The untold stories of ethnic minority entrepreneurs | Professor Monder Ram | TEDxAstonUniversity

Key Concepts

• Community as Indispensable Resource: Businesses, particularly those owned by minority groups, often serve as unofficial community centers, providing essential support beyond their commercial functions.
• Critique of Traditional Research: Conventional academic and institutional approaches often overlook or mischaracterize the contributions and realities of minority-owned businesses.
• Community Organizing vs. Business Advising: A shift from imposing solutions to building relationships and co-creating solutions with entrepreneurs is more effective.
• Empowerment and Voice: Enabling communities to tell their own stories and participate in policy-making leads to greater impact and self-determination.
• Partnership and Implementation: Moving beyond report publication to collaborative implementation of findings is crucial for driving real change.
• Economic Contribution of Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurs: Significant economic value is generated by these entrepreneurs, with potential for substantial growth if barriers are removed.
• Focus on Strengths: Shifting from problem-focused analysis to identifying and building upon existing community strengths is a more effective change strategy.

The Somali Grocery Store: More Than Just a Business

The speaker recounts an experience at a Somali-owned grocery store in Leicester. While the store appeared to be a typical grocery business, the owner revealed that a room upstairs was filled with community members seeking assistance with job searches, finding doctors, enrolling children in schools, and filling out forms. This observation highlighted a critical disconnect: the business was not just a commercial entity but an "unofficial community center" and an "indispensable resource" for the local community, operating because mainstream institutions were absent or indifferent. This experience foreshadowed a recurring theme of misinterpreting the true value and function of minority-owned businesses.

Challenging Academic Narratives: The Clothing Sector

Early in the speaker's career, while researching Asian entrepreneurs in the clothing sector for a PhD, they encountered a book titled "Industrial Relations in Small Firms." This book characterized businesses like the speaker's father's clothing manufacturing business as "helpless" and "exploitative." However, the speaker's personal experience growing up in the family business contradicted this narrative. They witnessed firsthand the hard work, resourcefulness (e.g., negotiating with suppliers in broken English), and community impact, including employing local individuals who struggled to find work. The business provided a lifeline for the speaker's father, who arrived in the UK with no job or networks, enabling him to create economic and social value and contribute to integration. This experience underscored the question: "who gets to tell their story?"

The Birmingham Project: Community Organizing for Entrepreneurial Support

Later, in partnership with Citizens UK, a community organization, the speaker initiated a project to support migrant entrepreneurs in disadvantaged areas of Birmingham. Faced with a choice between employing a traditional business adviser to diagnose problems or a community organizer to build relationships and understand businesses, they chose the latter. For a year, the focus was on working with the businesses, co-creating solutions rather than imposing them. This approach led to a surprising outcome: 295 business owners began utilizing business support services they had previously ignored or been unaware of. More significantly, 12 entrepreneurs formed their own "business leaders group," seeking to influence policy and shape interventions, demonstrating a desire to "speak truth to power." One entrepreneur stated, "We feel valued now. It's great to be at the table. We feel really seen." This project was later cited by Nesta as an exemplar for grassroots innovation.

Partnership with NatWest: Unlocking Economic Potential

NatWest Bank, recognizing the speaker's work on ethnic minority entrepreneurship, requested a report. Instead, the speaker proposed a collaborative project to create a document that would drive change. This "sliding doors moment" led to a two-year partnership where insights and observations were shared. The research revealed that ethnic minority entrepreneurs in the UK contribute £25 billion to the economy, with the potential to quadruple this contribution to £100 billion if existing barriers were removed. The key to unlocking this potential was identified as partnership.

From Report to Implementation: Driving Systemic Change

Recognizing that publishing a report alone is insufficient, the speaker and their partners spent the subsequent two years implementing the report's findings. This involved NatWest investing in new initiatives, mayors of West Yorkshire and West Midlands adopting recommendations, and business support organizations and professional bodies collaborating. The project gained further traction when the Department for Business and Trade became an official implementation partner. This scaling of the "micro relationships" and "relational engagement of mutual respect" with communities, exemplified by the Somali grocer, was adopted at a governmental level. The speaker's center and its mode of working were subsequently mentioned three times in the government's small business strategy.

A New Approach to Change: Focusing on What Works

The speaker advocates for a different approach to change, one that begins by asking, "What's already working?" rather than focusing solely on problems. This reframes how change is created and emphasizes the strengths and ingenuity already present within communities. The core message is to actively seek out and invite underrepresented voices into decision-making spaces, not as a token gesture, but for genuine engagement and collaboration. Ignoring community efforts devalues their assets and misses opportunities to build upon their inherent strengths. The speaker concludes by emphasizing that those doing the work are best positioned to know what is working, urging listeners to "Really listen."