Celebrating the entrepreneurs - small businesses making a difference
Photojournalism book and exhibition puts spotlight on enterprising men and women in Hong Kong and worldwide
Who isn’t familiar with the name Li Ka-shing? Tycoons make headlines every time they open their mouths, but there are millions of small entrepreneurs too creating jobs that keep the global economy ticking over.
That’s the message carried by a photojournalism exhibition at Pacific Place, which celebrates the contributions of the everyday entrepreneur.
The stories and images on display are taken from the pages of The Other Hundred Entrepreneurs, the second in a series of books produced by the Hong Kong-based Global Institute for Tomorrow (Gift), featuring 100 entrepreneurs from 95 countries.
The title is tongue-in-cheek, “poking fun at the notion that we celebrate the richest 100”, says Chandran Nair, the founder and CEO of Gift, an independent think tank.
“It’s not to poke fun at the richest, but to suggest that we oversimplify and we need to look at the world in a much more nuanced, yet sophisticated way.”
It’s not to poke fun at the richest, but to suggest that we oversimplify and we need to look at the world in a much more nuanced, yet sophisticated way.
One of Nair’s favourite picture stories is by Seyed Esmail Mousavi, who captured the work of farmer Gholam Hossein in rural Iran. Twice a year, nomads herd their sheep and goats across his land. Hossein solved the problem by building a cableway across a nearby river. This prevents his land from being trampled, while earning him a small sum for each animal transported.