The IOEE International Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Dr. Ernesto Sirolli at the 2016 Celebrating Enterprise Awards, held at the House of Lords on Thursday 10th November. The recipient travelled from California, where he lives and works, to collect the award.
The IOEE International Lifetime Achievement Award was established in 2013 to honour individuals who have made a significant contribution to enterprise and entrepreneurship. This contribution, whether it be through research, writing, leadership or enterprise support, must have a significant and lasting impact on the enterprise field and must demonstrate a lifetime of commitment to raising the profile of enterprise and entrepreneurship. Dr. Ernesto Sirolli is one such individual. A world leader in the field of local economic development, since beginning his career in International Aid in Africa in the early 1970s, he has worked across the globe to promote and facilitate local entrepreneurship and self-determination.
During the 1980s, Dr. Sirolli worked in Esperance, a small rural community in Western Australia, pioneering a unique approach to economic development, based on harnessing the determination and resourcefulness of local people. His work in Esperance inspired more than 350 communities around the world to adopt a responsive, person-centred approach to local economics. The Esperance community project is still active and created over 800 new businesses during its first 20 years. In 1995, Dr Sirolli founded the Sirolli Institute in California, a social enterprise dedicated to teaching civic leaders how to capture the passion, energy and imagination of their own people. Over the past three decades, the work of the Sirolli Institute has demonstrated that the provision of caring, competent, dedicated advice and support to entrepreneurs is as important as the introduction of physical infrastructures to the development of a stable and prosperous economy.
Accepting his award at the House of Lords event, Dr. Sirolli had a serious point to make about the importance of valuing local enterprise in these days of global, multi-national conglomerates. Referring again to the election result, he said:
“I really think that it’s our fault. We have failed economic development and we have failed original development. We have created ‘us and them.’ In the big cities of America, they think it’s fine, but in the countryside people are totally disconnected and history is passing them by. I really think that for us to renew our support of local entrepreneurs in rural country towns is essential in the next decade otherwise the idea of globalization will vanish. Remember what we used to say 20 years ago – think globally but act locally. As soon as you take the time to shut up and listen to local people you discover the miracle of intelligence.”
Dr. Sirolli received a Laurea di Dottore in Political Sciences from Rome University in 1976 and a PhD in Local Enterprise Facilitation from Murdoch University, Australia in 2004. He is an Industry Fellow at CSRM University of Queensland, and an Adjunct Professor at Curtin University, as well the author of two books and a TED Talk that has been translated into 31 languages and downloaded over 2.5 million times.