This week the Royal Society of Arts put on a day of talks on the future of small business

ON TUESDAY this week I spoke at a conference organised by the Royal Society of Arts in London on the subject of self-employment. The purpose of the day was to come up with ways to help entrepreneurs and encourage more people to jump free of the bonds of the nine-to-five. Other speakers included the RSA’s Adam Lent, advocate of the autonomy that comes along with self-employment, Stella Creasy MP, economist Will Hutton and the always cheerful Emma Jones of Enterprise Nation.

The RSA’s research suggests that we are in the middle of a new boom in self-employment. There are now nearly 5 million self-employed people in the UK. At the current rate of growth, the sector will outgrow the public sector by 2017, which itself is a reason to rejoice, as there is nothing worse than being stuck in a boring, stressful job at the council.

Leftie economists like conference delegate Will Hutton, and Economist hacks as well, suggest that the self-employment boom is born out of necessity. Big companies sack people and workers are forced out on to the streets to eke out a precarious living as some sort of freelance operator. Wealth comes from big companies, not small ones. The best thing, they say, is to get people back into full-time, lifelong employment. That is also the view of the trades unions.

My own view is the complete opposite. I would like to see a world where most of us work in small groups and for small companies. This is because I know from experience that it is the only responsible path and that despite the downsides – poverty, long hours, attacks from the spiteful – self-employment can bring happiness and fulfilment. Small business offers the potential for creativity and autonomy.

What the utilitarian economists miss in their analysis is the desire we all have for fun and for excitement in our lives. And romance as well: I mean romance not in the sense of finding your true love, but in the sense of living a colourful, dramatic, adventurous life.

And truly, small business is a romantic path.

But it is certainly not an easy one. What this conference was all about was the need to get together and help each other. We need a guild of the self-employed, or a guild of the small business. I always recommend that start-ups, however small, join the excellent Federation of Small Businesses. This costs £150 a year but is well worth it for the legal advice and documents that they’ll supply.

For our part we are launching a new course for creative people who want to go into business or who have recently started. It is called Business for Bohemians.

To read more about our course, please click on the right.

ENDS