The School for Social Entrepreneurs

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!

Innovation Edge: some live blogging from opening plenary

Am at Innovation Edge, NESTA's big innovation event / conference at the Royal Festival Hall. Sitting in on the plenary session, so will blog a few highlights as we go. Highlights to come? Bob Geldof, Tim Berners-Lee, Gordon Brown and lots of other interesting people. Chair and chief exec of NESTA to kick us off with some opening thoughts.....

[NESTA chair] Chris Powell: key themes are that this is a growing movement, + a broader view of innovation than before...importance in global context re. problems / challenges / UK:world...

- innovation as iterative and incremental process...
- need to embed innovation / make change systemic
- relationship to government (procurement, DIUS, DCMS etc) / demand

(slightly boring this: basically stating why NESTA is needed.....)

[film interlude about innovation...which I think is meant to be funnier than it is....a few sniggers in the audience]

---------------------------------------------

Jonathan Kestenbaum: (detailing progress since last event 18 months ago...seed funding, public service innovation, new tech funding, source of authority and expertise....); key point is that they have built dozens of partnerships, which have been crucial.

- NESTA has learned 3 things:

    - NESTA at best when taking risks; + importance of risk-takers
    - extraordinary power of partnerships and collaborations (innovation coming from creative combinations)
    - huge national appetite for innovative solutions + "not an elite activity"

[now going to film about NESTA's work / stories; quite the production budget they have... ;0) lots of people saying nice things: Geoff Mulgan, David King, Richard Lambert etc...but also some neat case studies]

Final bit emphasises 'misson-driven' nature of NESTA, + praises staff etc. Quotes Robert Kennedy on the future belonging to those with "passion, reason and courage"...

[another film! with Andrew Marr, no less; from his modern history of Britain programme, I think] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now Jonathan Freedland interviewing Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Live by videolink from Bristol...unfortunately slightly out of sync.

T B-L: my boss "didn't exactly say yes, but didn't say no either"; importance of long leash + generalising specific solutions they have found...."give people space...don't micromanage";

"if you tell them what you want, you're giving them the old ideas...not enabling them to come up with new ones"

[quotes Einstein?]: "if we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research".....importance of not restricting with outcomes + measuring return on investment....

"I hope that the internet will be 'responsible' as it grows" alongside experimenting with "new forms of society, science, democracy etc"

[question about incivility online]: blogs, wikis etc are 'social machines' and are new, so people are finding their way with these new tools of interaction; views these as "growing pains"....

[question about current project: Web Science] thinking of the web as "humanity connected" rather than connections between computers / web pages....; need for 'cognitive science' of the web: "we have a duty to understand the web"

[question about web being fragile] As much about "will it be a force for good?"...in the realm of scientific / drug information...etc

[question about innovation : collaboration] hopes innovation will be "collective, rather than individual"; 'common language' gets built up between groups and teams; web can make these collaborative spaces "transparent"; need for collaboration across disciplines to solve the big problems. "That's why I made the web" (good sentence to be able to be say!)

And break!

Concept and practice: Charlie Leadbeater and Peter Holbrook

I'm never at my finest on Mondays, but today was a really stimulating and interesting one which revolved around two very different individuals: one more conceptual, and one very practical. [apologies for length of post]

First up was Charlie Leadbeater at the Hub for breakfast (two coffees necessary before I could form sentences, needless to say), talking about the ideas and issues which inform and underly his book, We-Think. Leadbeater has been an innovator and ideas pioneer for many years (in 1997, for example, he wrote 'The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur' at the same time as the SSE was being founded). We-Think is about the rise of mass, creative collaboration, and how this is changing society, employment, and traditional systems.

Some interesting tidbits I took from his talk this morning were the five themes in the book:

- the move from marginal to mainstream can happen much more quickly these days
- creativity is a social and collaborative process
- the world is cloud / swamp-like; organisations are box-like....
- a different approach to ownership and control is emerging (sharing animates the economy....)
- these are old systems re-emerging in new incarnations (peer-to-peer, the commons etc.)

He also posed two key questions about this movement: How do you make money from it? (the financial q) and Can we be trusted with this stuff? (the political q). The discussion was interesting, particularly for me around how to make best use of a distinctive piece of intellectual property (don't keep it in a darkened room...think counter-intuitively), about  the importance of relationships (could we see SSE through a lens of creating relationships that motivate, support, trade and inspire?) and the three principles of (self) governance in this area, which again seemed very much related to what we do:

- the need for these connected networked communities to have leadership that leads by values/purpose and tends to come from within that community
- the community needs motivation to contribute and left options to decide why and how they will do so
- peer-to-peer becomes much more important for accountability, review, resources, credibility and so on

Much food for thought.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was then straight off, via a swift clear-up of my desk (we've moved around in the office), to visit Sunlight Development Trust in Gillingham. Peter Holbrook, who founded the trust (the building was an old Sunlight laundry factory that they got the funding to renovate), is a social enterprise ambassador, and it's been a pleasure to meet and work with him on that programme.

Sunlight is an inspiring place, and is growing really fast: a network of cafes is stretching through the Medway Towns in Kent, and, most recently, they won the contract to provide all the catering in the new Medway Council building: so there is a social enterprise serving up all the lunches, coffees etc in the heart of the local authority. The original Gillingham site is also piloting a range of other initiatives, including a music studio, a radio station, parenting workshops, community gardening and so on.....

It's hugely impressive and a good kick up the arse for those who become occasionally jaded and cynical (this is my arse I'm kicking) about what these types of organisation can achieve. Whilst Peter and I agree that it is about the people, leadership, quality of service, transparency of operation etc that brings success, the CIC model clearly has brought Sunlight benefits; with freer governance, but also the badging / recognition that it brings.

Peter himself is one of those genuinely inspiring blokes; not only because of his energy and enthusiasm, but also because he is fired up and passionate about Sunlight being the best it can be, and about making a difference in what is a hard, tough business. It is a professional outfit, but also remains passionate and personal(ised)...which is a great achievement. Though he made me feel like he'd done more that morning than I had done in the past two weeks, I left inspired: take the concepts and thoughts, and start to deliver.

Charlie Leadbeater referred to a headteacher friend of his who labelled himself a 'pragmatopian', in that he had kept his utopian ideal of the power of education, but had had to do inspite of (and weaving through) the national curriculum, Keystages, league tables etc. It's a horrible neologism, but I think Peter is one too: pragmatic and entrepreneurial, but with values written through everything he does.

Thursday round-up...Blakebrough, Baroness and blogs

Ok, so what with the pressures of Shine, a swathe of documents to write, and two new programmes starting, things have been a little busy. Also been covering some ground of late: Liverpool, Nottingham, Leeds and so on....all good stuff. Particularly enjoyed the board meeting at EMSSE: great to see the progress the organisation has made under Fergus Brazel, with much assistance from the board; and also enjoyed delivering my measuring social impact session with the cultural social entrepreneurs in Liverpool. What a great bunch they are, and look forward to seeing their progress over the coming months.

Anyway, here's a long overdue round-up:

- Adele Blakebrough, CEO of CAN, is stepping aside to spend more time with her family (whilst retaining an involvement in their Breakthough investment fund). CAN and SSE started at a similar juncture around 10 or 11 years ago, and have worked together on direct delivery of support, on the founding of UnLtd and, more recently, on promoting the policy agenda for social entrepreneurs. Adele is a unique, engaging and inspiring presence in the sector, and that energy and passion will be sorely missed. She'll be welcome as an expert witness here anytime ;0)

- At the recent Good Deals conference, a couple of things stood out for me: the first was the social enterprise ambassadors launching their first campaign, called More For Your Money, about the added value the movement brings; the second was a typically rabble-rousing effort by (ambassador) Nigel Kershaw about the need for incentives to attract investment (interestingly mentioning that 3 of the 1706 CICs have received inward investment of this type)

- OTS is investing about £350,000 on developing a standard for measuring SROI; it's a thorny, complex area, but if (even limited) consensus can be achieved, the benefits could be substantial....watch and wait.

- At a recent ACEVO conference, Baroness Glenys Thornton (formerly chair of Social Enterprise Coalition), mentioned her beginnings in this world, which is relevant to us / our founder:

"I was very fortunate when I was a young woman to work for one of the 20th century's social entrepreneurs - Michael Young. He's a person who gave birth to many of the great ideas we take for granted today, like the Open University and the School for Social Entrepreneurs. The thing he taught me was that you mustn't be afraid of coming up with ideas and testing it to see if it works. He was always prepared for ideas not to work."

From what I know from those who worked with him, that certainly rings true.

- And on that note of ideas not working, here's a cheery little piece called the Six Signs of NonProfit Decline., which includes both the obvious ("1. Loss of all or a significant portion of support from a key funding source") and the less obvious ("3. Sudden and dramatic expansion of services"). Interesting to note, and put alongside your organisation, or those in your sector....

- And finally, for those who missed my session at Shine (where were you?), here's my How and Why to blog set of slides....feel free to use (with credit!):

| View | Upload your own

Wednesday round-up link fest: Craig, CIC, Catalyst

Am between a long morning meeting and a long afternoon meeting, so just thought I'd pack in the round-up of links of interest to social entrepreneurs and the wider movement:

- Nice profile of Craig Dearden-Phillips in today's Society Guardian; I have huge respect for Craig and what he's achieved, and the interview demonstrates his clear and open approach. SSE is also endorsing his new book, Your Chance to Change the World: the no-fibbing guide to social entrepreneurship. The launch is next week, so I'll have an update then.

- Another one of the social enterprise ambassadors, Peter Holbrook, is also widely regarded as someone who walks the walk, and he's put up another great blog post on why "Food is a four-letter word"; click on 'Blogs' from the main website

- And yet more of them: congratulations to Dai Powell and Steve Sears of HCT and ECT respectively; they've combined successfully with the ingeniously-named E&HCT to win a transport contract at the Olympics.

- Social Firms UK have put out a template for a share-based version of the CIC structure

- New social investment website, powered by Rod Schwartz / Catalyst: SocialInvestments.com; see also the Good Deals conference, which looks like being a great event in this area

- David Wilcox asks: "Are big innovations possible within large non-profits?"

- Social Innovation Conversations podcast: Chip Heath on how to write a good mission (more interesting than it sounds....)

- And, for humour's sake, here's a piece from the Onion on a philanthropist wanting to give youngsters the opportunities he never had....in pole-vaulting

Wednesday round-up: OTS, Olympics, Obama

In a radical break with tradition, here's a Wednesday round-up for you of relevant news, views and opinion.

- First up, I've tried to capture a fair bit of Skoll, and post-Skoll coverage: that would be a links page on its own, though, so best viewed and checked out via our Del.icio.us bookmarks link at http://del.icio.us/SSE/Skoll which encompasses a pretty decent cross-section....

- A social enterprise business park as an Olympic legacy: sounds good. And most interestingly, put forward by someone who is a practitioner, not an umbrella org looking for funds; and we used Calverts for our last big printing job (highly recommended)

- When Muhammad met Liam (Yunus and Black): interesting conversation transcript

- A compare and contrast on social franchising (US- based) from Social Enterprise Reporter

- CSR as a business strategy

- Decent piece on (social) entrepreneurship / government policy in HBR; incidentally, there is a piece in the current Stanford Social Innovation Review which suggests what the new US president (come on Obama!) should do in this field. More on this soon...

- Also in SSIR is a piece about the relationship between producitivity and impact in the non-profit sector; it's called "More Bang for the Buck" which gives you an indication of where it's coming from. I think I took more from this case study

- Big welcome to the first 4 UK Ashoka Fellows, and congrats to Ben Metz for pulling off a good event the other evening. The Fellows are Camila Batmanghelidjh, Al Harris, Bob Paterson, and Faisel Rahman.

- OTS has released a piece of research from Rocket Science on Social Enterprise Networks. I found this useful and informative, but I'm not sure if that's only because I'm approaching sector-geek status. What the report does do, alongside give a good overview of regional and sub-regional networks, is emphasise the need for more peer-to-peer learning / networks....and wisely pulls out SSE as a case study. :0)

More soon, when the frenzy of the last few weeks calms itself.....do buy some extra reading in the meantime :0)

Busyness is business

It's been a busy few weeks here at SSE HQ: on top of our biggest graduation event ever, it is reporting season (aka the end of the financial year), which means spreadsheets and outcomes till the cows come home. It has been nice to look back at one three-year grant and see how closely we have delivered on what we said we would (it helped fund network development / franchise package)....though I am pretty much in the fifth circle of box-tick, form-fill hell by now. Still, worse to have no funding to report back on, so I'll cut the carping.

Alongside that, I've presented to Finnish and Chinese visitors, delivered a policy and lobbying workshop up in Birmingham (and re-found an SSE Fellow: hello Parminder), and put in motion the changes to our extranet. Also, preparation for the Skoll World Forum of Social Entrepreneurship. Alastair, our CEO, and I will be presenting on the 'fringe' at 8am on Thursday, I am led to believe. Those who've suggested we deserve our place there for comedy reasons should know that there is nothing funny about an 8am presentation....ever. If you're coming, come along and see how much caffeine I've managed to down.

I'll also try and write up some thoughts here as the event goes along. This will be my 5th forum (yes, I've been to every one), and it's certainly changed a bit over the years. For a start, it was free the first time (thankfully, as I was running a tiny non-profit at the time), but is now a price that would make Rob Greenland blanch. And after Ben Kingsley, Robert Redford and Al Gore in previous years, ex-president Jimmy Carter is making an appearance this year. SSE is going, largely because of networking, particularly in relation to potential international partners; and because there's a lot of interesting thinking to get a handle on (if I can follow it). It's useful, particularly, to get a sense of how people view what you're doing when coming to it completely fresh with none of the baggage and politics (i.e. from abroad)....and also for us to remind the 'scaling up', systems-changing brigade that social entrepreneurship is also about inclusion, opportunity, and grassroots, local, sustainable change. (I will be taking the soapbox).

So, no time for now to review Andrew Mawson's book, the Social Entrepreneur (teaser one line-review: lots of Mawson, but also lots of passion and insights, + is very readable in snappy, bitesize chunks; worth buying), or to look forward to the first UK Ashoka Fellows (announced / revealed on Friday), or to tell all about the forthcoming Shine unconference (Facebook grp).

And no time, indeed, to discuss how SSE was present when Stephen Bubb (chair of Adventure Capital Fund, taking over Futurebuilders) met Richard Gutch (outgoing chief exec of current Futurebuilders) at the recent ACEVO conference for the first time since the surprise switch was announced....though I can confirm that hell did not freeze over, and the four horsemen of the apocalypse did not appear....

Friday round-up: audio, aggregation, and alltop

It's been a while since the last round-up, and lots to link to and write up.

- Will write more about this shortly, but the Ambassadors have started to blog....and there is an uber-feed you can sign up to for all of them combined (http://feeds.feedburner.com/SocialEnterpriseAmbassadorBlogsFeed). Early days, but starting to happen....

- Details of the next Social Enterprise Research Conference announced

- Free audio file from Stanford Social Innovation Review from their Social Entrepreneurship Day, which I shall be listening to on the way home...

- Podnosh has an interesting post on "Why should leaders blog?"; check comments also...

- SSE graduation in London on March 14th (a week today); if you haven't got an invite, and think you should have, then get in touch.

- US article about entrepreneurship and social change (in the Tennessean, no less)

- Updated research from CAF on Social Enterprise in Practice; haven't had a chance to read, but looks very interesting both on the challenges to the sector (quote from PR: "Social enterprises are unlikely to achieve financial sustainability and it is unreasonable to expect them to do so") and on what is needed in terms of measurement and support. Will follow up on this......

- Sally Reynolds is held in high esteem in the sector for her work leading Social Firms UK, and they continue to take an approach focused on quality and delivery; new trade directory of social firms is now online, and their Star Social Firm quality mark is also taking hold. Interesting to hear her discuss the other day how they could develop quality standards for social firms because they are more tightly defined / structured (see definition of What is a social firm?) than the diverse and varied spectrum of social enterprise.

- Related to that spectrum-like nature, NCVO are "unhappy with the government definition of social enterprise", according to this Guardian article on their new 'civil society' approach. I do hope we're not entering a period of definition debate.........

- Social Enterprise Magazine has relaunched (more developments on website to follow), and, IMHO, looks a country mile better in design, focus and content. Massive congratulations to all involved in making it happen and promoting it so effectively: Tim, Claudia, Deniz and the team. Look forward to encouraging our students and Fellows to read and get engaged with it....

- Greed offsetting. Really?

- Interesting Business Week article on the profits (social and financial) of CSR

- And finally, for all your non-profit blog needs, here's Nonprofit.alltop.com; single page aggregation is the future?

Have a great weekend, one and all....

Will blog for Brownie...and innovation.

Met for a coffee yesterday evening with John Craig, Director of the Innovation Exchange, the government-funded initiative to promote innovation in the third sector (particularly where it meets public services; see here for more). There's the potential for some SSE Fellows to be brought into the process and conversations that John will be enabling, particularly at some 'open space' events coming up soon. I'll also be blogging a bit for the InnovEx, hence the title of the post (if being at SSE has taught me something, it's there's no such thing as a free chocolate brownie). More news to follow in future posts.

As has been pointed out before, just when you were waiting for one innovation exchange to arrive, along comes another one. In this case, the Social Innovation Exchange (or SIX) which is driven by the Young Foundation and a group of core partners (including SSE). More fluid in remit, currently, it intends to draw together resources, build networks and collate case studies from across the globe. Differing, therefore, from its govt.-funded namesake by its global reach, and a much broader focus. SIX is taking a direct feed from this blog, featuring SSE case studies, and we look forward to collaborating with our global partners on a number of future initiatives. Congratulations to Sara for getting it all built and designed....

Friday round-up: Newman, NCVO, NVQs and Neuroscience

Swift Friday round-up of all things socially entrepreneurial and enteprising:

- Hot on the heels of Liam Black leaving Fifteen (see previous post / here), another leading CEO of the sector, Penny Newman, has announced she is leaving CafeDirect and is, 'open to offers'. Form an orderly queue. We're yet to hear whether her leaving do will feature as many Brazilian dancers as Mr Black's....

- OTS launches its Grassroots Grants programme, being administered by the Community Development Foundation, who are now seeking local partners. It's an interesting scheme (matching philanthropist money to create endowments etc) and badly needed given the dearth of early-stage, grassroots funding; read Phil Hope speaking about it here

- More on John Elkington and Pamel Hartigan's book, The Power of Unreasonable People, on Social Edge

- The piece above talks a fair bit about failure in this context, and this is a good article in the New York Times about failure and its relationship to (successful) entrepreneurship of all types.  Why is failure not (always) a bad thing? "Failure underscores the need to take chances...Success can breed complacency...and Failure can force you to rethink every assumption".

- NCVO have launched a new third sector jobs site: NCVO JobShop 

- I love a bargain, and I love buy one get one free (the BOGOF staple), but I never thought it would apply to laptops. And now to houses. Is this some sort of embedded giving? CSR? Philanthropy? Something else entirely? Do we care as long as it works?

- Muhammad Yunus has a new book out, called "Creating A World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism", promoting his concept of social business, a kind of reasoned, philanthropic, patient investment model.

- 75 tips on becoming a better networker. Particularly enjoyed no. 12: "Walk like you know where you're going". True in life as well as networking...

- Enjoyed this post by Mike Chitty about  learning / development. He quotes a manager he's working with, who said "All of our managers have been through the NVQ level 3 in Management - but they are still unable or unwilling to recognise and manage under-performers" Mike goes on to add comment that seems spot-on to me:

"This shows the dangers of pursuing qualifications - rather than pursuing performance. We seem to be trapped in a public policy for vocational education and training that puts qualifications above practice. We are getting a more qualified workforce - but not necessarily a more able one."

- A bit of light relief (ok, not) in the form of this article, the Neuroscience of Leadership, which is more interesting than it sounds: basically discussing how our growing understanding of the brain and cognitive functions can help us manage and lead organisations better.

- An international database of eco-labels to help the consumer navigate their way through the chaos...

- Harvard Business School on "Putting Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector" which is very good, methinks.

- For those in the health sector, Entreprenurses is likely to become a good and useful resource, if a terrible neologism. Dave Dawes speaks sense on this stuff.

- And finally, in honour of yesterday, a cartoon from Hugh at Gaping Void (click to open up):