System social entrepreneurs: the return…

Posted on February 6, 2007 by sse

I said I would get round to responding to the Shaftesbury Partnership’s response to my response to their post about system social entrepreneurs (as opposed to community social entrepreneurs). I think this helpfully elucidates what they mean by the differences here:

"A key prerequisite of what we term community entrepreneur is that they are people-orientated, and possess significant local political and social capital – enough for reforms and new ideas to really take route [sic] in their communities. This does not mean they cannot at the same time then build scaleable initiatives, but there is ultimately a localness about the community entrepreneur related to the number of people they can genuinely and personally influence"

while

"System social entrepreneurs, if you like, are somewhat opposite in temperament – their inclination is to really understand the systemic problems to be addressed and then identify the key solutions to them in a top down fashion, but aware that part of the solution must involve the inclusion of community entrepreneurs if the initiative is to succeed and culture change is to be brought about"

They go on to say that system social entrepreneurs are more likely to come from the City, business or government, and give some examples. There’s some interesting thoughts here: I would agree that we need new entrants from all places and walks of life, and would also agree that we need to bring these diverse people together: that’s when the strongest work emerges, in our experience. I would also agree strongly that top-down initiatives have often failed to connect with or give ownership to the grassroots/local frontline. The scaling up of local initiatives is one we have covered several times on this blog; suffice to say that it is a difficult process suitable for some, not all, and I would say the main problems tend to be not enough proof of concept, expansion before consolidation, and not enough risk assessment, rather than access to finance.

They also address the difference between social innovation and system social enterprise; basically saying that the former is ‘solutions-oriented’ and the latter is ‘problems driven’, and that innovation is inevitably more concerned with the new, and the ‘light bulb’ moments, rather than simply transplanting/honing/merging existing ideas, as a system social entrepreneur might.

"This incidentally, also puts a limit on the amount of system social enterprise that can take place, because the starting point is not necessarily the idea or innovation, but the problems within the system and the risks needing to be managed (using ideally social derivative thinking), and finding people who can quickly understand them and identify the community entrepreneurs who can help them shape and disseminate the solutions required"

I think there would be those in the social innovation world who might not agree with all of this (indeed, I think they are trying to move it away from innovation as newness or novelty, and make it more systematic, though it does inevitably have more freedom of thought associated with it). I think this is a helpful dialogue, which adds to our understanding, rather than simply dwelling on definitions (which I’ve railed against enough previously). They end with the nice phrase: "Less ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’ and more ‘co-create the flower we need for the job’ ", which I think helps sum up where they are coming from. It is a more strategic, holistic, planned approach to solving the problems that are there from within (and without) the existing systems. I look forward to perhaps bringing some of the planters of our thousand flowers to get involved in that co-creation process.

Friday round-up: responses, debates and new thinking

Posted on January 26, 2007 by sse

A brief Friday round-up before the computer ices over:

– A couple of things I previously blogged about have sparked responses / continued in debates. Firstly, the i-genius debate continues both in the comments of David Wilcox’s original post (I particularly liked Tom from MySociety‘s "Yikes, it might be the best site in the world, but it doesn’t seem to
really chime with British social sensibilities. I’d go red at the face
with the idea of adding myself to a site with a name like that. The
hubris!") and in a follow-up post with an e-mail response from the site’s founders. Read on, but give the site a try too….

The second thing was my mention of the Shaftesbury Partnership’s distinction between system social entrepreneur and community social entrepreneur. A summary of my post might read "kind of agree, kind of disagree"….anyway, they’ve posted up a response on their blog which goes into some depth answering some of the questions I raised. I will respond to this more fully, but will do so in a separate post with some proper thought behind it, but am enjoying the conversation.

– George Bush used the words "social entrepreneur" in his state of the union address (thus causing havoc with my Google Alert feeds); I’ll leave it at that

– Davos Conversation, a kind of online forum of the World Economic Forum, if you want to know (some of) what’s happening

– the 59 smartest non-profit organisations online claims to be a list of "organisations who are winners because of their web
2.0 smarts and a willingness to engage their constituents far beyond
asking them to dig into their pockets.These are organizations that give their volunteers and members a voice and get out of the way. They’re pros at mobilizing awareness online. They’re experimentors. Innovators. On a mission. They’re fearless." That paragraph is a bit American, and so is the list: I counted about three non-US sites; I don’t know whether that’s the real proportion (certainly the US leads on this stuff), but I doubt it. Still, lots and lots of interesting content through all these links….

– some interesting stuff on action learning via School of Everything via David Wilcox ; more on this soon as well, I hope

– something causing a bit of debate is a report from the City Parochial Foundation called Building Blocks about second-tier organisations which has some interesting findings including:

– small groups clearly benefit more than medium-sized organisations who struggle to fund their infrastructure support needs
– small groups in particular feel their voices are not heard and it is funders and outside agencies which decide what they ‘need’
– frontline groups value one-to-one help, from knowledgeable,
experienced, committed, and skilled individuals/bodies which are not in
competition with them for funding

CPF provide some funding to our London programme [disclaimer alert], and we are featured in the report as an example of good practice [double disclaimer!], but there is real validity in the points above. And it should be those that are reported, as well as what has become the headline (Cut back second tier non-profits, says major funder).

– and finally, an interesting article from Simon Jenkins in the Times (from October 2006: finger on the pulse, as ever), which includes, on the second page, the following:

"Someone should spur a revival of community participation in Britain.
A crash course in parish innovation is needed similar to that which
swept Scandinavia in the 1970s and 1980s, enveloping communes,
municipalities and mayors. It should capitalise on the wealth that is
pouring into many British villages and on the time that many retired
people have to spare. Most rural communities in most parts of the world
look after their old people without having to call for help from a near
bankrupt nationalised industry.

Nor is all lost. The admirable Leicestershire village of
Sheepy Magna raised £45,000 in 2003 to convert part of its church into
a one-stop community enterprise, with internet access, a baker’s shop,
a Fairtrade market and, of all things, a sub-post office. It took
nothing but determined local leadership. It can be done, even in
England."

Rural social entrepreneurs come forth…..

What is a system social entrepreneur?

Posted on January 8, 2007 by sse

Stumbled across an interesting new blog just before Xmas, entitled The Shaftesbury Partnership. It’s a name that conjures up any number of interesting possibilities, but is in fact a kind of ethical business consultancy working primarily with what it calls “system social entrepreneurs”. The people involved include Nat Wei, co-founder of Teach First, and programme director of Future Leaders (recently featured in the Guardian).

So what is a system social entrepreneur? I think it’s worth pasting up their entire post on this:

“Social entrepreneurs are those who take
aspects of entrepreneurship most commonly but not exclusively
associated with the private sector, using it for social good. In its
most enhanced form, the business model underlying such entrepreneurship
includes an element of income self-generated from the social economy.

There are two main types of social entrepreneur (though on rare
occasions both types can appear in one person): community social
entrepreneurs and system social entrepreneurs. Community social
entrepreneurs are locally based, working at grass-roots level. System
social entrepreneurs have both the skills and the inclination to grow
initiatives to national size, affecting the entire system. System
social entrepreneurship tends to take a strategic top-down approach
working on issues that governments and the public see as some of the
most intractable and challenging, but by working with community
entrepreneurs on a grass-roots level it hopes to make real impact as
well on the ground reaching parts that governments and other
traditional agencies find harder to reach.

For large-scale social improvement (in the public sphere and
elsewhere), both community and system entrepreneurs are needed, working
together to address poverty.”

It is the differentiation between ‘system’ and ‘community’ social entrepreneurs that I find most interesting here. Some might argue there is an element of elitism here (note that community social entrepreneurs don’t have the ‘skills’ or ‘inclination’ to take things national / scale up, according to these definitions; giving them the opportunity to learn those skills, and gain confidence and ambition to use them might be a thought), but there is also more than a grain of truth. Certainly Teach First and Future Leaders have been strategic, top-down approaches to addressing unmet needs, and appear to be working well (I met Brett Wigdortz, the CEO of Teach First, at a conference recently and was impressed breitling kopior with him and their work). But the division seems slightly too stark to me here, and perhaps over-emphasises the ‘rarity’ of community social entrepreneurs who start local but grow to become national.

Think of Anita Roddick who started with one shop in Brighton, or John Bird, who started with a monthly publication in London. Or, more recently, Colin Crooks, who started Green Works with one small local outlet. Whilst it is true to say that the majority of SSE Fellows are what might be termed ‘community social entrepreneurs’, there are certainly a fair proportion who would probably balk at that term. Also worth noting that our recent evaluation (by the New Economics Foundation) addresses this point:

“Sometimes SSE fellows are described as being simply local community activists working for local people solving local problems. This evaluation aims to contribute to the debate as we find that whilst social entrepreneurs are working locally they often face challenges produced by processes beyond their immediate sphere of control. Some fellows are seeking to counteract disempowerment by ‘scale jumping’ to assert their specific concerns and actively seek to shape and change public policy at local and even national and international levels.

There is also danger that the ‘local-people-solving-local-problems’ view may strengthen a dangerous assumption that social enterprise is the panacea that will solve social ills on the ground, thereby relinquishing responsibility for addressing these ills directly, or more importantly their underlying and systemic causes.

The SSE programme is designed and delivered in a way that is sensitive to the diverse needs and attitudes of the students who are striving to achieve positive change for communities. The spirit of the SSE experience is in the way it seeks, through the endeavours of its students, to reverse trends of social exclusion, poverty and disempowerment at local, national and international levels. SSE guides students through a process of personal transformation, organisational development and by supporting a community of social entrepreneurs as part of a network that can work on a long-term basis to create wider and lasting change.”

The other interesting point for me is that the description of a system social entrepreneur here sounds very much like strategic social innovation, rather than person-led social entrepreneurship involving risk, opportunism, personal responsibility, challenging the status quo and so on….but then perhaps going down that road is too stark a differentiation from my side as well. The bottom line is that we need entrants to this movement from all backgrounds, working at all levels to solve complex problems; and working together where it brings benefits and improved results.

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