TV shows such as The Apprentice portray entrepreneurs as “greedy, self-regarding and . . . dim-witted” and could put people off starting a business

October 8, 2013 Leave a comment

October 7, 2013 11:07 pm

TV shows misrepresent entrepreneurs, says PizzaExpress founder

By Andrew Bounds, Enterprise Editor

TV shows such as The Apprentice portray entrepreneurs as “greedy, self-regarding and . . . dim-witted” and could put people off starting a business, according to Luke Johnson, who is launching a think-tank to improve the image and influence of entrepreneurs. Mr Johnson, the PizzaExpress founder who is a Financial Times columnist and prominent investor in start-ups, launches the Centre for Entrepreneurship on Thursday.“Government, the media and big business – despite all claiming to support entrepreneurs – can undermine entrepreneurship through unhelpful legislation, image stereotyping and monopolistic behaviour,” he said. The centre aims to address this by promoting entrepreneurs, lobbying and producing research.

It commissioned YouGov, the polling company, to ask small business leaders their view of programmes such as The Apprentice and Dragons’ Den, which are watched by millions.

Three in four of those polled believed they had raised awareness of business ownership. But the fact that competitors are chosen for their entertainment value meant they did “more harm than good”. More than half feltDragons’ Den promoted the false message that you can only grow a business by borrowing, while 74 per cent said The Apprentice presented a false picture of the investment process.

The centre is being funded partly by the Legatum Institute, a non-profit offshoot of the Dubai-based investment fund.

Dale Murray, a leading investor; Ed Wray, founder of Betfair, the online exchange; Brent Hoberman, Lastminute.com co-founder; and Emma Jones, head of the StartUp Britain campaign, are on the advisory board.

The survey comes as James Lambert, chairman of R & R Ice Cream , which makes Fab lollies, was named entrepreneur of the year in a competition run by EY, the professional services firm.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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