?
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Okay, can you sell it? Can you look after the money?"
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"Oh, no, I cannot do this.""Would you like me to find you somebody?"
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We activate communities.
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We have groups of volunteers supporting the Enterprise Facilitator
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to help you to find resources and people
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and we have discovered that the miracle
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of the intelligence of local people is such
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that you can change the culture and the economy
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of this community just by capturing the passion,
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the energy and imagination of your own people.
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Thank you. (Applause)
