Ripples from the Zambezi: Passion, Entrepreneurship, and the Rebirth of Local Economies

Rating:
Summary: Development is making ready those willing to help themselves
Review: "There are some men who are counted great because they represent the actuality of their own age, and mirror it as it is," wrote zoologist and philosopher Thomas Henry Huxley. "There are other men who attain greatness because they embody the potentiality of their own day and magically reflect the future." With Ernesto Sirolli, author of Ripples from the Zambezi, we have a new case of Huxley's proposition, in the field of economic development.

I am an associate professor of economics at Minot State University. Sirolli teaches the concepts of economic development the way that I do in my economic planning and development class, but he does more than just teach the concepts. He has taken a concept, tried it and found it successful. But success is a matter of degrees. Not being satisfied with one success, he has refined his method - enterprise facilitation - over many years and many different places.

Start with the basics - a semantic foundation. What is economic development? In my class, I go with a definition provided by Jane Jacobs. Economic development, Jacobs writes, is "feasible improvisation." Sirolli follows this definition faithfully. He goes into semantics more than most economic authors. Sirolli describes development as an unfolding of economic potential in people. But Sirolli is not a man with his head in the clouds. His trinity of management concept notes that successful entrepreneurship is about knowing how to market, knowing how to manage financially, and having the technical skills to produce and sell. The problem is that few entrepreneurs go into operation knowing all three. They need a helper to fill one or more holes. The trinity concept, when applied, saves many businesses just starting.

I was glad to see Sirolli make many references to important, original, twentieth century thinkers such as E.F. Schumacher, Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers in Ripples from the Zambezi. Sirolli said many things not only regarding economic development, but also of a general nature, that I agree with. I emphatically agree with what he says about education, masters and teachers.

It is the way of the world that planning - or at least too much planning -- is usually deadly for economic development - with the exception of the task of building the infrastructure to support development. What Sirolli outlines is a potential - no, actual -- alternative.

With one case study after another, Sirolli shows how skill and passion in people is what economic development is all about - and how that skill and passion is cultivated fearlessly with the system of enterprise facilitation. Sirolli and the process that he demonstrates is "anti-dogmatic," "anti-idealistic" and "anti-authoritarian." Development in Sirolli's book is not about solving a particular macroeconomic problem, such as unemployment, or slow economic growth. Sirolli deftly refers to the writing of Carl Rogers as he states that development is on the level of the individual, not the problem. "The aim is not to solve one particular problem but to help the individual to grow so that he can cope with the present problem and later problems in a better, more integrated fashion. Rogers' therapy was not a matter 'of doing something to the individual' but rather 'of removing obstacles so that he can again move forward.'

It is not uncommon to see criticism of the kind of economic planning which alienated Sirolli so much. But what Sirolli did in this book was to first put forward, and put into action, a system which is an alternative - an alternative to the kind of planning which has ruined whole regions and nations. It was a great experience to read the criticism of the SWOT methodology at the end, and not the beginning of Sirolli's book. It really brought home the point that there are already other things which we can do, which have been tried, which are better.

I was pleased to see the Sirolli methods have been tried first in the United States on the Great Plains. He really put his ideas to the test by coming to this region. If enterprise facilitation will work in little towns in South (and North?) Dakota, it will work anywhere.

Rating:
Summary: Development is making ready those willing to help themselves
Review: "There are some men who are counted great because they represent the actuality of their own age, and mirror it as it is," wrote zoologist and philosopher Thomas Henry Huxley. "There are other men who attain greatness because they embody the potentiality of their own day and magically reflect the future." With Ernesto Sirolli, author of Ripples from the Zambezi, we have a new case of Huxley's proposition, in the field of economic development.

I am an associate professor of economics at Minot State University. Sirolli teaches the concepts of economic development the way that I do in my economic planning and development class, but he does more than just teach the concepts. He has taken a concept, tried it and found it successful. But success is a matter of degrees. Not being satisfied with one success, he has refined his method - enterprise facilitation - over many years and many different places.

Start with the basics - a semantic foundation. What is economic development? In my class, I go with a definition provided by Jane Jacobs. Economic development, Jacobs writes, is "feasible improvisation." Sirolli follows this definition faithfully. He goes into semantics more than most economic authors. Sirolli describes development as an unfolding of economic potential in people. But Sirolli is not a man with his head in the clouds. His trinity of management concept notes that successful entrepreneurship is about knowing how to market, knowing how to manage financially, and having the technical skills to produce and sell. The problem is that few entrepreneurs go into operation knowing all three. They need a helper to fill one or more holes. The trinity concept, when applied, saves many businesses just starting.

I was glad to see Sirolli make many references to important, original, twentieth century thinkers such as E.F. Schumacher, Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers in Ripples from the Zambezi. Sirolli said many things not only regarding economic development, but also of a general nature, that I agree with. I emphatically agree with what he says about education, masters and teachers.

It is the way of the world that planning - or at least too much planning -- is usually deadly for economic development - with the exception of the task of building the infrastructure to support development. What Sirolli outlines is a potential - no, actual -- alternative.

With one case study after another, Sirolli shows how skill and passion in people is what economic development is all about - and how that skill and passion is cultivated fearlessly with the system of enterprise facilitation. Sirolli and the process that he demonstrates is "anti-dogmatic," "anti-idealistic" and "anti-authoritarian." Development in Sirolli's book is not about solving a particular macroeconomic problem, such as unemployment, or slow economic growth. Sirolli deftly refers to the writing of Carl Rogers as he states that development is on the level of the individual, not the problem. "The aim is not to solve one particular problem but to help the individual to grow so that he can cope with the present problem and later problems in a better, more integrated fashion. Rogers' therapy was not a matter 'of doing something to the individual' but rather 'of removing obstacles so that he can again move forward.'

It is not uncommon to see criticism of the kind of economic planning which alienated Sirolli so much. But what Sirolli did in this book was to first put forward, and put into action, a system which is an alternative - an alternative to the kind of planning which has ruined whole regions and nations. It was a great experience to read the criticism of the SWOT methodology at the end, and not the beginning of Sirolli's book. It really brought home the point that there are already other things which we can do, which have been tried, which are better.

I was pleased to see the Sirolli methods have been tried first in the United States on the Great Plains. He really put his ideas to the test by coming to this region. If enterprise facilitation will work in little towns in South (and North?) Dakota, it will work anywhere.

Rating:
Summary: Attention County Government
Review: All County Administrators and County Commissioners should read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Economic Boost For Rural Areas May Be As Close As This Book
Review: Anyone who cares about the economic future of Iowa should read "Ripples from the Zambezi: Passion, Entrepreneurship and the Rebirth of Local Economies" by Ernesto Sirolli. It might be the closest thing to an economic cure-all Iowa can find.

Sirolli is an Italian native who now lives in St. Paul, Minn. He's worked for 30 years in economic-development efforts in Australia, Africa and North America. He's started something called the Sirolli Institute, where they teach a concept called "Enterprise Facilitation." It's a way to provide help for Iowa's languishing rural and inner-city economies.

Under Sirolli's program, small communities are assigned "facilitators" who go around town finding people with ideas for starting new businesses. Sirolli has found that most potential entrepreneurs are passionate about their idea but lack management or marketing skills. Working confidentially with the potential entrepreneurs, the facilitator helps put together an elementary business plan, early financing and a marketing plan. The facilitator doesn't try to motivate anyone or dictate solutions, but only works to bring the right players together in a community to help them launch a small business on their own.
 
It looks to be a huge success wherever it has been tried. The National Commission on Entrepreneurship recently profiled the book by saying the boom economy of the 1990s transformed American society but left-behind many rural communities. "What can be done to develop prosperity in these so-called 'left behind' communities?" the commission asked. Traditional economic-development efforts may not be available to small towns.
 
"The remaining option for small communities is to build on their own existing assets and resources. But how can this happen? How can untapped resources be uncovered and exploited? A pioneering approach, called Enterprise Facilitation, may offer a potential solution," the commission said.
 
This oddly titled book describes how it all works. The title comes from Sirolli's early experiments in economic development in Africa, where the young developer was first sent by the Italian government to help poor villages. Ideas pioneered there worked in Western economies, too.
 
In Western Australia, Sirolli helped fishermen in a rural community sell fish to the Japanese sushi market that paid six times what the local cannery was paying for their catch. Another business was started smoking the fish for gourmet markets. Another new business made quality sandals from local kangaroo hides. Sheep farmers developed a processing business that turned worthless old ewes into valuable hides, wool and mutton kebabs.
 
In rural Minnesota, the Communicating for Agriculture folks hired Sirolli to work in one of the poorest counties in the state. Within four years, the effort had started 30 new businesses, helped 127 existing ones, retained 55 jobs and created 71 new ones. The county's work force was only 3,000.
 
In rural South Dakota, a broke cattleman developed a welding repair business in a small town. Within two years, it employed 27 people who processed $90,000 worth of orders a month.
 
These communities are no different from those in rural Iowa.

Sirolli's group has been hired by local banks, colleges or farm organizations, such as the Farmers Union or the Farm Bureau, to work in rural communities. More groups could do the same in their communities.
 
Sirolli writes that a facilitator working for one year in a community of 10,000 can see between 150 and 200 clients. From this group, between 25 and 35 will open a news business or expand an existing one. Between 25 and 60 jobs will be created with an economic impact of $5 million to $10 million a year. Imagine if that track record were repeated all across Iowa. It could be worth billions in just a few years.
 
Someone once estimated that more than 1,000 people in Iowa earn their living working for various "economic-development" programs. Imagine if just 50 of those people were retrained in enterprise-facilitation work and placed in Iowa's poorest counties and run-down inner cities.

It's clear Iowa has to try something new like this. All that we've been doing hasn't been enough. Things like organic grain processing, fish farming or welding shops aren't very sexy. But these sorts of businesses form the backbone of the Iowa economy. Hard-pressed rural towns and depressed inner-city areas are that way because they've lost many small businesses. They need to find ways to start some new ones. Sirolli's "Enterprise Facilitators" can help them do that.

This could be one of the most important books anyone in Iowa reads this year.

Rating:
Summary: Economic Boost For Rural Areas May Be As Close As This Book
Review: Anyone who cares about the economic future of Iowa should read "Ripples from the Zambezi: Passion, Entrepreneurship and the Rebirth of Local Economies" by Ernesto Sirolli. It might be the closest thing to an economic cure-all Iowa can find.

Sirolli is an Italian native who now lives in St. Paul, Minn. He's worked for 30 years in economic-development efforts in Australia, Africa and North America. He's started something called the Sirolli Institute, where they teach a concept called "Enterprise Facilitation." It's a way to provide help for Iowa's languishing rural and inner-city economies.

Under Sirolli's program, small communities are assigned "facilitators" who go around town finding people with ideas for starting new businesses. Sirolli has found that most potential entrepreneurs are passionate about their idea but lack management or marketing skills. Working confidentially with the potential entrepreneurs, the facilitator helps put together an elementary business plan, early financing and a marketing plan. The facilitator doesn't try to motivate anyone or dictate solutions, but only works to bring the right players together in a community to help them launch a small business on their own.
?
It looks to be a huge success wherever it has been tried. The National Commission on Entrepreneurship recently profiled the book by saying the boom economy of the 1990s transformed American society but left-behind many rural communities. "What can be done to develop prosperity in these so-called 'left behind' communities?" the commission asked. Traditional economic-development efforts may not be available to small towns.
?
"The remaining option for small communities is to build on their own existing assets and resources. But how can this happen? How can untapped resources be uncovered and exploited? A pioneering approach, called Enterprise Facilitation, may offer a potential solution," the commission said.
?
This oddly titled book describes how it all works. The title comes from Sirolli's early experiments in economic development in Africa, where the young developer was first sent by the Italian government to help poor villages. Ideas pioneered there worked in Western economies, too.
?
In Western Australia, Sirolli helped fishermen in a rural community sell fish to the Japanese sushi market that paid six times what the local cannery was paying for their catch. Another business was started smoking the fish for gourmet markets. Another new business made quality sandals from local kangaroo hides. Sheep farmers developed a processing business that turned worthless old ewes into valuable hides, wool and mutton kebabs.
?
In rural Minnesota, the Communicating for Agriculture folks hired Sirolli to work in one of the poorest counties in the state. Within four years, the effort had started 30 new businesses, helped 127 existing ones, retained 55 jobs and created 71 new ones. The county's work force was only 3,000.
?
In rural South Dakota, a broke cattleman developed a welding repair business in a small town. Within two years, it employed 27 people who processed $90,000 worth of orders a month.
?
These communities are no different from those in rural Iowa.

Sirolli's group has been hired by local banks, colleges or farm organizations, such as the Farmers Union or the Farm Bureau, to work in rural communities. More groups could do the same in their communities.
?
Sirolli writes that a facilitator working for one year in a community of 10,000 can see between 150 and 200 clients. From this group, between 25 and 35 will open a news business or expand an existing one. Between 25 and 60 jobs will be created with an economic impact of $5 million to $10 million a year. Imagine if that track record were repeated all across Iowa. It could be worth billions in just a few years.
?
Someone once estimated that more than 1,000 people in Iowa earn their living working for various "economic-development" programs. Imagine if just 50 of those people were retrained in enterprise-facilitation work and placed in Iowa's poorest counties and run-down inner cities.

It's clear Iowa has to try something new like this. All that we've been doing hasn't been enough. Things like organic grain processing, fish farming or welding shops aren't very sexy. But these sorts of businesses form the backbone of the Iowa economy. Hard-pressed rural towns and depressed inner-city areas are that way because they've lost many small businesses. They need to find ways to start some new ones. Sirolli's "Enterprise Facilitators" can help them do that.

This could be one of the most important books anyone in Iowa reads this year.

Rating:
Summary: More than just a good little book...
Review: I bought "Ripples from the Zambezi" thinking, okay, person-centered development from an Italian who did government-sponsored work in Africa, perfected his methods in remote western Australia, and now spreads his gospel in the United States. Ought to be an interesting read and a good 'little' story.

I was *way* off.

This is - in my estimation - a great book by a true visionary, Ernesto Sirolli. The two chapters in the middle of this book "The Esperance Experience" and "The Esperance Model Applied" are as good as business-writing gets. In Sirolli's world, the glass is neither half empty nor half full. Rather, the water is gushing over the top of the cup. The stories he tells here of enterprises 'facilitated' in the bleakest economic conditions imaginable...well, it can't help but turn you into an optimist.

But Sirolli goes further. He takes these experiences and imagines them on a grand scale where, as he says, "reciprocity matters." Calling it a "civic economy," he envisions a world benfiting from "generalized reciprocity, from people helping people to succeed, with the understanding that well-being of the community is to everybody's advantage."

Don't misinterpret these sentiments. Sirolli is a capitalist at heart, but he presses for a system "beyind capitalism...which enhances participation in the creation of wealth, not only in its accumulation."

How does he connect the dots from tiny Esperance to his grand vision for a civic economy? I urge you to read "Ripples from the Zambezi" to find out.

Rating:
Summary: More than just a good little book...
Review: I bought "Ripples from the Zambezi" thinking, okay, person-centered development from an Italian who did government-sponsored work in Africa, perfected his methods in remote western Australia, and now spreads his gospel in the United States. Ought to be an interesting read and a good 'little' story.

I was *way* off.

This is - in my estimation - a great book by a true visionary, Ernesto Sirolli. The two chapters in the middle of this book "The Esperance Experience" and "The Esperance Model Applied" are as good as business-writing gets. In Sirolli's world, the glass is neither half empty nor half full. Rather, the water is gushing over the top of the cup. The stories he tells here of enterprises 'facilitated' in the bleakest economic conditions imaginable...well, it can't help but turn you into an optimist.

But Sirolli goes further. He takes these experiences and imagines them on a grand scale where, as he says, "reciprocity matters." Calling it a "civic economy," he envisions a world benfiting from "generalized reciprocity, from people helping people to succeed, with the understanding that well-being of the community is to everybody's advantage."

Don't misinterpret these sentiments. Sirolli is a capitalist at heart, but he presses for a system "beyind capitalism...which enhances participation in the creation of wealth, not only in its accumulation."

How does he connect the dots from tiny Esperance to his grand vision for a civic economy? I urge you to read "Ripples from the Zambezi" to find out.

Rating:
Summary: An approach that actually works in real places
Review: I've worked in small business technical assistance and economic development for 15 years and this is the most profoundly useful book I've come across on HOW to do it. Sirolli's is based on listening, looking, and linking the existing resources with new markets and on shoestring capital. I've done his approach clumsily and seen it bear amazing fruit. This is the real stuff as opposed to the great amounts of shallow platitudes that pass for much economic development literature.

Rating:
Summary: Many have suspected, but few have followed through.
Review: Many people wish to strengthen their local economies, reduce dependence on multinational corporations, build community by doing things, or achieve self-fulfilment through meaningful work. Yet these results are not coming easily or economically from the top-down, programmatic, and strategic approaches typically used by governments, economic development districts, and even by community groups, nonprofits, and advocacy organizations.

As E. F. Schumacher observed in Good Work, we cannot expect to raise the wind that will push us to a better world. What we can do is hoist a sail to catch the wind when it does come. Ripples from the Zambezi tells the gripping story of how Ernesto Sirolli learned to catch the wind of passionate, skillful, creative, intelligent, and self-motivated entrepreneurs--the acknowledged powerhouse of the economy as well as of social change.

Sirolli's experiences as a volunteer for the Italian government in Africa during the 1970s convinced him that "development" schemes were anything but. After absorbing Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered and the person-centered psychology of Carl Rogers, Sirolli put his radical, antidogmatic ideas to the test in rural Western Australia. Instead of trying to motivate people, he made himself available as coach and advocate for anyone who was serious about starting or expanding a business enterprise.

By treating economic development as a byproduct of personal growth and self-actualization, Sirolli was able to make a quantum leap in the effectiveness of business coaching, as well as create local miracles of economic development. He has devoted himself since to teaching committed civic leaders how to do what he has done.

"In every community, no matter how small, remote, or depressed, there is somebody who is scribbling figures on a kitchen table. If we can be available, for free and in confidence, to help that person go from the dream to establish an enterprise that can sustain that person and his or her family, we can begin to change the economic fortunes of the entire community."

The strategy that Sirolli teaches to communities often involves a committed volunteer local board, who hires an "Enterprise Facilitator" who is then trained by Sirolli. The facilitator does not initiate projects or promote "good ideas." He or she responds to the interests and passions of self-motivated people. Because no one has equal passion for production, marketing, and financial management, all of which are necessary for business success, and because people only do well what they care about doing, the secret of success and survival for a business of any size is to find people who love to do what you hate. "The death of the entrepreneur is solitude." The facilitator and the board, with networking, help people form teams to advance their idea.

This is a strategy that is always followed in large business, but remains unusual in small business, where most people are still advised to write business plans singlehandedly, and to get better at what they hate. For example, farmers and ranchers whose inclinations and personalities do not lend themselves to marketing are often told that they must learn marketing skills to get off the commodity roller coaster.

Sirolli's ideas are not just good. They are inspiring, inflammatory, they resonate--and they are based on 15 colorful years of failing and succeeding at hoisting the sail in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the U.S.

The underlying philosophy has to do with empowerment rather than control. "A shift from strategic to responsive development can only occur," Sirolli writes, "if we are capable of believing that people are intrinsically good and that the diversity, variety, and apparent randomness of their passions is like the chaotic yet ecologically sound life manifestations in an old-growth forest."

The message is that bottom-up, person-centered, responsive economic development works--and if well understood and led at the community level, it works better than anything else. When a community can help motivated people succeed, the motivation spreads. "The future of every community," Sirolli writes, "lies in capturing the energy, imagination, intelligence, and passion of its people."

Rating:
Summary: Ripples from the Zambezi
Review: One of the most extraordinary books I have read. It parallels my own life experiences in working in international development. The abject failure of most top down economic development programs must be a major cause for concern for all of us.
I first ran across the work of Ernesto Sirolli in 1991 when I attended a conference in Cairns, Australia and joined a workshop put on by Brain Willoughby, one of Ernesto's trained enterprise facilitators. The emphasis on not initiating or motivating when working in community development was diametrically opposed to the work I had been doing with aboriginal people in the Western Arctic and in Australia.
The advice was excellent. But this new book adds even more gems of wisdom. The trinity of management explains how it is virtually impossible for any potential entrepreneur to supply expertise in all three areas of production, marketing and financial management. No-one can do it alone. 80% of small businesses fail during the first five years, usually because of poor marketing, an inability to repay loans or because of chaotic production of the good or service. What is even more depressing is that most of the remaining 20% close their doors and walk away from the business during the next five years.
Ernesto Sirolli has really understood the secret to small business success. The book highlights the philosophical structure underlying what motivates entrepreneurs, and what facilitators should be doing to help people truly learn how to form a team with others who have the areas of expertise which are missing.
The final piece of genius is the approach to teaching people. Again this is brought out of the philosophical structure underlying the book. The excitement mounts as we grasp the new pair of eyeglasses Ernesto Sirolli is giving us and we see the great opportunities for helping people start small businesses successfully, but only if we allow them to initiate.
The book is filled with incredible advice for those who really do want to help people achieve success in their lives through their work in a small business. The style of writing is easy to read because of the many stories which support what the author is saying. As a result of reading the book, I took Ernesto Sirolli's course which was truly outstanding. What is interesting is that everything we learnt had already been covered in this excellent book. A classic which will go down in history as the work of a genius....