Entrepreneurs create by breaking things.

When I was about 6 years old, I got into my fathers 10lb Assorted Arnotts biscuit tin.

They don’t make them any more – but made of tin, square, with a folding lid (about 450 mm high and 300 mm square, they were ideal for storing “things” in.

Like bits and pieces of broken toasters, light fittings, screws, nuts etc.

My dad’s assorted collection had a three pin 240 volt power plug with some wire and a couple of bare copper wire ends.

I plugged the three pin plug into the power socket, turned on the power and awaited the magic that I knew came from the wires. As they were not connected to anything – I waited in vain.

My mother (probably saving my life) came out of the kitchen at this point and asked what I was doing with those dirty things all over the carpet.

“Just learning about magic mum”, I replied.

“Put that stuff away and go and practice your violin”.

As I folded up the cable to put it away the two bare ends shorted and blew out the fuse.

I had broken my first thing, a fuse.

Contrary to a great deal of self inflicted worrisome anticipation, I didn’t get a walloping when dad arrived home. Instead I received a lecture on the potential worry I could have caused my mother if I had electrocuted myself. The lecture concluded with my dad giving me an old flashlight to pull apart and experiment safely with 3 volts of electricity.

That old flashlight became the beginning of my life as an inventor.  No, not an inventor that invents things from scratch. An inventor that pulls apart three working objects to construct a fourth working object of dubious merit.

Dubious to my parents but oh so inspiring to young Thomas.

Entrprenuers do that. They break things on purpose. Sometimes three of four things and create a new something from the broken parts that is actually quite often a hell of a lot more useful than the original sum of parts in their original configuration.

I call this – thinking outside the square.

The Internet facilitates global disruption and the Internet arrived via Entrepreneurs.

Academics claim they delivered the Internet to the World. Not so. They, withheld the freedom of the net from pollution by commercial interests for as long as possible. Until basically they realised that they could no longer request the larger amounts every year for funding a private network.

Governments and Entrepreneurs don’t quite “Grok” each other. Which is why they are constantly on opposite sides of the fence.

An Entrepreneur is merely an inventor that knows how to commercialize his or more usually, another’s invention.

Governments don’t care if the world is round. Or if the “electricity” will replace the dangerous gas lights.

Governments care about satisfying their voter sponsors. The persons that contributed the most to their campaign elections.

Entrepreneurs on the othe hand know that in "the invention" hthey have a working disruptor which if applied correctly can change the world and benefit all mankind.

Unfortunately, mankind doesn’t always like change. We are creatures of habit and spurn new innovations until the groundswell of peer pressure forces us to adopt the latest and the greatest.

Here’s an example – How many people over 50 have bothered to update their mobile phone in the last five years ?

Yep – not many.

Unless someone gave you a new one, most of us are pretty happy with the samo samo. After all, it’s familiar. We don’t have to relearn how to use it’s 97,399 features.

But what are we missing out on by not upgrading?

In 1986, my father came to visit me in Darwin. I showed him the wonders of Personal Computers and how Internet email worked.

He told me it was toy and dismissed the technology out of hand.

In 1999, when I reverse listed my fourth ISP, he said – "It wont last".

In 2004 when I read him an email from one his granddaughters n the USA. “So?” he said. “But dad, I get two or three from each of the girls every week. No matter where they are in the world – they can always send me email".

He bought a computer and organized an Internet connection the next day.

18 years he did without the Internet and then suddenly he was flooded with photographs, emails and daily chit chat from his two granddaughters.

Essentially, my father was just mirroring the quill pen mentality of many of his generation. Unfortunately it is the same quill pen mentality that affects many of the Baby Boomer generation, including our current politicians.

Entrepreneur: “Yes – this will put Telstra out of business – but it will mean increasing the GDP by a factor of 20. “

Well known Ex-Politician: “Is that guaranteed? Can I see that in writing”?

Entrepreneur: “No Sir, it’s not guaranteed, but if you reduce the cost of communications to small and medium sized business throughout the country, it stands to reason that they will communicate with each other more, subsequently their sales to each other will rise. The Internet allows that same logic to be applied globally. Australia could with the right infrastructure and pricing policy become a world leader in E-Commerce.”

Well known Ex-Politician: “Thank-you for your views. We’ll think about it.”

Did they above conversation take place?

Of course.

Why haven’t I identified the parties? I have.

As a result of that "We'll think about it", Australia by my estimate missed out on over 3 trillion dollars in foreign trade over the last ten years.

As a consolotaion prize we made a few hundred million dollars out of selling of a publicly paid for asset to the ..... public.

In other words - Sheep farming.

Until Governments are prepared to take a little walk on the wild side. To think outside of the square, our progress will be limited to the permitted growth allowed us delivered via instructions, received on high from US Federal Reserve and the American self-serving political lobbyist cartel.

We need as a country to stop listening to our “trading partners” and start listening to our entrepreneurs - just a little.

There is a reason why we don’t have many successful Entrepreneurs in this country.

The Government needs to find out what that reason is – and fix it. Before we get left behind permanently.

Although - we do appear to have a handful of politicians that appear willing to engage with the public in an equal twoway communicative, "feedback" wanted basis.

There is light at the end of the Tunnel.