Nurturing entrepreneurs

HBR recently featured a piece about Ernesto Sirolli who has spent 30 years helping people find the resources they need to start businesses and make them thrive. He and the people he’s trained have been instrumental in launching more than 40,000 enterprises in 250 communities and 25 countries. His advice to entrepreneurial facilitators:

First, all effective development ideas need to come from local people rather than “experts,” no matter how well-meaning or informed these experts might be. Second, most efforts to motivate people are fruitless; rather, those trying to help local enterprise must wait until entrepreneurs ask for help, then connect them with the resources they need. And third, entrepreneurs should never be encouraged to act in isolation on their dreams, because doing so will increase their chances of failure and cause them to question their own capacities