Skoll Scholars 2010

From the start of the session, the place was left to share experience and lessons learned from the audience of social entrepreneurs. All have agreed that the financial crisis has act as a force multiplier for:

• External collaboration:

The financial crisis has brought ”legitimacy” for social entrepreneur who has noticed a change of perception from governments, institutions and for profit businesses: outsiders are becoming insiders! In fact, social entrepreneurs are now seen as the people who know the reality on the ground and who have access to the solution. More collaboration can now be seen among social entrepreneurs who are now sharing and bringing forces together to fight against a common issue– the example of Samasource's collaboration.

• Internal collaboration:

Social entrepreneurs were forced to look for innovation to counter the downside of the financial crisis: innovation in effectiveness and innovation in management. An example would be the decentralisation operated by Engineers without Borders to push the innovation to the edge of the organisation. But the most recognised point in the session was about the leadership and succession planing : it was about the importance of recognizing when founder leadership becomes a bottleneck and when founder should pass on their leadership.

From the discussion in the panel, a collaborative leader should action on 4 different axes summarized below. Those axes have brought to me an analogy with the African circle dance*.  

1. Vision and story telling: A leader should be able to articulate his/her vision and communicate it to his team. Furthermore, storytelling, which led to actions, is the key to share the company stories, within and outside the organization. Like in African dance, the leader will communicate its/her intention to create a circle by setting up the scene of the dance (place and size of the circle );

2. Diversification in the organisation : more diverse is your team, more innovative ideas you will be able to develop as you will look at the issue with different angles. In the analogy of the African dance, the leader is in charge of gathering people, encouraging them to join the circle, should they know the steps or should they bring their own;

3. Collaboration and team : each team member should feel part of the accomplishment of the social mission. the leader should motivate and strengthen the collaboration in the organisation. He should be able to develop his associate so, as soon as the context requires to, he will be able to pass on the leadership.It means, in the Africa circle dance, he is the one to who ensure that the center of the circle is never empty;

4. Leadership style : therefore, in my analogy with the dance, the real leader might not be the person standing in the middle of the circle but it might be the one developping his associates so, one day, one of them can be in the center of the circle. And the dance will survive long after the founder has left the scene because he could have succeed to pass his vision and train his successors !

Muswagha KATYA 

 *  In sub saharian Africa, when celebrating and dancing, the dance will always end up in a circle with all the dancers moving in the same direction, leaving the space Inside for each of the participant who feel it to have few seconds of glory and lead its own steps from the middle of the circle

1. Your Identity – What is it? To what extent do you want to mix your private and public identities? Do you want to befriend every single person on facebook or twitter?

2. Giving up control of your message – To me, social media is a bit like the game Telephone (aka Chinese Whispers). After all, rumors spread quickly but how accurate are they? So if you’re going to use social media, you really have to think about how you frame your message so that when the 1000^th person hears about it, the essence of it will still remain…

3. Trust – Social media is built on the social psychology of trust. I trust you, you trust me, so you’re more inclined to read or take note of what I read or take note of. This means that someone who uses social media must be authentic and transparent. For example, Vin Diesel is the most popular guy on facebook because he is authentic...

Entering the jam-packed Rhodes Trust Lecture Theatre, I wasn’t sure what to expect from a topic that is over-discussed and under-substance. My main motivation this morning was to meet Jeff Mendelsohn, Founder of New Leaf Paper (a case which 100 of us MBAs learnt by hard for an assignment in Strategy II). What turned out, however, was the best panel I have ever attended.

Moderated by Byron Auguste (McKinsey), who did a great job throwing controversial questions, the panel comprised of old, gigantic corporations to new and smaller firms (New Leaf Paper, $25 mil, 12 years old). Three main areas of discussion were revolving around:

• Is there really a business case for sustainability investment among corporations?
• When social investments conflict with financial returns, what should companies do when shareholders’ goal is primarily profits??
• How should companies or intrapreneurs push the sustainability agenda forward within large corporations?

The first issue: Mike, having been Head of Sustainable Business for many years, believes so. For years in M&S, he has demonstrated how investment in sustainability brought cost-savings in other areas (e.g. utility bills), allow the search for new market places, and formation of new relationships and partnerships (e.g. 55% M&S vouchers distributed via Oxfam products were claimed, boosting sales; compared to the 2% industry average!). Deborah explained how networks at a higher level (e.g. first lady of South Africa) were formed from its Social Entrepreneur of the Year awards. Alberto shared that undoubtedly, the social agenda in Venezuela is not even a matter of debate - one needs that for mere survival. Different examples to the same vision.

The second issue: Bryan posed the question: “How do you demonstrate a case to a person who only wants to make money?” Jeff gave several useful suggestions- Establish connection with shareholders towards a common goal by looking out for nexuses between sustainability and markets, then use innovation to fulfill both demands. If possible, marry a company’s definition of success to the social mission. The question, in my opinion is: “Is the decision of prioritizing sustainability based on cost-benefit analysis, or strategic imperative?” If it is the former, then we would go at snail pace in making paradigm shifts in the private sector.

The third issue: Deborah said, “Use persuasion”. She explained how in E&Y, a partnership company is a challenge because every penny that is used comes out from the pockets of partners. However, she leverages on her persuasive skills to get things done around the world. Jeff uses brand power in its “Non Pulp Fiction” and “Think and Smile” campaigns where NLP users are involved in appreciating their contribution to the environment both by thinking rationally and reacting emotionally. He also shared a lesson he learnt: If you want real change, include sustainability as a key indicator in every employee’s performance evaluation.

From negotiation to marketing skills, supply chain management to HR policies to financial astuteness, the task of pushing sustainability out of a mid-level manager’s desk into the board room of corporations is a gargantuan one. It is however, not an excuse for delaying any longer, for we have done so, as the private sector, for far too long.  

Skoll World Forum, Thursday 9am

1. The future is something that comes at you independent of your will, not something that you go into.
2. As an entrepreneur, as yourself which of 3 ways you can look at time: are you moving through time towards a target? is time coming at you? or are the elements that determine your future already in place and will unfold with time (e.g. an accident waiting to happen)?
3. Scenarios deal with uncertainty in an environment when forecasting based on the previous performance is not relevant to the future.
4. There are 3 reasons to manufacture scenarios: To set the direction, make sense of a context you don’t understand, are determine if you are working with the right values.
5. To use scenario planning, one must “manufacture” (not choose) potential scenarios that that best fit the purpose of the analysis and are the most challenging scenarios. Get rid of the word “unlikely”, and narrow the number of scenarios you offer. Evaluating a question in the context of 2 scenarios is best, 3 ok, 4 is tough.
6. To start out scenario manufacturing, you must identify the central actor, look at the transactional environment around them (the people surrounding them, suppliers, clients, investors), then look at the contextual environment (factors) around the transactions environment that affects the transactions.

• Sally Osberg, President & CEO, Skoll Foundation
• Brizio Biondi-Morra, President, AVINA

• Federico Bellone, Amazon Program Manager, Fundación AVINA

• Mariano Cenamo, Executive Secretary, Idesam
• Dr. Martín Von Hildebrand, Director, Fundación Gaia Amazonas
• Adalberto Veríssimo, Senior Research & Co-Founder, Imazon

The panel discussed the growing human right issues related to water scarcity around the world. The panel was moderated by Fred Lazaro from PBS Newshour. The panellists were from pacific institute, water.org and EcoPeace. The panel raised the issue of how water could be the next big issue in the world after oil. There are several water related disputes around the world both between countries and within countries. The panel discussed about “peak water” which is the maximum water humans can use on a sustainable manner. Gidon Bromberg, EcoPeace highlighted the fact that most affluent nations continue to use more water than what is sustainable.  Gary white talked about lack of drinking water access to several communities around the world. There was discussion about macro versus micro solutions alluding to centralised infrastructure developments versus decentralized local solutions to providing water. The centralised infrastructure is very costly and cannot be adapted quickly to changing scenarios.
One of the panellists mentioned the term Soft Path without elaborating much on it. Somebody from the audience mentioned that more of the infrastructure is built not for those in the bottom of the pyramid. There was reference to climate change’s contribution to water scarcity. Someone from audience referred to farmer suicides in India and its relationships with water scarcity. There are failing monsoons due to climate change. The water table has dropped immensely and hence farmers have to use more powerful engines to pump ground water. This leads to increased CO2 emissions.

Social Edge is compiling a daily round-up of top blog entries and tweets from the Skoll World Forum 2010. Below is our round up for Thursday, April 16, 2010. For the latest blog entries, see the blogging page of the Skoll World Forum's website.

Bonus Video - Day 3 Highlights - 2010 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship.

Blog Entries

• Social Entrepreneurship: As the Movement Builds, the Boundaries Blur (Kjerstin Erickson on Social Edge)
• Wajeha Al Huwaider, a woman, driving in Saudi Arabia (Lisa Katayama on Boing Boing)
• Skoll World Forum: Keeping social entrepreneurs real and relevant (Elmira Bayrasli on Wonderment Woman)
• They Call them ChangeMakers: Skoll World Forum 2010 (Katie Forrest on Little Miss London)
• Inside the Skoll World Forum: Climate Change (Grace Augustine on NextBillion)

Update - Post-Forum "Volcano" Blog Entries

• Under a Blanket of Ash and Fire (Nathaniel Whittemore on Change.org)
• Life Under a Cloud (Ray Suarez on PBS Newshour)
• I’m a Social Entrepreneur Get Me Out of Here (Matthew Bishop on Philanthrocapitalism)
• TEDxVolcano (Marcia Stepanek on Cause Global)
• Skoll World Forum - The Extended Version (Bruce Lowry on Skoll Foundation)
• Video: TEDxVolcano (UStream)

Tweets

For a complete list of favorite tweets from Skoll World Forum 2010, please refer to Social Edge's Favorites on Twitter.

Interesting idea to consider. I have always found the concept of using the brain to study the brain fascinating. The panel on the first day of the Forum discussed this topic brilliantly, and framing and grouping appear two notions to consider in answering the above question.

Stereotyping. We all do it consciously and subconsciously. It functions as a crude measure to categorise people into groups, and influences our behaviour to respond in favourable or less favourable ways towards others. Acting somewhat as a primal safety mechanism.

The panel explored this notion of how we frame the world and continually identify people as in our ‘in’ group – a group of people with similar characteristics. Or in our ‘out’ group – a group of people we don’t identify with. 

We all broadly recognise this concept. Culture as the software of the brain automatically frames our world. But the panel discussed scientific research of great interest. For example, a person upon seeing someone else in obvious suffering has a subconscious diversion of blood flow to empathy centres in the brain. This diversion however is greater if the sufferer fits in the subjects ‘in’ group. A lesser response occurs if the sufferer is perceived as from an ‘out’ group.

Similarly, framing questions in certain ways can affect the way people answer them. 600 people are on a deserted island hit by a deadly flu and you have a life saving vaccine. The catch is you need to decide between two options. Option 1 – you have 200 doses of the vaccine and can give it to 200 people who are guaranteed to be saved from the flu. Option 2 - you try a new vaccine on all 600 people with only a 1/3 chance it will work.

Most participants in the study went for option 1, the guaranteed saving of 200 lives. Framing the dilemma differently however, if option 1 reads you will kill 400 people rather than save 200 lives (albeit the same outcome as originally posed) most participants opt for option 2.

A similar pattern exists in organ donation. Countries with an opt-in system have much lower participation rates than those with an opt-out system (where people are automatically enrolled in donation and need to explicitly revoke their participation). The result is not because the populations of the countries have significantly different attitudes to organ donation, but, because the notion of participation is framed in an entirely different way.

So what did the session reveal? Frame your proposition to position people in your ‘in’ group. Make them feel part of your idea. You have the power to define that ‘in’ group, and can make many different ‘in’ groups to achieve your desired outcome. It's science.

 Carlo Bellini - carlo.bellini@sbs.ox.ac.uk

• Personalize and humanize and then clearly tell what can be done to help
• Know your story but know your audience (internally and externally)

• Opportunity to increase organizational capacity and capabilities
• Are we willing to do it? Say no if doesn’t make sense
• No two organizations have same interest, find common area.
• Clarity of the responsibilities and the value each brings to the table and

• Understand individual visions but bring in commonality-shared vision
• Ask at each step, does this support the vision?
• Founder should step back and allow the employees to step up

• Invest in your employees to see and understand all parts of organization
• Clear vision that all can be understand, refreshed by all. Strong accountability.
• How does founder transfer power to team
• How do you find local people

Karabhi Acahrya of Ashoka initiated the discussion by talking about 5 types of system changers such as change in market dynamics and value chains. She emphasized on bringing a culture of change in the organization and raised a controversial question that how you know that the system has changed. This provoked an interesting debate which threw up interesting theoretical ideas such as making the change agent redundant. However, the consensus was that the very dynamic nature of change makes it difficult to come up with a static definition of change. Change must be defined under a set of assumptions which must be re-evaluated after each milestone towards change is achieved.

Laura Callanan wearing her hat of a Mckinsey Consultant suggested a 3 step assessment plan and 24 factors of evaluation that Mckinsey uses. Details of the method could be found at lsi.mckinsey.com.

 Fedrico Bellone of AVINA emphasized  on the importance of creating a collective vision of all stakeholders and keeping track of all achievements even small ones over a period of time, to eventually weave out a complete story and not merely objective facts. He also briefly raised the usual debate on cost of impact measurement Vs the cost of causing the impact and the conditions in which one may forgo impact measurement. The greatest concern was that in collective impact there is a diffusion of responsibility and the challenge was to make individual players accountable.

Ina Epkenhans of PHINEO looked at impact measurement from the Investors perspective and raised the important issue that evidence based approaches discriminates against preventive approaches.

Overall the session was informative and involved innovative ways for greater participant involvement. Biggest takeaway is the realization that overall it is a very inefficient market and grantees should articulate their expectations very specifically. Lastly there is a great scope for independent impact measurement agencies, though as of now none has come up with a perfect technique.
 

On this Thursday 16th April, the morning has started with a scenario planing session! And what a session! From basic definitions to the actual exercise of scenario planning Dr Rafael Ramirez  has succeeded to bring us in an 1h30 journey in the future!

1. Future is made of 2 different things : events which are coming to you, independently of your will (birthday, retirement, death) and events from the past which is catching up with you;
2. There is a difference between forecasting and scenario planing : when the former -forecasting- is focusing on certainties like past database data, the later -scenario planning- is more focusing on uncertainties. For example, you can forecast the behaviour of car drivers in a main street in Oxford based on your past experience and adapt your behaviour accordingly;
3. The inter relation between the future and the present : in other words, the way you prepare today is linked to your projection of the future. For example if you plan to go camping in UK during the weekend, you will prepare yourself differently compare to if you are planning for a sunbath weekend in Greece (some may argue that you can actually sunbath while doing camping in the UK but let me be sceptical on that over optimistic prevision). This inter relation between the future and the present exists with scenario planning: you behave today accordingly to your projection of the future, should it be in 3 years or in 15 years.

At that point of the panel session, we were ready for the scenario game itself! The question was simple: imagine you are in 2030, in one of the Mining and Metals scenarios extracted from the World Economic Forum: What will be your daily life? What will the Skoll World Forum for Social Entrepreneurship look like?

The output of my group, working on the Green Trade Alliance scenario, is the following:

• As a consumer, the most important criteria in my buying decision making is not the product itself but it is focused on how the product is processed and which benefits the making of the product has generated to the community (local and global);
• There is a shift in the competition between businesses: the processes and the collective return (either social or environmental) drive now the competition, instead of a solely financial profit driven competition.
• The term “social entrepreneurship” does not exist anymore as it has been recognised as the normal way of doing business. Ex- social entrepreneurs are CEO of all multi national companies;
• The SWF is a platform to help non GTA member to align their processes to GTA standard and join the Alliance.
  

But the objective of a scenario planning session is not to "put your eggs in one basket" by focusing in only one scenario configuration -either green, yellow or red in our Mining and Metals exercise. A social entrepreneur should navigate between the three  scenarios and identify the implication (opportunities and/or challenges) each situation will create. By reflecting on the implications, the social entrepreneur will defined the actions that could be taken to benefit from these opportunities and respond to the challenges. 

This session presented a panel with a ton of expertise - perhaps too much to fit in with 6 panelists in 90 minutes, including questions from the crowd.

The panel:

Jill Finlayson - Moderator

Mai Siriphongphanh - Digital Divide Data (DDD)

Viwe Mgudiwa - mothers2mothers (M2M)

Sam Goldman - D.light Design

Sebastien Marot - Friends-International

Pari Jhaveri - Third Sector Partners

Yvette Alberdingk Thijm - Witness

The session wavered between real highpoints, with truly insightful comments and sneak peaks into the organizational growth struggles of D.Light and Friends-International, and less engaging stretches a bit too focused on organizational promotion (always more tolerable when the organizations are interesting).

Mai Siriphongphan presented information on how DDD brings disadvantaged trainees from zero skills up to employability in the ICT sector, eventually retaining about 20% for their own leadership ranks and moving the other 80% on to formal employment. Viwe Mgudiwa added her thoughts on the strong emphasis M2M places on cultivating internal talent, and the opportunities for advancement it provides to women from the regions it works. I have to admit I didn't truly understand the HR models at play (even after further questions, and despite a fairly explicit explanation - perhaps the brain was just in premature shutdown at the end of the day), though the organizations appear to do phenomenal work.

Sam Goldman was candid and engaging in explaining the shifting needs of D.light as the company has grown, as well as some lessons learned along the way. Sebastien Marot from Friends-International echoed many of the thoughts, with key lessons worth keeping mind for any organization with roots in the developing world. Both spoke of the trade-off between bringing experts from the expat community and going through the (often painstaking) process of identifying or training local talent. While expats can often be much easier to find and have fairly immediate impact, and it can take many, many times longer to find these local leaders, in the long run their commitment and willingness to remain in country (vs 1-2 yr turnovers for expats) makes the effort worthwhile. Sam also mentioned making early mistakes in not working hard to ensure internal transparency.

The final two panelists focused more on specific issues of succession planning and grooming/finding new leadership. Pari Jhaveri focused her efforts on the challenges of replacing strong founders. A sensitive subject for board driven searches when the founder is still involved, and if left to the founder, simply never quite makes it to the top of the priority list. I wondered listening to this if that paradigm is changing as the sector becomes more sophisticated, and organizations are more purposefully and professionally built and managed. Yvette Alberdingk Thijm added useful insights into the necessity of strong internal processes, intensive documentation, and multiple points of contact for key relationships in order to avoid too much knowledge becoming concentrated in a single leader or team member. Following up after the talk, her contention was it didn't matter at all what tools orgs used for these purposes, only that it was done relentlessly, and obsessively.

All in all a useful panel, though definitely not enough time to accommodate all the panelists and the planned small group sessions didn't really appear to materialize in a meaningful way. The buzz in the room was that it was a useful, fairly practical session though.

Oceans in Peril may not have been one of the hot topics at the Skoll World Forum; nonetheless sitting in the lecture theatre I was very intrigued by the social aspect of this topic.
 

The session panel comprised of Rupert Howes, CEO, Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), Jake Eberts, Independent Producer and Callum Roberts, Professor University of York. The session was moderated by Jon Bowermaster, Writer & Filmmaker, Ocean 8 Films.
 

The session started with some startling facts about the current fish stock. 90% of the fish stock has depleted and by 2050 all fish stock in the Ocean is projected to disappear. By 2012 the Blue Fin Tuna is expected to be extinct. While 12% of land mass is protected, only 1% of the ocean is protected.

According to Callum (author of The Unnatural History of Seas) it is hard to imagine how much oceans have changed. In 1930 bottom trawl catch was 14.2 times of what it is now. Scarce stock of fish results in higher cost of catch. Additionally the increased awareness of the benefits of fish consumption has put further pressure on the fish stock.  As per WHO, globally only 80% of the recommended portion of 300gms per person of consumption can be supplied. There are 3 possible options to reduce the pressure on over fishing:
• Eat less fish
• Catch more fish
• Grow more fish

While the first two options are difficult to achieve, the third option of aquaculture to achieve adequate supply of fish stock is viable.

According to Rupert marine certification is another option to control over fishing.  Fisheries can opt in for compliance and can use a blue certified stamp on all products on successful audit. This would raise awareness of the consumers and at same time increase commitment of retailers to certified products. Presently 10% of global fisheries are in the program but there are huge challenges as some governments are not responsive.

Next Jake Eberts introduced his new movie project, Ocean. His objective is to use media to get a message across. If Marine Protected Areas (MPA) are created and there is no catch, the fish stock can return within 7 years. This can be easily achieved by governments.

Overall the session presented a strong case against over fishing and suggested solutions of certification, aquaculture and marine protected areas to save the oceans.

A common theme through some of the amazing sessions at SWF '10 has been the power of art and expression, and this session demonstrated that in spades. After Eve Ensler, who unfortunately was not able to make the session, wrote the Vagina Monologues, it empowered women all around the world to speak openly about sexuality. Pat Mitchell, the moderator, from the Paley Center for Media, made a comment that when she first reported on CNN about the Vagina Monologues, she wasn't even allowed to say the word 'vagina.' As a result of these successes, Eve founded V-Day, an organization that encourages performances of the Vagina Monologues around the world to promote an end to violence against women. V-Day, amazingly, is a small organization with no formal office and yet accomplishes an immense amount of good all over the world.

Now V-Day supports a number of other exciting projects, including two showcased in the session. Agnes Pareyio, Project Coordinator for the Tasaru Ntomonok Initiative, used to walk around Masai villages in Kenya with a model of a woman's torso to show the effects of female genital mutilation. When Eve met her in 1999, she asked Agnes what she needed most--at that time a vehicle--and gave it to her. Ever since then Eve and V-Day have helped Agnes in her mission to stop female genital mutilation and to instill alternative rights of passage along with education for girls in these villages.

The other V-Day project featured was Karin Heisecke's winning entry to the Stop Rape Contest in 2001. As a baker's daughter in Germany, she saw the potential power of using bakery bags to educate the German population about violence against women. This hugely successful initiative spawned millions of bags featuring 60 different campaigns. Karin is now the Director of V-Day Europe--a position that was necessary because of the high demand for V-Day events in Europe.

I loved hearing these two inspiring women's stories, and although it would have been fun to hear Eve herself, the session attendees got a great flavor for what her organization was about. It would have been interesting to generalize the discussion to some extent and really explore how others could use lessons from V-Days successes in creating their own "fierce, wild, unstoppable movement." All in all a fun session to be a part of.

•  Laurie Spengler, President & CEO of ShoreBank International Ltd.
• Oliver Karius, Partner at LGT Venture Philanthropy
• Toby Eccles, Development Director, Social Finance

1. There is still a chicken and egg thing going on in social finance investment. Before investors are ready to invest in a social enterprise they want to see proof of concept. But social enterprises often lack the access to risk capital to pilot and scale their model.  There still seems to be a gap in risk financing for budding social enterprises.
2. There seems to be an adequate supply of social finance (if the right conditions are met). But there seems to be a lack of investment ready social enterprises. It seems that aspiring enterprises need more than just financing to get off the ground to be able to attract bigger financing fish.