42 Degrees - Business from a different angle

Tim Smit is the man who saw paradise on a piece of disused
wasteland in Cornwall and turned it into Britain's fourth largest
tourist attraction.

It's ironic really when you consider the extent of Tim Smit's crimes against humanity, that he now seems hell-bent on saving it.

Smit is chief executive, co-founder and driving force behind the Eden Project, a dramatic collection of giant geodesic domes housing more than a million plants in the crater of a derelict clay mine near St Austell in Cornwall.

In the seven years since it opened, a worthless, polluted and unusable site has been turned, by Smit and his team, into Britain's fourth largest tourist attraction, employing 500 people and drawing around 1.2 million visitors a year.

It has helped to regenerate the entire region of southern Cornwall. "We have pumped in nearly £800m to the local economy, twice as much as the EC has given the whole of the southwest," says Smit with great pride.

But he has far loftier ambitions than simply helping an area in economic decline. He wants to redefine not only the way that business relates to the wider community but also mankind's relationship with the natural world.

"This is a stage for change," says Smit. "I'm a capitalist and an environmentalist. We wanted to find the most derelict place on Earth and create life in it. We then wanted to show how clever human beings are by building something totally fit for purpose."

He's right. the Eden Project is a stage, and it has made him one of the biggest stars in modern business thinking. His almost miraculous ability to turn wet clay into gold and show how business methods can address social problems has established him as a guru with a global fan base of people interested in progressive management techniques, sustainable development, tourism and architecture.

But Smit wasn't always a do-gooder. For ten years he was a jobbing record producer, writing and producing songs for the likes of Barry Manilow and the Nolan sisters. He even had a big hit once – an astonishingly naff version of Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata, called 'Midnight Blue', by Louise Tucker (it sold seven million copies).

Smit does a nice line in irreverence, especially when it comes to his own past. "The worst offence was a Scottish football anthem for the World Cup in 1986," he laughs. "It plumbed shallows that still take my breath away." He reflects that his greatest contribution to music was to "do a Captain Oates and leave".

Thus, in 1987, he moved to Cornwall. "I didn't retire to Cornwall," he says. "I retired hurt and washed up." But being on the verge of penury clearly sharpened his entrepreneurial antennae. "I'd become interested in rare breed animals, in particular Vietnamese Pot Bellied pigs, and I'd been to see a guy who owned some land. He mentioned some gardens." Beneath the brambles and nettles of a neglected estate close to his new home, were the remains of sumptuous gardens dating back to the 12th Century. "They were like the Marie Celeste. On the spot I chose to become a gardener."

For Smit, they were to prove a dress rehearsal for the Eden Project. Despite being very nearly broke, he spent the next two years clearing and restoring the gardens. They are undoubtedly stunning, but their relaunch as The Lost Gardens of Heligan reveals Smit's streak of marketing genius. Would they be the most visited gardens in the UK, attracting 400,000 visitors a year if they were called Heligan Park or St Austell Leisure Gardens? Almost certainly not.

It was, in turn, the success of Heligan that allowed Smit to contemplate the Eden Project. "It was sad to watch the clay communities dying in Cornwall. I was already thinking about gardens and integrated thinking for the creation of wealth, and of giant domes. So as soon as I found the pit I knew what it would be."

But he admits he had no inkling of how much it would cost. And trying to raise nearly a £100m in finance with no significant track record for something that had never been done before involved some very fancy footwork and truly awesome powers of persuasion.

"I went to the local development committee and said I had this great idea to build the eighth wonder of the world," remembers Smit. "I had no business plan, but promised that it was going to be absolutely fantastic. They gave me £25,000 to go away."

"Then the Millennium Commission wouldn't give any money until we had established it was feasible. So we lied and said it would cost what we thought we could raise." He secured a £700,000 loan against Heligan, which then attracted more development money from the banks.

Eventually, the Millennium Commission awarded Eden half of the then project cost of £74m, which was matched by other donations. But he still had the brass neck to persuade two construction companies, Sir Robert McAlpine and Alfred McAlpine, to work for 18 months without payment or contract. Then, for good measure, he persuaded them to loan Eden a significant sum only to be repaid if the project was successful.

Raising the finance, persuading a team of 100, including large corporate builders, to work for free, devoting two years of his life to a not-for-profit project when he was strapped for cash, all seem like really significant challenges.

But by far the biggest challenge in the entire project was not emotional, conceptual or financial. It was the month of January 99, the night that 43 million gallons of water flooded the pit. "It was winter 98/99 and it had been raining for 134 days solid, which stopped work," says Smit.

"Eventually the water poured in and a cliff face collapsed into the pit. The task of removing one and a half million tonnes of crap when you have no budget and you are already behind schedule was one of the most daunting of my entire life. The Irish site manager forged 60 of the toughest men in the world into a rescue crew and saved the day."

For a moment he sounds slightly deflated by the memory. But then, Tigger-like, he bounces back. "Mind you it was Tonka truck heaven and the industrial choreography of all those lorries and diggers was amazing," he reflects. Much to the surprise of all, the project came in on time and on budget.

Smit is a man who found his calling relatively late in life. But, having discovered the social benefits of business, he seems driven; anxious in his desire to make up for lost time, eager to spread the word. There is an excellent management team at the Eden Project so now, as a Social Enterprise Ambassador, Smit sees his role as promoting the idea of social enterprise – that business methods can bring about social benefits.

"Social enterprise is not just about tiny community projects: it is a model for running big business and public services alike," he says. He's anxious to extend it to regional eco-friendly activities such as power generation and revitalisation projects.

But first, he argues, we need to get over the innaccurate idea that private enterprise equals efficient and public enterprise equals useless." One of the real big cons about social enterprise is that there is a belief that the private sector is rigorous and professional and dynamic," he says. "But many of the best charities are run like very, very fine businesses, and a lot of companies I come across are run like accidents."

Social enterprise is hugely important, he says, but society needs to be more bullish about its potential. "We must understand its transformative power, not in terms of getting jobs for people who previously found it difficult," he explains. "That's kind of a loser's mentality. We should be talking about how we can transform services in this country to act efficiently and how we can bring wealth back to a wider stakeholder group."

A new social contract is needed, he says. "I think the human race can save itself – there are miraculously good bits of homo sapiens. But the only people capable of delivering globally transformative change are the big corporations."

"That is our battle ground. It's to grow up and not take the baggage of the 1960s – the radical chic of being pro-business or anti-business – with us into the next phase of our development. We need to understand that there is a new configuration developing, and if we can't bring business together with the sort of value-driven systems that we have, that will be our failure."