The James Hilton Column: The Future is Irritated

James Hilton, co-founder and CCO of AKQA, is one of the industry's most respected figures and we are delighted to welcome him on board as one of shots.net's new, regular columnists.

Hilton will be regaling us with his thoughts and opinions on advertising, creativity and whatever he deems interesting and relevant each month. In this, his inaugural column, Hilton bemoans entrepreneurs.

“Hello, I’m an entrepreneur!”

I’m pretty sure I groaned. Inwardly, I think. This happens every time I do a talk. I used to be polite and listen and nod and make encouraging sounds to whatever bollocks followed; now I just reply: “How lovely!” and get the hell out of Dodge. Of course what I really wanted to say was “Oh why don’t you just f….” You see, these days you’d be forgiven for thinking that being ‘an entrepreneur’ is akin to attaining some kind of business-like Nirvana. Even Big Dave got in on it recently by singling-out ‘Britain's entrepreneurs’ as 'national heroes' like they were Gattaca-esque superior beings.

Those who can, do

Be that as it may, the thing that really irritates me (irritation being the theme of the day) is the seemingly accepted truth that you can teach this stuff. I met someone the other week who told me that they taught a course in entrepreneurialism. I asked how many businesses they'd had before they decided to teach. "Oh no, I’ve never had my own business. Maybe one day!” I didn't really know what to say. 'Those who teach…' So the saying goes.

My view is, you can no more teach someone how to be an entrepreneur than you can teach them how to be creative. You can, on the other hand, teach people how to be uncreative, risk-averse, and thereby not at all entrepreneurial. (Kids are best for this because they’re impressionable and despite their coming across as disrespectful little fuckers, they do actually - and quite bizarrely - look up to adults.)

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