GrowthBusiness.co.uk: Your gateway to entrepreneurial success

With 2008 and soon the Bush administration behind us, it’s time to look forward, be optimistic, and climb up out of the hole we’ve got ourselves into.

But politicians and the mass media are intent on digging us deeper by constantly talking up gloom for political or headline gain, maintaining a depressing sense that there’s nothing to be done.

One great new year’s resolution would be to ignore free newspapers and 24-hour news, with their general disregard for significance or accuracy (like that inept carbon calculation which equated a Google seach to boiling a kettle). In fact edited periodicals and papers like the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal saw growing sales last year: people want genuine comment and news, not live “noise”.

Second resolution. Stop excessive rushing and consuming. The market has slowed to a more manageable human scale. Most people found Christmas more enjoyable as excessive consumerism waned and there was less need to keep to market speed. The growth in “self-storage” is evidence we have too much stuff already. Spend time to think, plan and make wise decisions.

Third resolution: Spend more time with family, friends, thinking, re-skilling. 2009 is a year of human values – personal interaction not Facebook, learning not outsourcing brain or memory function to Google, staying local rather than taking carbon-intensive flights and holiday fixes. One of the nicest stories I heard recently was the MD of a commercial property firm effectively telling his staff, ‘We made so much money off you over recent years, that despite the slowdown we will keep your jobs going – but take time to relax and use downtime productively.’

Fourth resolution: Clear out the rubbish. Recessions are both natural (forest fires revitalize soil and growth) and an opportunity to clear out deadwood businesses and inefficiencies in the value chain. Whilst high-street music stores suffer, six billion songs have been sold through iTunes, representing a new way to capture value. Inefficient old-world models of distribution, with each in a long line of intermediaries adding their own mark-up, are no longer viable in the age of globalisation and the internet.  The recent £20 billion extension of small business loans is good news, but businesses cannot survive on loans or access to capital alone. They must run lean (except for vital R&D investment) and start out bringing in revenue through early products and profit before growth, as Sir Alan Sugar often points out.

There is no going back to the old capitalism or financial market model – it is truly broken. The tide has gone out leaving many naked, outmoded business models are washed up, and the tsunami of job losses and high-street impact is only just arriving. Yet this year is one of great opportunity for new ideas and innovation to emerge that will replace the broken market and start to deliver and define the 21st century.