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.
