Why Alex Salmond is the best Scottish Entrepreneur of all time..!

Irrespective of their interests, the whole world was watching The Scottish referendum of last week. Undoubtedly a very special event to watch in our lifetime, if a country wish to break their union accord of 307 years, or in other words, if they really feel they are capable of captaining their own ship. The decision was relieving for the queen and the British PM, but if there was one person who should be given credit of this biggest entrepreneurial effort, it’s Mr Alex Salmond.

As for the history, he has dragged his Scottish National Party (SNP) from the fringes of politics to the governing power in Edinburgh, ridding it of the feuding that had weakened it and building support for a more gradualist approach to winning independence. And its due to his skill as a campaigner, the pro-unionists lost a commanding lead over the pro-independence camp in the final weeks before the referendum, forcing Westminster to make a last-minute devolution offer if Scots rejected independence.

 So, what is an entrepreneur’s perspective here..??

Let’s look at the theory of corporate spin off:  The rationale is “the parts are greater than the whole”, which involve the separation of a business unit or subsidiary from the parent, can help shareholders get better information about the business unit because it issues separate financial statements.  A break-up can also boost a company’s valuation by providing powerful incentives to the people who work in the separating unit, and help the parent’s management to focus on core operations.

We all know the mergers gone wrong, be it AOL-Time Warner or Sprint-Nextel or a transatlantic one, Daimler Benz and Chrysler. Irrespective of the outcome, which was basically to realize mistakes and correct it later, it was an marriage of convenience, overlapping future goals and mutual business interests.

Looking from this lens, it all started with the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when King James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne from his double first cousin twice removed, Queen Elizabeth I. but it was not until the early 18th century that both political establishments came to support the idea, albeit for different reasons and the Acts of Union was signed in 1706 and 1707 by both the parliaments to create the now known Parliament of Great Briton and United Kingdom, as we know. The historian Simon Schama said “What began as a hostile merger would end in a full partnership in the most powerful going concern in the world.”

But commanding, steering, strategizing this referendum and getting it approved from the Prime Minister was an herculean task which was not to be done by anybody else than an entrepreneur driven with passion, ideas and belief. A vision of new state, its impact on the lives of people, the value it will unlock for the Scottish and the implications of this decision in longer terms needed an extraordinary leader, nothing less than Mr Salmond. Even though Sir Tom Hunter, Scotland’s first billionaire, has supported this referendum through his foundation without explicitly taking sides, he has appreciated the view that Scottish wealth per head is more than £2,300 higher than in UK as a whole, and outstrips major economies such as France, Japan and Italy.

The (business) plan looks great on paper, the GDP (can be read as revenue) numbers look even better with the oil reserves and consumption capacity, a nationalist party in control, (any doubt on passion of the team.?); still the only thing that went wrong probably was communicating the vision of a separate state convincingly to every stakeholder of the country.

The top 10 reasons counted by the NO voters revolve around the doubts and lack of surety of vision for the future. (Read here). Which means, a couple of years or 5 years down the line, with more efforts on grass root support, the referendum would have been a better bet for Mr Salmond. Just the case of being early to market and getting killed without a reason, probably.

Outside Scotland and the UK, a very few people knew Mr Salmond, irrespective of his dominance in Scottish politics so completely for the last decade. And while hanging his boots last week after this debacle, everybody knows, unless managed properly, somebody down the line will again try such an attempt and if the English are found ill prepared next time, we will surely see a new country in this world.

Being ejected from the House of Commons in 1988 for interrupting Chancellor Nigel Lawson, till he decided to hand over the reins to his long time deputy, he qualifies on every quality of being an Entrepreneur, and if you take a closer look at the competition, after Andrew Carnegie and few more local billionaires like Sir Tom Hunter, I would consider him to be the best Scottish Entrepreneur of all time.

Any reasons why not..???

Image courtesy: The Guardian, UK

First published Here