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):

Few more items to round-up from another exciting week in the world of social entrepreneurship….

– I’d been meaning to blog about the Economist’s supplement on CSR this week (which I’ll try and come back to), but then it was superseded by this piece on social entrepreneurs. Well worth a read: related, as it is, to the Schwab forum in Davos about the movement, and to the book Pamela Hartigan and John Elkington have written on the subject: The Power of Unreasonable People.

– SSE were represented in Zurich (not by this blog, sadly :0) ), and were happy to see Ann Cotton, SSE Fellow, get one of Schwab’s five World Social Entrepreneur awards. Congratulations to Ann and, as she would say, the entire team at CAMFED. Read more here.

– At the big daddy version of Davos (the World Economic Forum), the big news was Bill Gates talking about his concept of ‘creative capitalism’; you can read the whole article in the Wall Street Journal: my summary version is "companies should create businesses that focus on building products and services for the poor, thinking innovatively about the poorest and bottom billion".

– Closer to home, we must report that Liam Black, one of the foremost social entrepreneurs of his generation, has left Fifteen. Non-acrimonious according to reports, and the sector will no doubt be paying attention to what he does next: a book and a new business idea are on the horizon….

– Rod Schwartz has a good post about corporates and ethical purchasing on the Catalyst Fund Blog.

– Somehow, I missed this before: the first Office of Social Entrepreneurship opens in the US, in Louisiana. See also "America Forward", pushing the movement to the various presidential candidates…

– Voice 08, I think I mentioned before….looking like it will be the biggest and (hopefully) the best Voice conference so far. See if you can spot the Coalition’s promotion of it on their website ;0) SSE will be well represented, including our Liverpool SSE staff and students….hope to see some of you there.

– CAN Mezzanines have got their 100th customer, and a potential fourth venue…congrats all round

– Scotland has mirrored England’s Office of the Third Sector by merging its charities and social enterprise teams. It made sense here…I think it makes sense there too.

– The OTS themselves are seeking organisations who’ve actually used a Social Return On Investment methodology to measure their impact. See here for more details and who to contact.

– SSE welcomes all the Ambassadors next week, and we’ll blog about all of that and how it goes: an amazing bunch of people to bring together….

– And finally, this made me chuckle: for those of you with little desk space; the collapsible home office