Survey of Social Entrepreneurs

Partnering with multi-nationals is fine as long as one keeps in mind that their "legitimate" corporate goal is making more money.Community-oriented helping activities have to be subordinated to that prime directive.

As the title says, I agree. It's tempting to "fall in love" with companies that show an interest in our work, but - as in any other walk of life - it pays to keep your wits about you.

John -

As a social entrepreneur, I have seen many world-changing ideas and innovations fall flat on their face, and this wasn't for a lack of money or access to resources. In my experience, social innovation fails for three reasons - (1) poor execution, (2) lack of sponsorship), and most importantly, (3) cultural disconnects. Its this last factor that is most overlooked in the collaboration conversation between social entrepreneurs and multi-nationals, or any other stakeholders.

Culture is the context and lens through which we all live. The challenge is, we each bring our own "culture" - set of assumptions, beliefs, biases, and understanding to the table and conversation. What happens when world-views and value systems collide? Well, just ask any social entrepreneur or sustainability champion. This is their everyday story and struggle.

We can try to over-rationalize the challenge of "collaboration" with sophisticated matrixes, frameworks, and other business school constructs - but at the end of the day, I think it comes down to relationships, trust, and understanding. How do you facilitate this?

Tell better stories! This has been my learning and experience over the past five years - working with leaders in how to build better brand stories, organizational stories, personal stories, and cultural stories. Narrative intelligence can and does bridge business/social divides. The art is learning how to translate an idea into a story that can travel across culture(s). The power of a story grows exponentially as more and more people accept it as given truth.

Stories are the great equalizer/transformer, and until the social enterprise and sustainability community wake up to this fundamental root challenge...we will continue to talk past each other in building sustainable collaboration with the private sector.

Michael Margolis michael AT thirsty-fish.com

From the perspectives shared, and from my interactions with people across the globe, it is clear that people in developing nations want to participate more fully in the global economy. What I have noticed, however, is the social entrepreneur community and the network that comprises this group of dynamic individuals has the feeling of a club that is very difficult to engage and/or gain access. Perhaps I am wrong about this, but the faces and paths of people seem eerily similar.

So, as I read the Sustainability research report with great interest, the concept of Mindset 3.0 immediately took hold for me in a significant way. The concept has merit, and will gain traction shortly as a viable way to think about sustainability in terms of building economic wealth. As an example, I describe our business model in terms of how innovators like the company ecomaximus (makes fine paper out of elephant dung), has synergies with a Hallmark to fill key niches in their product line. International Paper to help build scale, Cisco in terms of building new communities in which to sell more gear and with direct consumers and companies who would interact in commerce in lieu of unsustainable donations. It’s an exciting time, and if we continue to expand our thinking and redesign our mental models, great things will happen for people across globe and the poor will be in a position to participate more fully in the global economy. lhowell@schetikos.com

John, When we brought a for-profit model from the US to the UK in 2003, there was no community interest company form. So we attempted our first UK project as a guarantee company. The only source of loan funding then was funding arm of the cooperative movement who turned down our request on the grounds that we weren't a "bona-fide" cooperative.

Since then I've attempted to communicate with many social enterprise advocates from the very top ie Baroness Thornton, to be comprehensively ignored. Our founder, from the US was strangely refused when attempting to renew his visa. Another 2 years passed before I was able to convert an IT services business to the same approach. Now working alone I was obliged to take a conventional share capital form and began again, with the understanding that the DTI considers a business rendering more than 50% of profit to community purpose a social enterprise. Ironically, the very definition we established in the US a decade earlier.

Our customers included goverment departments, local authorities and NHS outlets and several others who promote the social enterprise cause as endorsed in goverment policy. In dealing with these organisations we were to experience many cases of chronic late payment, some not wanting to pay at all. But we've survived, waiving wage payments for the last year to render funds to our social object.

The ultimate slap in the face now, is what appears to be the sponsorhip of a new social enterprise networking website by a goverment agency who don't pay their bills. I register, to discover that they're planning a conference in an exotic location and I can't help gaining the impression that this is at our expense and ultimately to the detriment of our social purpose.

Meanwhile we continue our efforts overseas, having already demonstrated the success of full cost recovery in a 5 year project proposed by ourselves and implented by USAID, whilst we appear to struggle against a "not invented here" mentality in the UK.

What I can offer in response to your questions above is that we do engage with other organisations in that the work we do is to is to use our resources to identify opportunities for targetted economic development in poverty reduction and deliver strategy plans to leverage development aid funding towards this end.

I can also offer an insight on a new approach to funding which is beginning to reveal many exciting possibiities. This is the concept of "Open Capital" a shared asset approach to funding developed by Chris Cook, former director of the International Petroleum Exchange. Using a new legal model the UK LLP, a tax transparent wrapper brought about as a response to concerns about vicarious liability following the collapse of Barings Bank, it opens up the possiblity of collaborative funding toward social ends. We're now seeing this approach being proposed to fund overseas development as well as in social housing proposals here in the UK under a community land partnership model.

IBM is launching a public forum on Economic development in Africa until May 25. If it is improper to mention this please delete this post.

http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/thinkplace/

I'm sure this does a nice job of advertising their latest colaboration technologies, but a partnership with the devil is just that. I think the ideas that are developing there draw attention to the technical interest in growing infrastructure which is really quite exciting for a number of reasons.

If you are looking for social networking connections and want to know who's doing what work, that appeared to be available. Naturally, a lot of the ideas are technical, it's a good time to exchange thought. In my own experience technical controls and the clout that backs them up go a long way in protecting people from big machines. The interest that all organizations have is being first, and maintainig control. So I think there is quite a bit of opportunity now that is certain to play out.

Hi, Sharon:

> If it is improper to mention this please delete this post.

Not a problem at all. Helpful hints and hands are always welcome here.

Maybe it's because I was born in 1949, before the invention of the telephone, that it has taken me so long today - between meetings, including one with a well-known politician, alongside his Spitting Image puppet, displayed in a case like a Dodo in a museum - that it has taken me so long to hack into this discussion. And, given the nanosecond reaction times of the Internet, thanks to anyone who chose to wait around.

Will plan to reflect and feed back more fully tomorrow, but have already been struck by how rich the ideas and suggestions have been. Should have tried this before!

I totally recognise the "cultural disconnects" flagged by Michael Margolis. And the power of stories. That's something that the most engaging social entrepreneurs we have come across have down to a fine art - but not to the extent (yet at least) that you wonder whether you're hearing a film script due to star Brad and Julia. Michael, I'd like to know more about your work.

As to the "eerie similarity" mentioned by Lafayette Howell, and the clubby character of much of this field, or certain high profile parts of it, again I agree. Have always had Grouchoish feelings about clubs - although those in this area seem to me slightly more open source than those you come across elsewhere. Still, there is a huge responsibility on those who find themelves - for one reason or another - on the inside to feed back to those not yet included and, desirably, to ensure a much wider spectrum of folk are hauled into the tent.

On Mindset 3.0, yes we use the term, but even I am not quite comfortable with it, yet. Still the notion that we have been moving from a Compliance mindset to a Citzienship mindset - and are now headed into the realm of Creativity, Competitive Strategy and Creative Destruction/Reconstruction - makes a bunch of sense to me.

To Jeff Mowatt, what a horror story! The UK is not alone in displaying the "not invented here" syndrome, nor the antsy behaviour around visas - have come across the syndrome worldwide, but particularly in the US. My apologies on behalf of the UK, though! Again, I'd like to know more about the new legal model, UK LLP. And it's nice to think that the Barings fiasco might have led to something useful!

On Sharon's posting, I confess I have no sense of what the etiquette is for sessions like this, but as long as we don't have blatant promotions of addictive substances and habits, I'm happy.

On the comment appended to Sharon's posting, they say you need a long spoon when supping with the Devil, if indeed you sup at all. But one thing that struck us very forcefully in our survey of social and environmental entrepreneurs was the extent to which they want to partner with mainstream companies. Their ask was for help in deciding who and how.

Hello, John:

You mentioned that you were born "before the telephone" - a slight exaggeration, I fear – and that perhaps for that reason it has taken you a short while to come back to us with your responses to one and all…

> And, given the nanosecond reaction times of the Internet, thanks to > anyone who chose to wait around.

One of the wonders of the net, it seems to me - despite the sometimes magnificent, sometimes awful "nanosecond response capability" you mention - is that it allows us a sort of asynchronous leisure in response that is actually somewhere on the contemplative end of the time spectrum - closer in some respects to old-style play-by-mail chess games with friends in far-flung corners of the globe than to the instant insistence of the cellphone.

And that's one of the reasons I'm very glad that these weekly events, which are the heart of the exchange between SocialEdge and its participants, I think, are now being given a fuller billing on our home page. Because if four such events are listed, that means that each individual conversation can unwind over a longer period than was previously the case… before being dislodged by the new and the timely…

I personally view time as among the greatest gifts we have: not unlimited, any more than our planet's resources are, but like them, rich in possibility. So conversations that last a bit longer, from my vperspective, have a chance to get a great deal deeper into their respective topics. And when the topics include such things as social entrepreneurship and sustainability, I count that quite a blessing.

I trust we'll be able to continue these strands of conversation with you for a little while longer…

*

On the topic of supping with the devil..

There has recently been a Big Fuss on the social interest games mailing-list, because some people felt that military-funded educational games were - and some, that they were not - by definition, social interest games. From which I gather that one person's devil may well be another person's friend.

Globalisation, Big Business, the Media, the Military-Industrial-Complex – everyone from Eisenhower on down has some large entity to warn us about, often to good point. But the world is dappled, surely, at some very fundamental, fractal level, so that the (US) Department of Defense gives us DARPA gives us the Internet gives us the Electronic Frontier Foundation gives us outspoken critiques of government heavy-handedness… and so on.

We have to be nuanced, it seems to me, if we are to appreciate where opportunities can be taken, and where discretion should be the better part of valour.

*

Thank you for your patience and consideration in responding to our many points of view. It is, after all, in a polyphony of voices that the finest music may be heard.

And the devil shall not have all the best tunes.

Oh dear ... I was always told never use CAPS in emails, because it's the equivalent of screaming - so maybe I'm a screamer, as some accused Maria Callas of being. But for some reason my thumb finds the Shift button every time it comes to do titles for these things. Must be the sense of occasion.

And I genuinely liked the idea of world being fractally dappled. Fits with my experience. No patience needed,a question of Hipbone, really, just finding time between other things to hook in and see what pearls people have left in the trough.

The last couple of days have been fractally challenged, I confess, at least at my end, hence the rather erratic postings. SustainAbility has been having its server upgraded, which has caused my universe to wobble slightly, and - yesterday and today - I have been putting the final touches to a late draft of the book I have been doing (for centuries, it sometimes seems) with Pamela Hartigan of The Schwab Foundation. Titled The Power of Unreasonable People and due out next Spring via Harvard Business School Press, if all goes well.

In tidying up my study as the thing begins to grind its way down the slipway, I have been sorting through endless of piles of books, reports, cuttings and so on. And it striking just how far the conversation/debate has moved in recent years as the notion of social entrepreneurship has begun to push into the mainstream.

Charles's point is well taken but I am an advocate for taking a unflexible but pragmatic position with "the devil" corporations. Corporations by charter, by law and by organization have only 1 goal - maximize profits. This means they have to externalize impacts, underpay workers, cheat customers. That is how you boost profits. It is not that they are immoral - they are amoral.

That being said, they are not impossible to work with. More important, they must be worked with because they are the dominent economic life form on earth.

So what is my solution? Tell they how they must behave. If they refuse, hit them with everything from boycotts to ad campaigns to demonstrations to organizing until it costs them more to not change. Then negotiate deals with them and monitor the deals. When they stick to the deals, praise them lavishly. When the backslide, hit them over the head again.

It works. Rainforest Action Network is a genius at this.

Great post,Patrick. You just revved up my day!

I'll back John up on the telephone anecdote, being born in the same year. Most of us without one to all intents and purposes and you've just reminded me of the awe, in learning as a young child, that a neighbour had one.

Getting back to the Devil we know, by some strange coincident, I'd just referred elsewhere to Thomas More, early advocate for free speech in parliament without reprise and remembering the fictional account in "A Man for All Seasons" where More's son in law tries to persuade him to take preemptive action against an act of malice. He advocates "cutting dowm every tree in England" to get at the Devil himself, to which More replies:

"This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and if you cut them down--and you're just the man to do it--d'you think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"

So, I'll go along with More in his way of dealing with the problem within the law. This is where Open Capital comes in, having unwittingly given us the vehicle, or as it's otherwise been put "If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, then maybe the road to Heaven just might be paved with some bad ones"

What it gives us in law, is for the first time, a vehicle for social investment which is non-usurous. Hence, for example a charity in Scotland may invest in a wind farm in Pakistan which yields electricity for the poor, a mechanism for delivering social housing in London's East End and the large scale Hanseatic Microfinance Initiative. It also features in the ideas of the UN Habitat research project for Global Land Tools in Kenya and discussions underway with C4-WORLD, an innovative collaborative funding model which is Kiva and then some.

Now when it comes to business partnership, I feel many initiatives leave a lot to be desired. I can't log in to the IBM site, ironically as they're unable to complete my registration today , but the others like Google Org and American Express to name two most recent, share the same approach. i.e we advocate action through partnership, but only if you're a registed nonprofit. To my mid they miss the point entirely, that social business engendering further social business is what it's all about.

Now I wouldn't for one moment suggest that either of these organisations are the Devil incarnate though I do expect more when it comes to the matter of preserving the principles of law. I'm being obtuse here, but Googling the expression "Evil Thrives" will probably reveal what the hell I'm going on about.

I agree that it's more than possible to work with big business, but have always felt that a good way of proceeding when being drawn in by the Devil's tunes is to be wildly transparent as you go, operating in a goldfish bowl.

Hence with very, very rare exceptions, we have always said which companies we are working with, what we are trying to do - and, the real clincher, what is working and what is not. This isn't just a question of transparency and accountability, it's also a question of the whole community/movement/whatever learning together, rather than being forced to repeat each other's mistakes.