Category Archives: Social Innovation

Will blog for Brownie…and innovation.

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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….

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

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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):

Iloveyou

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Friday round-up: Gates, Cotton, Black, and Schwartz.

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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

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Dartington, Second Voice, Internet-Free Day and Steve Lawrence!

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Four weeks of immersion into the world of social entrepreneurs go quickly, especially here in Bethnal Green. Just when I’ve gotten used to the tube rush in the morning, the tea routine at SSE, meeting new and brilliant social entrepreneurs virtually every day, then the month is almost over.

I do still have a  week left here, but it will surely go by fast with the SE Ambassadors coming in next week for a training session, the block program having their monthly classes, and finishing up the work I’ve been helping out with here. In the past week I had the chance to go down to Dartington Hall and see the place where Michael Young first found much of his inspiration for his great work. I would highly recommend taking a trip down there, magnificent place!

Another interesting event I was able to attend was Tom Donaldson’s presentation for the Young Foundation staff about his Second Voice device. Although not yet completely off the ground, something tells me we’ll hear more about this product in the coming years.

As a side note, keep an eye out for Nick Temple on BBC World today, where he will be representing the Global Ideas Bank about Internet-Free Day.

Last, but not least, we’re fortunate to have a visitor here at SSE this week. All the way from Australia, Steve Lawrence has come to study the school’s concept first-hand in order to get a real sense of how SSE works.Steve, a veteran in the sector and very much a social entrepreneur himself, founded Work Ventures about 28 years ago. Do check out their site: an amazing organisation. During his time here so far, Steve has sat in on a few witness sessions, met students and staff, and is very optimistic about the prospects for the SSE methodology overseas.

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The history of social innovation and enterprise (an impossible task)

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Our intern, Thor, who you will have read blogging here from time to time, has been looking into the history of this movement as part of his work / project while he’s with us. Which reminded me of this post that I wrote for another blog some time ago. Thought it might be of interest….:

It’s quite a common question to those of us who work in the world of social innovation and entrepreneurship: who was the first social entrepreneur? Or, when was the first social invention? The obvious answer, of course, is to say that such people (and ideas) have occurred throughout the ages. People like Robert Owen, Florence Nightingale, Gandhi, Michael Young (see here also) and the Rochdale Pioneers: social entrepreneurs and innovators one and all. But that only takes us a couple of centuries back: what about those social innovations that are so fundamental now that we don’t even think of them as such: the school, law courts, democracy. The latter is famously dated back to Athens (around 510 BC), but law courts and schools date back to 2400 and 2500 BC in Sumeria. The names of those forward-thinking Sumerians are sadly lost in the sands of time, but the campaign for their recognition starts here.

It does help put today’s work in perspective though. The term "social entrepreneur" may not have come into regular usage until the 1970s and 80s (its first use is believed to be in 1958, according to the mighty Wikipedia), but it’s fairly evident that entrepreneurial people wanting to use their skills and traits to make social change have existed for many centuries. Lecturing charities today on how they should start to trade and become self-sufficient seems less relevant when Oxfam started the first charity shop back in 1947 (and they were only copying the Salvation Army and Red Cross who ran second hand clothing shops before that). Similarly, pointing to the co-op movement (which was enshrined in law in the UK in the 1850s and 60s) as a new dawn ignores the mutualism prevalent in Europe at the time, and the craft guilds and friendly societies which existed since the 11th century.

Perhaps this helps make a wider point about (social) innovation and how we should think of it: not innovation in the sense of brand new Eureka ideas (innovation as novelty) but as a continuous process of refinement and incremental improvement, with the occasional bound forward. We are building on the ideas and actions of those who came before, responding to their innovations, and building upon them. But we are also responding to the problems and challenges that some of their innovations have created: advances in medicine mean a growing, ageing population; advances in transport have pollution as a by-product. This helps explain why those who have said (at various points in time), "everything has been invented", are utterly wrong: the need for innovation, particularly social innovation, will never go away.

As John Cage, the US composer puts it, "I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas; I’m frightened of the old ones".

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