Business Cases for mSMEs

by Duncan Williamson

The case studies in this book concern the mSME micro, small and medium sized enterprises. There were two motivations for creating and publishing these • as a practical resource for students at school, college and university • as a motivation for anyone who is thinking about or beginning to set up their own business As you work through this book you will not fail to notice that the cases mainly come from the Far the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia. I thought this was a very valuable thing to do for a variety of • most of the cases show how it is possible to think at the Micro level whereby little capital investment might be required • some of the cases relate to the extension of a hobby or something that the subjects of the cases thought about when they were students themselves • some of the cases show how an otherwise complex idea can be scaled down to the micro and small enterprise level I have tested many of these cases in a classroom/training room either myself or with the help of a colleague and I know that students in particular appreciate the motivation the cases provide. Given the level of unemployment of young people world wide, I believe this book is an excellent resource for to provide inspiration and motivation for these people to take hold of their lives for themselves. Just today there was a report on youth unemployment in the UK and I posted the following in my business blog as a reaction to • Many young people who live at home are receiving unemployment and other benefits and they may well be there is no drive for them to need work. • I talk to young people whose first ambition is to become a manager ... this is before they have any experience and, indeed, education, training and experience of the real world. Parents, teachers and others who discuss these matters with their young people need to convince them that starting at the bottom is the reality and not something that was fine in the old days ... • There are people who say, for example, that if someone can communicate, it doesn't matter whether they can spell and so complete tosh! This is a recipe for people to be trapped at the lower levels. After all, the average middle and senior manager needs good communication skills as they have to give speeches, write reports and so on. Mathematical abilities are nowhere near what they I have met 18 year olds who wanted to use a calculator to find the answer to the question, "What is 10 as a percentage of 100?"

186 pages, Paperback

Published July 23, 2012

About the author

Duncan James Williamson was a Scottish storyteller and singer, and a member of the Scottish Traveller community. The Scottish poet and scholar Hamish Henderson once referred to him as "possibly the most extraordinary tradition-bearer of the whole Traveller tribe."

Williamson is reputed to have been born in a bow-tent on the banks of Loch Fyne, near the village of Furnace in Argyll, to Jock Williamson and Betsy Townsley, and was one of 16 children. He learned his repertoire of stories and songs from family, and other members of the Traveller community. His illiterate father was a basketmaker & tinsmith, and insisted that his children get an education, sending Williamson to school in Furnace. Like other Scottish travellers, the Williamson family lived in a fairly large tent during the winter months and took to the roads for the summer, walking from camping place to camping place and picking up seasonal work as they went. At age fourteen, he was apprenticed to a stonemason and dry stane-dyker. A year later, he left home with an older brother, travelling all over Argyll and Perthshire. He worked as a farm labourer, and later as a horse dealer. He was married to his first wife, Jeannie Townley (a distant cousin) in 1949 and had seven children together. Jeannie died in 1971.

On 22 February 1977, Williamson married the American-born musicologist/folklorist Linda Headlee, with whom he had two children. For the first four years of their marriage they lived in a tent, following which they lived in a cottage in Fife. It was largely through her that Duncan came into demand as a storyteller in Scottish schools, as well a featured performer at storytelling festivals both in the UK and abroad.

Williamson's life on the road in his teens and as a young married man is recounted in his oral autobiography, The Horsieman: Memories of a Traveller 1928-1958. From early on he developed a zest for storytelling as well as a love for the conviviality that attends "having a crack" (trading talk with friends or companions). His repertory of songs and stories continued to expand throughout his life, particularly after he gained entry to the world inhabited by folklorists by taking part in Scotland's folksong and storytelling revivals during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

In 1967 Williamson met the travellers' rights activist Helen Fullerton, a collector of traditional folktales, who had previously recorded his mother and siblings in 1958. Fullerton told another collector, Geordie MacIntyre, about Williamson, with MacIntryre making further recordings, also in 1967. In 1968, Williamson performed at the Blairgowrie Folk Festival.

Thanks chiefly to Linda's skill in editing his tape-recorded performances, a number of Duncan's stories came into print during his lifetime. A few audio recordings of his songs and stories have been issued commercially as well. Many more recordings remain in storage in personal or public archives, including the Sound Archive of the Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh and the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress, Washington DC.

Williamson's talents as a storyteller are celebrated in several books written by specialists in Scottish tradition and the art of oral narrative.