ENTERPRISE Week is fast approaching – so this is a good time to start thinking ridiculous thoughts.

To be enterprising we need to think about the future, and we can learn a good lesson from Albert Einstein, who said: "If an idea is not at first absurd, then there is no hope for it."

Not all new ideas mean old ways are forgotten.

We still read books and newspapers; we still ride bicycles; but new ideas are out there and we need to grab them.

Thirty years ago computers were rare in many businesses. Now most businesses could not operate without them.

Changes – big changes – usually come about via three routes: from war, from natural disaster or from disruptive technologies.

We need our young people – in universities, in colleges, in schools, at home in front of their computers – to dream of these as yet unheard-of disruptive technologies.

This is where our future prosperity lies.

It's easy to keep looking backwards and to celebrate what happened in the past.

We need to anticipate the future with enthusiasm and grasp the opportunities that lie there.

It's very easy to think of mad scientists, crackpot inventors and possibly frightening technologies, but we have an expanding global population, a huge global financial crisis and we have increasing competition in trade and business from all corners of the world. We need more crackpots and mad scientists and outrageous thinkers.

Attitudes change. Nuclear power was not acceptable a decade ago. Now most people accept it has to be part of the energy mix, along with renewable energy sources.

Genetically-modified crops must be carefully managed, but they may also offer a way of feeding our expanding world population. It's easy to be against such things when you aren't starving in Somalia or Eritrea.

And nanotechnology is also here – and here to stay – despite the worries of Prince Charles.

We dream of robots to serve us, but they already are.

We don't have a single robot to do our bidding but hundreds of them, at work, at home and in our cars, to do things for us: but, here again, we are looking backwards. We need to gaze into the crystal ball and dream.

Bring on Enterprise Week.

Bring on the absurd ideas.