Last night I finished reading Penelope Lively's The Bookshop.  It's a short novel - 130 pages at the most - and it focuses on a 45 year old women trying to set up a bookshop in an East Anglian rural backwater.  It tells the story of how she makes the decision to start her business, how she comes to locate it in a haunted, but nevertheless sought after house, and how she build up the business. 

Sadly, it also tells the tale of the mistrust between her and the people in the village of "Hardwick" where she has her shop.  The community does not see the need for a bookshop at first - her bank manager is dismissive and the people around her point to a depressing economic climate.  And then, once it starts to appreciate the bookshop and its library, how the village starts to mistrust the business.  She has made enemies of the local dignatory who wants to set up her own Art Centre and, from that, there is no way that her business can survive.

Clearly the messages for 21st Century entrepreneurs were not lost on me and I was left with a set of questions.  Can we trust ourselves to react positively when others make unusual decisions? How supportive would our communities be?  Would there still be a "have you thought this through properly" reaction from the Bank Manager?

I can't believe that we would still react like this but, as one erudite Professor of entrepreneurship once said, "Until you change the dinner table conversations, you will never get an entrepreneurial culture."