Following hot on the heels of the Dragon’s Den not getting social enterprise comes some exciting and vaguely related news… Tim Campbell, first winner of the UK Apprentice, is leaving Amstrad behind to start on two projects of his own. One is about male grooming, but the other, entitled the Bright Ideas Trust, will be a "social enterprise initiative". No concrete details as yet, although it plans to " give away at least £1 million a year to budding entrepreneurs". Interesting stuff: Tim has clearly seen the light…
SSE Fellows: update on activity
As I flit between the Scylla and Charybdis of CapacityBuilders Destination 2014 and the new proposal for a Social Investment Bank (see also this Observer interview with Sir Ronald Cohen), news comes in from around our Fellowship network:
– first up, Charles Armstrong, founder and CEO of Trampoline Systems, which was developed with and at the SSE (it also powers our extranet), writes to tell us that they have received £3million funding from US investors; fabulous news, and also a boost for UK-based 2.0 tech companies more generally
– Chris Dabbs, who is both a Fellow and helped establish and run the Salford SSE pilot programme, is now also the co-ordinator of the NHS Social Enterprise Network; Chris e-mails to point me to an article he wrote in Health Services Journal, entitled, Taking care of business (registration/login required; can e-mail a copy if wished) which focuses on the support that (social) entrepreneurs need for the NHS to really be transformed in the way we would all hope….well worth reading
– An SSEI (Ireland) Fellow, Anna Lo, has become the first ever ethnic minority candidate to be elected in Northern Ireland and, indeed, the first Chinese candidate ever to be elected to any UK assembly or parliament. An amazing achievement.
– Jude Habib, who graduated from the London programme in December 2006, points us to her spangly new website which is up and running: her organisation, SoundDelivery is taking "a fresh approach to communications for the third sector", so check our their recent work and activity….
– finally, our chief exec Alastair Wilson, himself a Fellow of the first SSE programme back in 1998, features in Regeneration and Renewal’s current edition (online here but subscription required) under the headline "Have-a-go helper". It’s a good introduction to SSE, covering the methodology (learning by doing, case study driven), the importance of legitimacy ("Nobody appoints a social entrepreneur….it’s very important that they see it is possible to create things from scratch"), its track record (85% projects still running), its history (Michael Young and the importance of personal motivation), and why (and how) the government should invest in supporting social entrepreneurs….
Skoll Forum 2007: going international
Next week I have meetings here at SSE with organisations/individuals from China, Finland and Israel. Nothing revelatory in that, per se, but I think it’s symptomatic of a couple of things:
1) there is growing interest across the globe in social enterprise and entrepreneurship
2) the UK is at the forefront of this movement
OK, nothing revelatory in that either (!), but I think it’s worth dwelling on for a moment. Why? Well, the Skoll World Forum is coming up (see the Forum programme here), which provides a chance for international debate and discussion (and networking, of course) in the field, and to share knowledge and experiences with new people outside the UK scene.
The other point is that SSE will also be appearing on the fringe (the Orange programme) at Skoll, presenting on the long tail of social entrepreneurship. This basically discusses the need to scale up opportunities for social entrepreneurship involvement, as well as replicate ideas, scale individual organisations etc. I’ll post up a brief overview of where we’re coming from before we head to Oxford.
But what we’re hoping is that we can see how much of a UK-centric view this is, or how applicable it is to other countries. Is the support and finance available in the UK so far ahead of other countries that they would long (at this point) for star social entrepreneurs/enterprises like Muhammad Yunus or CafeDirect in order to promote the concept? Or does a grassroots, broad church approach appeal in terms of bringing wider benefits and tailored solutions? We’ll be looking for feedback to refine our thoughts and argument to have relevance beyond these shores…
The Forum this year focuses on social innovation, and features a whole range of speakers: from academics like Greg Dees to writers like Charles Handy, to practitioners like Yunus and Jim Fruchterman. Should be an event with a great buzz, and we’re already arranging meetings for when we’re there….If you’re coming along, then come and find SSE (and come along to our presentation on Wednesday morning); if you’re not, then we’ll endeavour to blog what we can from the event, as well as round-up afterwards….
Friday round-up: microcredit, RED, leadership, Harvard et al
Friday round-up, and there’s a fair bit after inactivity this week:
– good Worldchanging post on microcredit and the ongoing debate about how effective it is; the argument seemed to be saying that entrepreneurship and enterprising people were needed to change things: access to finance alone was not enough (which is undoubtedly an argument we’d hold to over here as well); well worth a read, and a topic that is not likely to go away…
– Intelligent Giving follow up on the RED campaign (after it got a kicking in the press); not sure I totally agree with their take, but difficult to disagree with: “If you like RED products, buy them, but don’t pretend you’re giving to charity. We’re talking pennies here…..” and they have some interesting information about the charity that benefits too….
– the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference has been happening; someone kindly rounded up those who were blogging from the event, though they did miss one or two other interesting posts. Both of which see progress or “the ball” moving forward….fake golden goose
– we attended the Third Sector Leadership Centre Provider Forum on Monday; we’re in their directory and they have an interesting interim report on action learning sets for third sector leaders (free registration needed); obviously we’ve been at that for a decade… ;0)
– Yunus saves the world with yoghurt….
– …and We Are What We Do with a bag
On that bombshell, we bid you farewell for this week.
Dragons don’t understand social enterprise
CNN visited the SSE this week, to learn more about social enterprise and entrepreneurship; they met several of our current students and sat in an expert witness session with social enterprise legend Colin Crooks of Green-Works. In discussing the sector, the movement, the history, the definitions (!) et al, we got right to the real water-cooler stuff as well: namely, that the Dragon’s Den five had totally rejected a “social enterprise” on the programme the night before, because “charity and business don’t mix”.
The episode in question is here, but sadly not the bit that includes the proposal in question (though you can submit a comment). A Senscot member has weighed in with his view on what happened. I confess to having missed the pitch through going to make a cup of tea, so it may have been unclear and sketchy and badly presented. But the reactions (which I did see) from the Dragons seemed to be that they simply could not grasp the idea of social purpose and business mixing. Which is bizarre, not to say near-backward: have five so-called cutting edge businesspeople not even heard of social enterprise? Not know who Jamie Oliver, John Bird and Tim Smit are? And their reaction was very strong, fake designer taschen kaufen as well….enough to make grown social enterpreneurs weep.
Anyway, a “dragon’s den” format is now de rigeur at all third sector conferences, but what the movement really wants is an equivalent on TV (I once suggested the Social Apprentice). Perhaps it would be too cute and fuzzy for good TV (bunnies rather than dragons?), but it also seems that the whole concept would need a massive amount of explaining. The mere concept of a social as well as financial return on investment might send them running down the stairs. Sustainability, pah! etc…
Or perhaps, once they were in a different mindset, it would be different. Duncan Bannatyne found no problem about giving money away on ITV’s Fortune programme, so perhaps he just needs to find a middle ground between the two?
Peter, Duncan, Theo, Richard, Deborah: love the programme, but get with ours.
