The School for Social Entrepreneurs

International social entrepreneurship

Our focus of late at SSE has been pretty relentlessly on our existing and planned activities in the UK; following the government investment in the national network back in February, our Network team have been working hard with our regional partners to get everything in place for the expanded delivery: staff and student recruitment, match funding, agreements with partners, marketing materials, etc etc And the fruits of those labours can be seen in the list of regional schools down the side of the website, which now features Devon, Hampshire and Yorkshire (NB - so new, they don't all have full details up yet!). Hugely exciting and even more so as we recruit students and start the programmes later in the year.

And that UK work and track record over the last decade and more has given us a robust replicable package to work with and created a great deal of interest in the methodology abroad. As regular blog readers will know, our SSE programme in Sydney is our first international pilot, and it has been very rewarding for all over here to see significant time and effort pay off with the first group of Antipodean social entrepreneurs gaining support and development. And to get practically involved: I'm Skype-ing the programme manager over there about an evaluation session tomorrow morning, for example. And we have learned a lot this side in the process, both for our ongoing, current UK work, and for any further international SSEs.

One thing I think is most interesting about our franchise system (I never thought I'd start a sentence with that) is that it is rigorous enough to deliver consistency / quality assurance, but also has enough flexibility to be tailored to different local, regional or national contexts. So what excites us here is learning and adopting new innovations and improvements from our international (and UK) partners, and sharing them back round the franchise. In this way, I hope that, whilst gaining maximum impact from our central expertise and experience, we are not doing so in a neo-colonial type way (UK knows best etc), but in a mutually-beneficial one. Then we can avoid the worst of what Rod Schwartz has been highlighting in his Social Edge debate: Are the only innovations in social entrepreneurship Anglo-Saxon?

And it's exciting to see how social entrepreneurship is spreading into different contexts and more mainstream institutions. Take today's announcement of the British Council planning to boost 10,000 social entrepreneurs worldwide, focusing particularly on East Asia, China and south-east Europe. I'm delighted because we've been working with BC in various guises, including helping on the design of a pilot skills for social entrepreneurs programme in Beijing, and they've now got buy-in centrally to push the work on. Which can only be good news for those of us who think that social entrepreneurship is part of the solution, regardless of your background or which country you're in.

Social enterprise and public service delivery

Yesterday, SSE attended the Smith Institute's launch event for its new policy pamphlet, Social Enterprise for Public Service (pdf download). Good line-up, including Stephen Bubb (ACEVO, Futurebuilders), Minister for the Third Sector Kevin Brennan and his opposite number in the Conservative party Nick Hurd. Each of them, plus Paul Palmer (Cass Business School) and Tom Titherington (Network Housing Group), spoke for 5 minutes, before it was opened up to questions.

Worth mentioning that the SSE chapter in the pamphlet looks at a few questions of relevance + pertinence to social entrepreneurs: whether entrepreneurship can be commissioned and procured; how can such 'unorthodox' people work with 'orthodox' civil servants; how can they gain legitimacy + credibility when self-appointed; is measurement more important than legal structure; and how can pressure to scale and conform be avoided?

Monday round-up: Wilcox, web 2.0, Wal-Mart, whisky

Back in the swing of things on the blog front: two meetings cancelled / postponed today, and time therefore for a brief post rounding up some recent links and news of interest. Hope you like the recession/Obama cartoon (from gapingvoid, as ever). Roll on the inauguration. And kudos to intern Hannah, who has been blogging so proficiently that I got complimented for it....

- On that subject, interesting-ish article about whether non-profits should use volunteers / interns on their social media; comments are as interesting as the piece.

- Third Sector Minister Kevin Brennan in the Times on the opportunities for social enterprise in the current economic climate: Chance for social enterprise to be more enterprising

- Arch genius of social media / non-profits (or the godfather of social reporting, as I read recently) David Wilcox twittered (yes, I know..) today about this categorisation of conversations and dialogues and tools. If you facilitate or run workshops, this is interesting.

- Nat over at Change.org is bang on the money again: Investing in People Not Ideas

-The Paradox of Choice, also via David Wilcox; why more is, ultimately, less; to apply this policy in the world of web 2.0, read Beth Kanter's tips on How Non-Profits Can Use Social Media Efficiently

- Top 10 Green Books of 2008: another list for the list

- Two new posts from social enterprise ambassador Peter Holbrook: Losses and Life in 2009, and Enterprising Solutions; both worth reading.

- Are you going to Voice 09? SSE will be there. Word on the street is that there were some bursaries available.....though these may have gone by now

- Turkish Social Entrepreneur of the Year list

- The top 5 articles in Stanford Social Innovation Review from last year are pretty interesting; on performance, impact, social innovation...and Wal-Mart amongst others.

- And from the same magazine, what better way to start the year than with 10 Ways to Become a Better NonProfit Leader in 2009

- I've just reviewed Forces for Good for Social Enterprise Magazine; I'm lining up the Charismatic Organization next (subtitle: eight ways to grow a nonprofit that builds buzz, delights donors, and energizes employees; oh yes)

- Social Silicon Valleys: in Spain article from the Guardian. I've met

- Finally, and fairly randomly, enjoyed this article about how whisky is having to be rationed because the Chinese are drinking so much. On an overland train from Xian to Shanghai a year ago, I had a conversation with a Chinese guy where he recommended 'baijio' ("Chinese whisky"; aka hugely strong alcohol schnapps-y type thing, best mixed with snake's gall-bladder apparently) and asked what I'd recommend. My recommendation was Bruichladdich, which my new friend faithfully wrote down on his newspaper. I'd like to think, therefore, that I'm at least partly responsible for this Chinese whisky frenzy.....

Top 10 social entrepreneurship trends for 2009

There are, of course, a whole host of posts and articles predicting what we can expect in the year ahead: check out Nat's take on Change.org for one. But repeating others has never stopped me before, so here’s my take (partially cribbed from other people’s posts) on what we might see in the next 12 months in the world of social entrepreneurship and enterprise. Who knows, we might even make this an annual thing to see if we were anywhere close to being right.....

1) Resilience: new favourite term of funders and policy-makers alike; the concept of resilient communities, as promulgated by Transition Towns, has only gained more credence in the current climate, and I think we’ll see it bandied around a fair bit. Rightly so, too, I reckon.

2) Partnership, collaboration and merger: where partnerships over the past five years have, at times, been partnerships of convenience put together simply to apply for a particular piece of funding, the recession will mean partnerships of necessity will be the order of the day.

3) Bang for buck: again, economically (and social impact-wise), it’s all going to be about value for money, particularly in public sector contracts; so added value will most likely need to be put into pound signs where possible (hello Mr SROI). To coin a phrase, the revolution will be monetised.

4) The Obama effect: while his grassroots web 2.0 movement building stuff will be the inspiration for a UK version (or twelve; who knows, one might take off), it may be that a U.S. Office for Social Innovation or a Social Entrepreneur agency (as touted in various documents and proposals) might be the more substantive influence on the sector.

5) Internationalisation: something which has grown in the last couple of years, with initiatives like the Social Enterprise World Forum and countless visits and exchanges; this will move from a network-y, sharing information, “you’re great, no you’re great” phase to more practical delivery partnerships and collaborative working.

6) Jobs and skills: with unemployment set to rise significantly (some are predicting over 3 million), an emphasis on job creation, skills for employment, and micro-entrepreneurship (aka self-employment) will come from government and trusts/foundations. Social entrepreneurship and social enterprise needs to place itself firmly and credibly in this space, because everyone else, from universities to private sector agencies, will be as well.

7) Mobiles: if last year (and the year before) was the year of the social network, we also started to see mobile phones (via twitter, qik et al) begin to impact. This could well be the year when “mobile apps for charity” is a phrase we see... or the year when Stephen Bubb starts to tweet. Which can only be a good thing.

8) Niches: the trend where we see expertise pulled in as a sub-contractor / deliverer for relatively small areas of work, or niche jobs; particularly relevant for start-up social entrepreneurs who should seek out those opportunities / unmet needs / markets.

9) Realism: the emphasis will be SMART, and the R will be the most important: realistic; from business plans to applications, from tenders to proposals, investors and funders will be looking for the credible, reliable and proven. Overblowing the trumpet not advised.

10) Investment (ready or not): two prongs to this point; the first is that there is much talk of ‘investment-readiness’ in the social entrepreneur world (or lack of therein), and 2009 will see agencies start to enter that space with vigour; the other aspect is that pressure will be put on trusts and foundations to maintain levels of investment even as their endowments go down, given the preceding decade of prosperity. We’ll see forward-thinking trusts do so.

All in all, lots to look forward to. SSE has much to look forward to, and we wish everyone, particularly SSE students and Fellows, a prosperous and successful new year.

Thursday round-up: karaoke, kicking and kiva

Ok, a brief round-up of some useful links and info, having surfaced for air from various bits of writing. Sadly, no photos or film from the SSE Christmas do last night as yet (which ended with karaoke), but perhaps in the New Year...All I'll say is that there was a version of Hallelujah which won't be appearing on X Factor any time soon. On to more important things:

- Starting unbiasedly with ourselves, SSE has contributed the Social Entrepreneurship chapter to the Philanthropy UK Guide to Giving. I think it's a useful one-pager for people looking for an introduction to this world.

- Voice 09, SEC's big event, is coming together. Check out the details online...and probably see you in Birmingham.

- Piece in the Times today on celebrities and social enterprise which is interesting-ish

- Good report on tackling worklessness by Blackburne House CEO (and SEC Chair) Claire Dove which pushes the need for (socially) entrepreneurial mindsets and self-employment

- Rod Schwartz continues to kick CICs, this time calling for action to change some of the regulations in light of the rapidly decreasing interest rates

- You may well have read the report on the Social Enterprise Ambassador programme shake-up (with two asked to leave); there's an interesting post + comments over on Rob Greenland's blog where I've contributed a fair bit

- The Spark programme for homelessness / social enterprise projects is renewed and open to new applications

- Third Sector covers the social enterprise debate / identity project

- Lord Mawson responds to the Queen's Speech and uses the opportunity to talk social entrepreneurship

- SSE Australia is happening; see here and here for more info

- I found this post, entitled Kiva is a menace very good in terms of how what seems to be an "internet-based" idea that can easily be replicated is actually much more particular, not least of which is that their leadership (I've met both Flannery's on different occasions) are so bloody good. Essential reading for those who are doing a "It's like Kiva meets MoveOn" type project

- NESTA are doing some interesting things in social finance

- And Nathaniel Whittmore continues to write great content on the Change.org blog; let's back his Make Social Entrepreneurship Support part of the National Service Plan (US) idea

- Check out Robert Mulhall, a Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Fellow (we love SEI), talking about his work on Irish TV

Till next time.....

Social entrepreneurship in China: lessons from Beijing

I've been in Beijing all this week working on a couple of practical projects and, yesterday, speaking at a Social Innovation and Third Sector conference organised by the British Council and the Ministry of Civil Affairs (or BC and MoCA as I'm learning to call them). There was some really interesting background statistics and information, not least the enormous rise in the registration of non-governmental organisations across the country: hundreds of thousands each year. The discussion of regulation was also fascinating, as new legal structures / processes have come into play, allowing for the creation of private foundations and also for very small local (primarily voluntary) groups to operate without the need for the full regulatory procedure.

Of course, small and local is all relative in this field: one conversation we were having about the importance of a social entrepreneur being connected / engaged with / from the community they are aiming to serve led one government-official to note that some of his neighbourhood leaders might come under that definition....and the neighbourhood they worked with and served? 125,000 people. Whatever one thinks of the Chinese government, they are practically the only route to scaling or replicating any sort of solution across this vast country.

But what inspired me most, given that we are in development with the Fuping Development Institute and the British Council about potentially bringing the SSE methodology to China, was the similarities between the social entrepreneurs and their voicing of the various barriers and challenges they face. There were some great examples and practitioners there: like the entrepreneurs who established Shining Stone Community Action and the 1+1 blind / radio project. In our breakout session (when I was still trying to gauge response to my presentation: always tricky to see how something has been received in translation / with a 10-15 second delay), such practitioners mixed with support agencies, government officials (some of whom were also extraordinarily entrepreneurial: overseeing pilot subsidies / exemptions for NGOs, increasing procurement from the third sector by 300% etc) and business leaders in heated and pretty open discussion.

And the key issues / barriers / challenges? Funding + earned income, personal/business support, government regulation / legal structures (on which people were split between they need to be heavily involved...and they need to get out of the way), connecting with each other to share information...and so on. Sound familiar? Absoutely. And while the UK is further along the line in many of these areas, and has learning and knowledge to transfer (including what hasn't worked), and while the constraints and challenges are different here, there is a huge amount of common ground. And what shone through, as ever, was the passion, dynamism and purpose of these social entrepreneurs doing extraordinary things in an extraordinary country.

Friday round-up: Shine, school, summer, sloths...

Basking in the Indian Summer here in Bethnal Green: here's to it carrying on all weekend. And, of course, what better way to prepare for the weekend than with a round-up of news frmo the world of social entrepreneurship and enterprise....

- First up, there's a downloadable pdf of the OTS "Is social enterprise at a crossroads?" research that I posted about yesterday: check it out on their website: Social enterprise: where next?

- Way back when (May), SSE was involved as a founding partner in the Shine Unconference; one interviewer who was there on day 1 was Alex Bellinger of SmallBizPod, and you can download and listen to the podcast at Social Entrepreneurs shine at Shine; it even features an interview with yours truly, but don't let that put you off....

- If you prefer reading to listening (or you don't have as long a commute as me), then this Harvard Business School article, the Coming Transformation of Social Enterprise might be interesting. Coming very much from an elite business school point of view, obviously, but some provocative stuff worth browsing about the "imagination deficit" in the sector...

- On a related theme to our recent monograph, Sustainable Paths to Community Development, the Development Trusts Association and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have been looking into the question "What role for community enterprises in tackling poverty?"

- Who are the leading entrepreneurial speakers? Find out (an opinion) here

- Andrew Mawson, author of The Social Entrepreneur, has been spreading the gospel in Australia

- Do you know how your council works? Urban Forum's guide will tell you how....

- Some good recent Social Enterprise Ambassador posts by Daniel Heery and Chris Allwood

- Finally, I enjoyed this post by Rob Greenland about the "sloth"-like organisations working in regeneration, and the challenges of partnering with them. It might be familiar to some of you...........

Back in the game: a returning news and info round-up

Hello everyone: a big welcome back from the SSE blog. We'll start back in traditional fashion with a round-up of everything that's been going on in the world of social entrepreneurship and enterprise in the past few weeks.

- For the geeky web 2.0ers amongst you, How Sociable will tell you how well your brand is represented on the social web. What more could a blogger want.... (thanks to Beth for this)

- Can you smell a rat? No, but they can smell a landmine apparently. And now they can smell the money: £500,000 worth of it for this rodent-loving social entrepreneur.

- Are you a sneaky rat yourself? Try this online ethical test for your moral DNA...

- Patrick Butler had an interesting piece in yesterday Society Guardian about Jamie Oliver / school dinners....but more generally about lone heroes bringing about social change (or not). Well worth a read, particularly for the complexities of measuring and attributing success and the need for catalysts.

- I totally identified with this post by Mike Chitty:

"Enterprise is not about business and entrepreneurship.
It is not about premises, finances, business plans and swots.
It is a process for human development.
It is a way of exploring:

• who I am,
• what my potentials are/might be, and
• the kind of future that I could create.

It is way of living – of becoming.
Enterprise can be a catalyst, a framework, for the emergence of identity."

- CICs are back in the news (stay awake at the back), with two CIC CEOs setting up a CIC association to provide support and representation to all those CICs out there. There's a fairly equivocal statement from the Coalition in response, but given their recent call for more promotion of the structure, they must surely see this as a good thing. Certainly, the meagrely-resourced regulator does....

- This year's FOOTSEY event in Yorkshire looks like being even bigger and better than last year's, which I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed. I'll be trying to get back up to God's country for this one as well, so see you there....

- Someone mentioned £300m being taken from the RDA regeneration budgets to fund the new housing initiative to me today. Will try and find a link soon enough: unclear what the ramifications may be region-by-region

- Good to see Social Enterprise Ambassador, SSE expert witness and all round good guy Craig Dearden-Phillips nominated in the most admired chief exec category in the Third Sector awards. And to see him having an entertaining debate with the publisher of his own book....

- Also, much SSE news forthcoming: a new programme in the East Midlands starting in October; a new SSE in Cornwall starting formally soon; and a new publication to be launched next week. I know your breath is bated now; more soon.

- Finally, the hot question of the week: are you a changer, a contributor, or a coaster?

Till next time....

Innovation brokers: necessary intermediaries?

The other week I attended an interesting and thought-provoking day at NESTA about social innovation, with many of the major players in the field (NESTA, Innovation Unit, Young Foundation, etc) in attendance. On the same day, the Innovation Unit had launched a report, called 'Honest Brokers: brokering innovation in public services'. [see here for more and to download the pdf]

Matthew Horne, who wrote the report, spoke about it briefly on the day, and I've since read the whole thing. The general gist is that social innovation is important, and that innovation in other fields (technology etc) has many intermediaries to help it come to scale and grow (such as hubs, incubators, labs, accelerators and so forth). As Horne writes,

"Innovation brokers help to mobilise innovations, identify opportunities that the current system undervalues and they broker relationships between disparate parts of the system.... In particular, they broker relationships between 'innovation creators', 'innovation seekers' (such as commissioner of services), investors and policy makers."

He goes on to recommend that the government seeks to create propitious market conditions for these intermediaries working in the social/public sector. And create these conditions by promoting innovation, regulating to encourage it and investing/using money to leverage in other investments. The pamphlet is more specific about where and how to do this, so I'd recommend a read.

Some cynics on the day drew a parallel with the old (false) maxim that "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach"; i.e., "Those who can, innovate; those who can't, broker". Others felt that it was no great surprise to find an innovation intermediary organisation writing a report that recommended greater support and resourcing of innovation intermediary organisations.

There might be the odd grain of truth there, but there's many worthwhile points of learning in the report. For example, it makes the clear case that "the innovation imperative is also an economic imperative", because the current centrally-driven approaches are not solving the problems we have, and are becoming increasingly unaffordable. I also liked the stuff on how and why innovation doesn't work in the public sector / social spehere: "monopolistic sectors...tend not to be very innovative. Sectors with lots of very small players tend to be good at incremental innovation. Sectors with many small players and a few large players tend to be better at more radical innovation". Which very much very much put me in mind of SSE's long tail argument.

Also, what if we started to view SSE as an innovation intermediary? In the list of services such organisations provide (expert consulting, experience sharing, brokering, diagnosis + problem definition, benchmarking, change agency, influencing policy....), I found myself putting a tick by many of them, to differing extents, for SSE. Further to this, the innovation research reaffirms SSE's beliefs in diverse networks and in the need for a safe trusted space; as Horne writes:

"Innovation-rich sectors tend to be highly networked, with a high number of random connections between individuals and organisations and a high level of social, cultural and professional diversity within these social networks.....[this] explains the important role that brokers play in estaboishing and maintaining such networks and relationships....

Building relationships between innovators in different organisations and creating rules that make it safe to share, be open about problems and potential solutions is important"

Which again reminded me strongly of NEF's findings about SSE students and Fellows and the benefits they gain from networks of support, resource and opportunity, and from a safe space to test out and discuss their ideas. Indeed, just as we have been saying to people that social entrepreneurship is about transforming 'beneficiaries' into leaders of change, so this report calls for "the next era of innovation in public services...to focus on the participation of the service users themselves " and, finally, for "systems that give the public tools to innovate for themselves".

My only caveat comes from an example we heard on the day, from the DOTT team (who are considered an innovation intermediary). Horne writes that innovation does not come from centralised organisations searching "for innovations and then impos[ing] them on others". Yet the Dott 07 example of Low Carb Lane, in which they introduced low-energy innovations on a street in Northumberland, demonstrated that intermediaries can also impose ideas on others. Most of the residents were more worried about crime, the burnt-out garage at the end of the street and so on, not on issues of climate change. The fact they had no ownership over the project also meant it was unlikely to be sustained.

Which led me to my final conundrum, one that all innovation intermediaries should be considering: how can we match the large-scale problems identified by research and evidence (chronic illness, ageing population, climate change) with the concerns and wishes of those at the grassroots  (which vary region to region, street to street). I think SSE's approach, of supporting and empowering those often coming from the problem they are aiming to solve, and then networking them effectively and building their capacity to make change, can play a significant role in this. Thinking of ourselves as an innovation intermediary might help push this forward.

Innovation Edge 2: overall thoughts + Sir Bob

The rest of Innovation Edge was....OK. Great turnout, great venue, but caught between a few stools I think: neither a trade fair of new innovations, nor a genuinely interactive forum, nor a traditional conference (keynotes + seminars). Networking was good, though not enough time for it....and the expert seminars (at least the ones I attended / heard about) were average at best: meandering was the word.

Gordon Brown gave an engaging, concise, warm speech (without notes...with jokes), but the highlight for me was definitely Bob Geldof. [you can hear audio etc of lots of the speakers here]

It sounded very much like he'd been reading John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan's book,The Power of Unreasonable People, as he used the same George Bernard Shaw quote (unreasonable people shape the world around them... etc) to frame his address. Without notes, he was passionate, coherent, fluent, intelligent and engaging: really impressive. A few excerpts that stood out for me (make of these what you will):

- "Desperation is the father of necessity, just as necessity is the mother of invention"
- [on Britain being more risk averse]: "We so fear failure that nobody dares try anymore....we need to celebrate the attempt at trying"
- "in a world of hyper-democracy, the notion of leadership comes to the self....decisions will increasingly be made locally"
- "co-operation and interdependence must be the way"
- "we need our social entrepreneurs to consider [ideas of a different world], to be innovative and progressive"

He then ended with a quotation from W H Murray, which he said should be written on the chests of social entrepreneurs, politicians and changemakers in the world; certainly a powerful call to arms, to the doers of the world:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!