Running notes from the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford, UK - Opening session/1. (Website - SocialEdge)
This year's Skoll Forum on Social Entrepreneurship (the fourth) goes under the theme "Enabling innovation". About 700 attendees, and a wide range of panels and speeches covering the many facets of social innovation -- from "where do ideas come from" to financing them and scaling them up, from working at the grassroots level to partnering with businesses, from "design thinking" to a systemic approach to innovation. I will try to blog a few of them.
Starting with the opening ceremony, which takes place in the round, historic (XVII century) and uncomfortable shapes of the Sheldonian Theatre and features statements and speeches by Stephan Chambers of the Saïd Business School at Oxford (which hosts the Skoll Center devoted to social entrepreneurship); Jeff Skoll, founder of the Skoll Foundation and of Participant Productions (his money comes from having co-founded eBay); John Hood, vice-chancellor of Oxford University; Geoff Mulgan and Rushanara Ali, director and associate director of the Young Foundation; writer Charles Handy; economist David Galenson of the University of Chicago (see next post for a summary of his speech); 2006 Nobel laureate for Peace Muhammad Yunus interviewed by broadcaster Pat Mitchell, and HM Queen Rania of Jordan -- plus music by Salman Ahmad, the founder of Junoon (which means "passion"), one of South Asia's most popular rock bands.
Introducing the event, Chambers quotes the poet Wadsworth who wrote: great writers create the taste by which they are to be understood. In the same way, he says, "entrepreneurs create the conditions by which they become understood". According to Jeff Skoll (see this post about his recent speech at TED2007), social entrepreneurs are creating those conditions: "In 2006, social entrepreneurs went from the edges of society to the mainstream" -- helped in that by the 2006 Nobel Prize given to Yunus. "The nature of philanthropy is shifting, and the nature of change is shifting too", from organizations to individuals, from governments to people. "Social entrepreneurs are everywhere social problems call for innovation, inspiration, and an inability to take failure as an option, and replacing cynicism with hope, and altering the course of history". John Hood stresses that "the growth in social entrepreneurship in both theory and practice has been remarkable in the last 10 years, which brings challenges -- including the challenge of focus".
A decade ago, a British think-tank that Geoff Mulgan used to run, called Demos, published a book called "The rise of the social entrepreneur". Ten years on, he says, "thanks to Yunus' GrameenBank, Ashoka and many others, social entrepreneurship has indeed entered mainstream". Social innovations have been many (fair trade, microcredit, complementary medicine, zero carbon housing scheme, carbon credits, timebanks, pledgebanks, patient-led healthcare, etc). "How do we take this further?" he asks. And mentions the three lessons, or organizing principles, taught by the late Michael Young, an archetypal social entrepreneur (after whom the Young Foundation is named):
- we should always take "no" as a question, not as an answer.
- look for small changes with potentially big leverage.
- when you see a problem, act on it.
Rushanara Ali offers three examples of social innovation by the Young Foundation, "starting with modest ambitions but combining the passion, energy and insights of local areas and building up over time":
- The Open University, the world's first successful distance teaching university, created in 1969 in response to exclusion from higher education (particulary for women), copied around the world by public and private sector. Like many innovations, OU faced a lot of resistance, particularly from universities (including from Oxford).
- Tower Hamlets Summer University, created in 1995 in the east-end of London (home of the largest Bangladeshi community in the UK), set up as a response to young people having nothing to do and getting into troubles: a program to keep them occupied, raise their aspirations, channel their energy into creative activities; the project helped reducing crime and drug abuse, and is now being rolled out across London and the UK.
- Language Line: telephone interpreting service for hospitals, police and other public services for the (culturally very diverse) London region. Now provides over 100 languages. Initial model was very straightforward, using immigrants as call centre operators. Most resistance initially from surgeons and doctors. Later sold off as a business, with professional intepreters, currently serving 750'000 people, and very much integral to the UK health system.
Mulgan: too many of the world's problems (climate change, aging, poverty, rapid urbanization, etc) are getting worse. What can be done to accelerate social innovation? Why doesn't social innovation attract the same billions as tech innovation? "The starting point has to be the passion to achieve change, but that's not enough. We have looked in some details at the processes of change, at the relations between the bees (the individuals with ideas) and the trees (the organizations, governments, businesses etc which have the capacity): without the alliance between the two, change doesn't happen", although "this movement of outsiders (the social entrepreneurs) should be careful not to become too much a movement of insiders". He mentions a couple of projects supported by the Young Foundation, such as Neighborhood Fix-It (a website using Google Maps that allows citizens who see something wrong locally to click and flag it; a message gets sent to the local officials and a conversation gets started) and the Social Innovation Exchange (SIX, a network of networks, resources and ideas for social innovation).
British writer and social philosopher Charles Handy has recently published with his wife Elizabeth a book called "The new philanthropists", where 23 people are portrayed. "Stories of ordinary people doing interesting things, and of the issues they raise", he says. He briefly tells four:
- Jeff Gambin, a Tibetan/Australian who owned a small chain of restaurants and a Rolls Royce when -- in his 40s, about ten years ago -- he had an epiphany about the lives of homeless in Sidney, sold the restaurants, and started preparing food for them, 400 a night. He was funding this out of his own money, but he is a businessman, and he wanted not only to feed people but also to teach them how to feed themselves. Has set up computer training centers to train them. Handy say that Campbell has taken 6000 people off the streets in 10 years.
- Tony Adams is not a businessman. He was a famous footballer in the UK, captain of the Arsenal team, a hero to many young boys. But he was also a drunk, and went to prison at the height of his career for drunk driving. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous, wrote a book, retired from football at 32, started a clinic for people with alcool problems and does prevention work.
- Peter Ryan, an ordinary (meaning: non rich) executive in a French food business, inspired while traveling in Asia, started a microloan operation in Malawi with about 20'000 pounds, giving hundreds of small loans over the last 3 years, mostly to women, mostly paid back.
- Mo Ibrahim is the man who brought the first handheld mobile phone into Britain, and created telecom companies in Sub-Saharian Africa. He has set up a hospital for breast-cancer patients in Karthoum, Sudan. Along it, he rents out luxury offices, the income of which, he hopes, will fund the hospital. Last year, he announced a prize to the African democratically elected ruler who can demonstrate that under his or her leadership the country has seriously improved (he has set a series of criteria) and who commits to leave public office, he will give a prize of 5 million dollars and a lifelong income of 200'000 USD per year.
What's new about these "new philanthropists", asks Handy?
- they're young-ish, in their 40s. They're still full of energy and ambition, but of a different ambition: to achieve social change. And want to do it now.
- they are not investing in buildings, in local universities, or museums, but they are ttacking what they perceive as social needs.
- they are DIY (do-it-yourself) freaks. They are not prepared to write checks to institutions they don't know or to people they've never met.
On the other hand, he adds, they desperately understand that nothing works by itself, that they need help, teams make a difference; and that they are often not very popular when they enter areas where they don't know anything (NGOs often react by saying: "why don't they just give us the money, we know how to do this"). Increasingly the available money for innovation and social change is going to be in the money of individuals and not governments or organizations. These people are the seeds of change. Yes we read the stories of greed and duplicity in boardrooms today. "But something new is happening. Adam Smith wrote two books. In the first he said that self-interest drives the world and keeps it going. But in the second he added that it's sympathy and moral sense that keeps it together. We have so far assumed that it was the job of business to create the world and keep it going, and that the sympathy/moral part was the job of governments. Increasingly however we are realizing that governments can't do everything. There are signs that self-interest and sympathy are coming closer together. Wouldn't it be nice if every business had a social venture fund, or participated in one? Wouldn't it be nice if one day businesses saw themselves as social entreprises?"
GrameenBank founder and Nobel prize Muhammad Yunus is interviewed by Pat Mitchell who introduces him by summarizing the story of how GrameenBank was started. "A young economic professor at the university of Chittagong observes that in this part of Bangladesh the poor have only one option when they need money: horrendous interest rates from lenders. Banks won't lend to the poor without collateral. Cultural taboos discourage lending to women. He lends 27 dollars of his own money, mostly women, they pay it back, loans more, etc. Goes on to open a new kind of bank. The Grameen model is exported around the world -- and last year he got the Nobel Peace prize". (BG note: it must be said here that the interest rates asked by Grameen, in the two digits, are also controversial).
Yunus: Today in Bangladesh we reach 80% of all poor families with microcredit, and of course we want to reach 100%. But as you do, you wonder what this does to people. One area we focused on was education for the children of our borrowers, was making sure that they go to school even though their parents are illiterate. Then we discovered that some of the children coming from illiterate families were top of their class, so we introduced scholarships. Grameen now gives out about 4000 scholarships a year. We then introduced education loans so that they could continue into higher education. We have been creating a new generation, dramatically different from their parents. What will they do once they finish their education? We invite them not to seek jobs, but to create jobs. The other lesson that we learned is that people taking a small loan don't only buy a cow or start a small business. They are also owning assets for the first time. And at the same time they are co-owners of the bank, this huge operation with 24'000 staff. They take a lot of pride. We introduced pension funds -- first time that people hear about pensions in Bangladesh, for them this is an amazing concept. At the beginning of Grameen the women were reluctant, but now there is alot of agility in the system, people understand loans, pensions, scholarships. This demonstrates that poverty is artificial, it's not inherent but it's imposed on people. Poverty is caused by the institutions, like the banks which neglect and ignore two thirds of people in the world who are not eligible to get a loan from a traditional bank. Poverty is also caused by the concepts we use, by the way business is defined, "to make money", that's the only kind of business admitted by economics. This unidimensional approach is a shame to the human beings. We need to do them justice. We should create other kinds of businesses to do good to people. That could change the whole structure of the economy. Economics assumes that we are selfish, but in truth we are not: it's just that the selfish part in us is the only one that's currently allowed. I met the CEO of Danone, the French food producer, and suggested that we create a Danone-Grameen company to produce yogurt in Bangladesh, and I told him that this is a business that won't distribute dividends, and he said OK: I thought he hadn't understood my English... And now we are producing yogurt. Things can be done differently, can be designed differently.
The closing speaker his HM Queen Rania of Jordan, who delivers a heartfelt call for understanding, for crafting together solutions for problems that have been around for too long. She said: until recently, companies (focusing on the bottom line) and civil society organizations (criticizing the companies for their lack of social and environmental thinking) were antagonist. But now they seem to be joining forces into what the Harvard Business Review recently called a "new social compact", realizing that they not only can, but should collaborate, speak a common language. Companies are realizing that they are a part of society and not apart from it. But our postglobal society is not prospering, we live in poverty of multicultural knowledge and respect. The Western world and the Islamic world are in suspicion and fear, each side feels increasingly threatened and misunderstood by the other. Yet, East and West are neighbors. Social inequality is wrong, but so is social intolerance. We should build a shared commitment to multicultural responsibility, we all have a role in promoting it. And corporations have a key role to play in bridging this divide, they should engage in Corporate Multicultural Responsibility (CMR). CMR is more than an formula, it is an essential strategy for success. As we grow global, so does our responsibility. I have engaged myself in creating this trust and respect between East and West, but I'm still at base camp and the way is long and steep. I need your help.
Bruno Giussani is a writer, the European Director of the 
Cézanne was an archetype of experimental innovator, his life was a
lifelong quest to achieve a visual goal that he could never clearly
articulate. "
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