What is the alternative to ‘Social Entrepreneurship?’ Anti-social Entrepreneurship?

All entrepreneurship is intrinsically socially-directed to a greater or lesser extent, so why has this distinction evolved? Is there more to it than people just looking for an “alternative” culture to uncool capitalism … or a place to park weak business models that wouldn’t otherwise be credible without the “social” precursor?

A couple of weeks ago I was privileged enough to attend a YGL workshop at the Harvard Kennedy School where a room full of very interesting and bright people talked about some major issues facing our world. The notion of “conscious capitalism” came up as a core theme. In fact, we even studied a case based on Wholefoods as an exploration of how capitalism and social values can be made to intersect. It became clear from the class discussion that there were some people who are vehemently opposed to capitalism. For some people, it is a dirty word, akin to ‘rapist’ or ‘pedophile’ and the emotional backlash of even possibly being branded a capitalist was rather shocking to me.

Capitalism has a lot to answer for, particularly in recent times. I am as disgusted as anyone about what has happened to our financial systems – but we also have to remember that there is a dual-edged sword here. We cannot throw markets open to vast innovation and ideation and never expect any challenges. Similarly, when the State intervenes with the market, better make sure policy is right! The Canadian government will tell you that it was prudent macroeconomic leadership that kept Canada’s banks stable – that’s true – but it was also the fact that fairly straightforward policies prevented risk exposure to subprime mortgages. In fact, in the US, the subprime disaster happened simply because policy allowed it to happen (and some argue, encouraged it because of Freddie/Fannie’s involvement).

So Capitalism, free market dynamics and policy are a three-headed hydra that can occasionally become chaotic. We’ve learned that lesson many times and I am certain it will happen again.

I personally believe in a notion of capitalism that is much simpler. Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom” is one of my favorite treatises and, with few exceptions, reflects a philosophy that I personally subscribe to. The road has not been without bumps, but when we focus only on the rot in our “free” market economy, we lose sight of the fact that capitalism has done tremendous things to globally elevate our (collective) standard of living and has lifted a couple of BILLION people out of poverty. I do believe that when our markets are free (but somewhat regulated – I am not as passionate about deregulation as Friedman) and enterprise is able to flourish without oppression from the State or any other meta-influence, then there is a higher probability that society conforms to some kind of democratic principle and that people are freer, safer and have a higher standard of living as a consequence.

So – what has this got to do with “Social Entrepreneurship?” Well, I vehemently dislike this term for 4.5 reasons.

I’ll start with the .5 because it is most relevant to the past few paragraphs.

Just because you are a social entrepreneur, doesn’t mean you aren’t a capitalist. If you think this isn’t true, then you don’t understand what capitalism is. The economic idea of capitalism, which is pure and simple, is that you utilize (owned) assets/property in such a way that you create / increase value over time, notionally via a profit (economists – you are allowed to shudder at the loose variant of this definition but I think it suffices). Therefore, whatever “organization” you have built to do whatever good deed you are trying to achieve, if it is growing, thriving, increasing and achieving self-sustainability (usually financial) in its objectives, then you have quite possibly and inadvertently achieved an act of CAPITALISM. Your motivation may not have been personal profit, but in a way that is not necessarily a requirement. What’s important is that the enterprise resources of “www.dogoodstuff.org” increased. Unless I am mistaken, this is often a desired goal – even “non-profits” kind of like to see it happen.

… By the way, there is an intrinsic implication in capitalism that if you are going to monetize your resources/assets through exploitation, that this exploitation has to somehow be sustainable. Why? Because if you don’t, your ability to profit from exploitation of your assets will decline. Therefore poisoning rainforests in Ecuador to extract oil is, at the end of the day, poor judgment. In hindsight, it’s not difficult to see that in our current world, the financial and reputational damage to companies that do not conform to our social expectations can be vast. Environmental sustainability isn’t a goal anymore, it’s a hygiene factor. If you don’t have it, people don’t buy your stock – either on principle or on performance.

The remaining four reasons?

1) Today’s society demands a higher duty of care.

We hold the business world to the highest standards of behavior and ethics. It doesn’t always happen – and then punishment is meted – but to think that the corporate veil somehow isolates the ethos of a corporation from society is completely false and erroneous. In fact, our best corporations are those that reflect the broadest cross-section of society and perform well precisely because they encompass our societal norms. I reject that, on the whole, we live in a society that grows ever greedier, exploitative and cruel toward our fellow humans. On the contrary, I believe that our hyper-communicative and integrated world is becoming more compassionate, more aware, more mobilized and responsive. We are reducing poverty, we don’t tolerate gender discrimination, we (correctly) browbeat our politicians into allowing gay marriage we are even curbing greenhouse emissions … perhaps not in time for the polar bears, but it is happening.

So if this is our social trajectory, and our businesses are made up of members of society, does the business world really not share our trajectory?

For an entrepreneur starting a new company, it’s even tougher. There are no shortcuts and there are no “get out of jail” cards. The new venture has to 100% meet our expectations of gender equality, environmental sustainability, “triple bottom line”-type stuff, or it doesn’t hire the best people and it doesn’t last long. FROM DAY ONE. Gone are the times when the new entrepreneur thinks, “Yeah, I’m gonna have a ‘garage’ furniture varnishing plant and dump my waste in the local river.” Those business plans just don’t cut it. In fact our society is becoming so regulated and so demanding on entrepreneurs, that we end up spending as much time conforming to society’s expectations of conduct as we do getting our ventures off the ground.

I’m not arguing that this is bad, by the way (though a risk in some industries because the entry criteria is higher) but rather I argue that, by extension, all entrepreneurs are necessarily ‘social entrepreneurs’ because … drum roll… society demands it.

2) You want to change the world? Better be sure your idea makes it a better place.

There are many entrepreneurs who launch great businesses (and make serious money) from fairly humdrum activities. A better payment system, a different type of financing vehicle, selling stuff, training people, a smarter way of recycling waste, etc. These people create ventures that make our societies – and economies – more efficient, more compliant and they employ people. They are my heroes.

However for those entrepreneurs who can’t sleep at night because they have a blue-sky, game-changer idea, I can tell you – those people are not, on the whole, thinking about ways of exploiting and damaging the planet, or causing misery to others. They are trying to make clean energies, cure cancer or AIDS, feed people, purify water efficiently and make the world safer. Just because those people may become fabulously wealthy doesn’t mean that their ventures are not socially-directed. They could be as meaningfully described as a “social entrepreneurs” as someone trying to help unemployed youth find jobs, save the environment, rescue abandoned pets, preserve historical buildings or retrain single moms who have been made redundant from a declining manufacturing sector.

3) Job creation – is there a more meaningful social endeavour?

When I listen to some wishy-washy “social entrepreneur” talk about some wishy-washy business plan – I think to myself “if they want to use their skills for social benefit, why don’t they just create the opportunity to employ people?” If, as the … er… gold standard Wikipedia suggests, that Social Entrepreneurship is “an entrepreneurial venture that aims to achieve a particular social goal through positive externalities, in addition to profit” – then surely providing stable and high-quality employment is a positive social goal … and qualifies?

During the global financial crisis, we bailed out banks to protect liquidity to mega-corporations. But they still fired thousands of people. My industry (the pharmaceutical industry) alone has shed 150,000 jobs in the US in the past 3-4 years. In my businesses, during the financial crisis – even when we were gasping for cash (banks were not doing much for small business, despite the bail-outs, by the way…) I never fired anyone because the business had to make more money. I went for almost 4 years without personally taking a pay check and personally covered payrolls so that I could guarantee the salary of my employees, so that they could in turn pay their mortgages or send their kids to school, and generally meet their financial obligations.

As an entrepreneur, I am 100% committed to my employees and the stability of their jobs. Why? Partially because I believe that I will have a better performing company, but also because I believe that it is my social obligation as an entrepreneur – just as it is my positive obligation to care for the environment (i.e. properly dispose of toxic waste from the lab) and support our community…. oh, and do so while creating value for shareholders.

However, above all, I believe that good entrepreneurs care deeply about the people and communities that they are part of and job creation in these difficult times is certainly a praiseworthy goal. By the way, this is an achievement that entrepreneurs seldom get credit for. 65% of new job creation in the US (and most similar “western” countries) in the past two decades came from small/medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In a place like Indonesia, it’s more like 70-75% (and, interestingly, driven more by women than by men).

Think about it.

4) Wealth enables philanthropy

Like many entrepreneurs, I am a giver. I usually give away about 20% of my personal earnings each year to a variety of charitable causes. I have put kids through university. I have contributed funds for medical research. I have paid for infrastructure to be built in developing countries. I’m not super-wealthy, though I have more financial freedom (isn’t that a funny combination of words, Dr. Friedman!?) than most people I know. My fortunes definitely wax and wane with my businesses (last few years have been harder), but in general – I consider myself to be very lucky.

It is my general experience with entrepreneurs that the more they make, the more they give. I am motivated by money. I value the freedom of not having to worry about whether I can pay for something, or go on a holiday or cope with an unexpected bill. I value the fact that I can afford clean food and water, better healthcare and live with a higher degree of security. But I do not believe that I have a right to any of those things, if I do not give something back. I am therefore also motivated to give my money away and the more I successful I am, the more this inclination has developed.

It’s also worth noting that despite our turbulent times, we have the largest private foundational wealth in the history of world – and people are giving. Yes, there are bad capitalists that waste money and lead excessive lives – but there are also many who quietly get on with the business of making sure that their spare time and money is directed at worthy causes. Yet again, an example of how the vast majority of successful entrepreneurs are intrinsically social entrepreneurs.

So here endith my rant. I have a sneaking suspicion that too many people who call themselves ‘Social Entrepreneurs’ simply don’t have ideas that are important enough or big enough to generate profit and sustainability alongside the intended beneficial consequence. In short, they are not entrepreneurs they are … er… just “social.” They should not be allowed a lower performance bar just because they choose to call themselves ‘Social Entrepreneurs.’

I have certainly seen plenty of crap social entrepreneurship business plans (and for clarity, at least as many lousy ‘regular’ entrepreneurship plans).

As a final comment – those of you who know me well know that I am intrigued by Islamic economics. I am not a Muslim and I have mixed enthusiasm about different aspects of the modern Islamic world … but the fundamental philosophy of Islam is fascinating, particularly in relation to concepts of wealth. There are a couple of great lines in Kard-i-Hasana in advice to the “Rich Man” (17:26) that should be a kind of credo for the entrepreneur – “Give the kinsman his due, and the needy, and the wayfarer, and squander not they wealth … those who believe and do good works … and pay the poor-due, their reward is with their Lord.”

I value the idea that entrepreneurs might even be more successful because we care about the world that we are part of – so even if you don’t buy into my argument that all entrepreneurs are social entrepreneurs, at least hope that – in time – they can be.

Social enterprises are problematic from this standpoint. Yes, accepting Cox’s examples at face value, it is laudable and welcome that good work has been done and lives have been transformed for the better. But in this regard it is akin to guerilla Fabianism. The crucial difference between social objectives performed through commercial activity and reforms won by workers through old-fashioned struggle is that our class grows in confidence and experience, and enters the next round of confrontations a more powerful collective. Social enterprise does not differ from Fabian programmes of reform – both bypass the workers and do not directly strengthen its power. (This of course does not rule out the possibility such outcomes could provide a more favourable context for class struggle).

You can’t beat a nice bit of press coverage

“Almost every young person I have come across during my time working in youth homelessness wants the same things – a home, a family and a job. It is therefore our role as charity professionals to not only hand out aid for immediate purposes, but to develop innovative initiatives that allow us to take the steps towards making these kinds of aspirations a reality.

Recent research indicates that up to 80,000 young people per year experience homelessness in the UK – the equivalent of a large football stadium filled to capacity with young people desperate for a safe place to call home. I saw a remarkable and rather distressing connection between this problem of homelessness and the UK’s booming house-moving market. The English Housing Survey indicates that a total of 3.5 million households in the country have either moved house in the last year or will move house in the year ahead, yet at the same time, so many out there do not even have a roof over their heads. Surely there is a way of drawing a connection between these two and of allowing these house-movers to help those who are facing terrible challenges?”

Read more: http://socialenterprise.guardian.co.uk/social-enterprise-network/2013/apr/26/cardboard-boxes-tackle-homelessness

I am doing lots of research at the moment on what is happening in this area in the world, as well as what new and interesting marketing ideas emerge as a result. I will report my findings + my thoughts and ideas here. In the meantime, I will be testing this idea on a couple of organisations, give me a shout if you need marketing help, for FREE. Check out my profile on Linkedin for details on my background and experience. You can also hire me on oDesk. My only criteria is that you are MAD

I am based in the Netherlands, and have 6 years of marketing experience in the UK. Dutch and UK organisations would benefit from my advice most, but feel free to contact me wherever you are.

Lola

I assume that you do have an idea on how to open the box, don’t you?
But have you asked also why? Why you should open it?

According to many publications and articles it seems that innovation and being creative aims mainly to find solutions. We need to find solutions for social needs, for growing demographic problems, for environmental issues, for health problems and many more … That’s why we are focusing that much on finding … solutions. The thinking on how to solve problems is growing everywhere. Just have a look at technical solutions: The incredible high number of apps, the uncountable mass of new services and website ideas are really impressive. Or search for business ideas in Google. You will find hundreds of thousands…

But somehow it feels wrong. Often solutions are not really solving our basic problems. They are just like a drop of water on fire, just solve the very obvious, superficial problem, the problem we recognize at a glance.

Reading through the ‘Design for public good report’ this morning I came across this statement:

A designer addresses development by “looking for a problem – not a solution”There is only one problem, but there are many solutions. Because of the amount of competition and the pressure on finances and resources, we don’t have time for mistakes. It is both efficient and risk reducing to identify the problem before developing the solutions.”
– David Fellah, CEO main markets, Designit

So, it might be worth to go more in depth and analyzing what is the real problem we need to solve before we are becoming innovative and find solutions, isn’t it?

Asking why and why again leads to the original problem
I mean an apparent problem might be already the consequence of another problem which by itself can be the consequence of a still deeper one. If we solve just the first, we will not automatically have solved the original problem.
If we think there is too much traffic in the cities and we build new streets then this is a short term solution. If we ask why there is so much traffic, we will find out that there is huge need to go from A to Z. If we ask why people need to move so often we will find a lot of reasons behind.

We need to make problems tangible through direct observation, visualisation and start to build prototypes. It is about rendering these things, which can seem so intangible and therefore so difficult to approach and only then start to be creative and innovative. Making it concrete, clear and easily intelligible to a wide variety of stakeholders.

So, imagine we would just solve one of the original problems instead of finding solutions for the apparent one… Then, probably, we would be much more successful.

What do you think?

Related material

Design for Public Good, a new report for the European Commission
April 2013

Participants can pitch an idea and form a team to prototype a technology-based social enterprise, or work on a team helping Mercy Corps address some of the world’s biggest challenges. Whether you’re a software developer, graphic designer, social entrepreneur, businessperson or aid practitioner, there’s a place for you at this event. Visit the website to learn more or register.

What: Tech4Change, a social entrepreneurship Startup Weekend hosted by Mercy Corps

When: Friday, June 7 through Sunday, June 9

Where: Mercy Corps global headquarters, 45 SW Ankeny St., Portland OR

How much? $75 (with early-bird discount)

About Mercy Corps:

Mercy Corps is a nonprofit disaster relief and development organization with operations in over 40 countries. Its mission is to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities. Mercy Corps strives to catalyze community-led and market-driven solutions to global poverty issues. Increasingly, Mercy Corps is employing technologies which have the potential to give millions of people new access to financial services and information, enabling them to grow businesses and improve their livelihoods, health and communities. Mercy Corps is also increasingly using startup technologies to streamline operations and meet compliance needs, freeing up human and financial resources to benefit those in need.

About Startup Weekend:

Startup Weekend is a global grassroots movement of active and empowered entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures. It is the largest community of passionate entrepreneurs with over 400 past events in 100 countries around the world in 2011. The nonprofit organization is headquartered in Seattle, Washington but Startup Weekend organizers and facilitators can be found in over 200 cities around the world. From Mongolia to South Africa to London to Brazil, people around the globe are coming together for weekend long workshops to pitch ideas, form teams, and start companies.

All Startup Weekend events follow the same basic model: anyone is welcome to pitch their startup idea and receive feedback from their peers. Teams organically form around the top ideas and then it’s a 54-hour frenzy of business model creation, coding, designing, and market validation. The weekends culminate with presentations in front of local entrepreneurial leaders with another opportunity for critical feedback.

King is the founder of HopeMob, a nonprofit crowdfunding site dedicated to supporting charitable causes, organizations, and individuals around the world. HopeMob primarily funds smaller scale, focused projects and provides direct aid to recipients instead of just wiring money. Despite the proliferation of crowdfunding platforms, King felt that too many people remained underserved because they did not have the tech or social media savvy to wage effective campaigns.

“We founded HopeMob to fill holes that we saw in the crowdfunding space,” King said in an interview with VentureBeat. “I don’t see our competition as other crowdfunding sites, I see it as the ills of society that cause people harm and prevent them from living their best life. A lot of people with compelling stories are totally blocked on other sites and this is often because if you don’t already have a crowd, you struggle to raise money. We flipped that on its head by building the community first around the idea that when generous strangers come together, we can get a whole lot done.”

HopeMob’s community is now 150,000 people strong and has funded over 100 campaigns, ranging from $400 for a medical procedure to $100,000 for victims of Hurricane Sandy. Before campaigns go live on the site, they go through a series of steps to make sure they are legitimate, as well as presented in the best possible way. HopeMob verifies stories that goes through the system by asking for references, conducting interviews and researching on social media. The fact that campaigns don’t receive money, but rather the actual aid they need, also weeds out disingenuousness. For example, a teacher raising money for her school receives the specific textbooks or water purifiers she needs and a cancer patient may have her bills paid for her, rather than getting a check to do it herself.

Once HopeMob approves a campaign, the user can ask for help building a compelling profile. King has extensive experience leveraging social media to achieve goals and built that into HopeMob so that if someone goes to the trouble of posting a campaign, they have a better chance of reaching their goal. Before founding HopeMob, King raised millions of dollars for the relief and recovery after the earthquake in Haiti, largely through social media, and he realized that bringing together social good with social media as “his calling.” He went on to launch an auction site called TwitChange where people could bid on the chance for celebrities to mention them on Twitter.

Along these lines, King launched Upfront today, an online community for influencers and their devoted fans. King said that the “value of fully engaged celebrities in a platform” is huge. Upfront provides opportunities for influencers to communicate with their fans through messages, photos, videos, emails, unreleased music, status updates, and live-streaming of events. Access is available on s subscription basis and a percentage of every transaction completed on Upfront goes into the Upfront Foundation to support causes they believe in.

King has played a number of roles through his life, including victim, teacher, pastor, community organizer, social media consultant and entrepreneur. He is driven by the desire to empower the downtrodden, and believes in the power of social media (and the influential people using it) to rally support for charitable causes.

When I first began to map out my Massive Legacy Project, I was on the lookout for any tools and resources that could help me along the way. I found a lot of exciting tools. One of which is called the Business Model Canvas built by The Business Model Generation. This canvas identifies the 9 major themes that are central to any business/organization out there:

• Customer Segments: Mapping out all of the people and organizations for which you’re creating value. This includes simple users and paying customers.
• Value Proposition: For each market segment, you have a value proposition. These are the bundles of products and services that create value for your customer.
• Channels: Describes the means and outlets used to deliver value and the product to your customers.
• Customer Relationship: Describing the types of relationships that you’re establishing with your customers.
• Revenue Streams: The revenue streams make clear through which pricing mechanism your business model is capturing value.
• Key Resources: Describe the infrastructure that you’re using to create, deliver and capture value.
• Key Activities: Outline the activities that your organization needs to be able to perform well.
• Key Partnerships:  Since your organization won’t own all key resources yourself, and won’t be performing all key activities, this section shows who can help you leverage your business model.
• Cost Structure: After understanding the key aspects of your business model infrastructure, you will be able to understand and tabulate the costs associated with each of the 8 sections.

What Obama’s Budget Could Mean for Student Borrowers

Our close cousin, the United Kingdom has always been a leader when it comes to social enterprise and ethical fashion. While Canadians spend billions to keep criminals in prison, a prison outside of London has instituted a high-end restaurant staffed with recently incarcerated inmates. The ultimate goal of this social enterprise is to provide training, certification and links to full-time employment in the culinary and hospital industries, in order to avoid the possibilities of these criminals re-offending. This is just one of the many examples of social enterprises in the United Kingdom that are finding opportunities to use commerce to transform communities.

As the 2013 Skoll World Forum recently occurred, this seems like an apt time to reflect on the growing social enterprise movement in Canada vs. our more successful counterparts such as the UK. In these countries, entrepreneurs are finding ways to tackle local and global issues across a variety of social, environmental, governmental and economic issues. However, very little of this representation comes from Canada.

The authors set out to demonstrate that you can plan start ups using the Business Model Canvas to sketch out your hypothesis, then listen to customers, and then follow up with quick, responsive development.

This approach isn’t just for new start ups, but also for innovation in existing companies, I am about to use the business model canvas this morning with a colleague to explore a new opportunity he has identified. We will use the process mapped out in the article, and see where it takes us!

Moving onto the beginning of this week, another famous entrepreneurial veteran is driving his company to push the private aerospace space industry. Yesterday, Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galaxy successfully tested it’s rocket powered SpaceShipTwo vehicle.  The vehicle can reach top speeds of mach 1.2 and will cost $200,000 for a ticket. If I remember correctly, I thought the Concord could do mach 2.  Anyway, the spacecraft goes to the boundary of space and passengers will be able to experience zero gravity.   Branson stated that the company will begin shuffling people to space suborbital flight in 2014.

On top of these events, another surprise came from the stock market. Even with the doom and gloom floating around the global economy the stock market has been doing surprisingly OK. Stocks extended a rally on Monday, with the S&P 500 unofficially ending at an all-time high as growth-oriented stocks like energy and technology lead the way.  Keep it up pioneering technological entrepreneurs, you are keeping America afloat.

I’m not one for superlatives usually. After a day like this though, there’s so much going on in my brain my mouth just doesn’t have the ability to catch up.

The planning for this event started back in, gosh, November of last year? It seemed so long ago. I was lucky enough to play a small part. Us students have to thank the current Frizky Chair Ken Denman and the Foster School of Business for pulling everything together.

I plan to put my notes from each of the sections up later, but here a quick summary of how the day went down.

The day started with Charles Songhurst, Head of Corporate Strategy at Microsoft on how we can be more innovative. Charlie looked at innovation from an economic standpoint, especially when we ask why big companies don’t innovate and typically it’s because they have no economic incentives to do so. As Charlie puts it: “Turkeys tend not to vote for Thanksgiving”, meaning no one in their right mind is willing to cannibalize their own business (usually).

We quickly move on to an all-star panel of investors with different approaches. Ghia Griarte with Saints Capital specializes in the secondary market, Michelle Goldberg with Ignition Partners in early stage companies, and Andrew Tweed from Thomvest Ventures which manages capital from the founder of Thomas Reuters. They gave us some tips on looking at the feature, product, company, the entrepreneurs behinds it and the market they’re going after. You have to be proactive and develop expertise and network in the space you’re going after.

The third panel is on social entrepreneurship, which to me is still relative new. It just seems this space is so tricky and the panelists echoed how hard it is to balance between heart and mind in non-profit. One panelists even say when he pitches now it’s literally just 2 slides–one with the story, and the other is the funding ask. Most important of all, as Kushal Chakrabarti puts it, service is the rent we pay for living life, and we shouldn’t wait to give back.

Before we break for lunch, Nilofer Merchant gave us tips on how to survive in the #SocialEra. She literally told us to abandon everything we know about Porter’s Five Forces or what Ronald Coase preaches about staying within an unit and economies of scale. In the #socialera, it’s about openness, connectedness, and co-creating the future. She uses examples like TEDx events or the Android operating system on how we create and learn as a community, making the #socialera the end of stupid people.

The first panel in the afternoon was my favorite, which was on building diverse and nimble teams. Not only do you want to find competent people, you want to make sure they’re just as passionate and believe in the same things you do. As a founder you have to be purposeful on your culture and core value. They are built from every little decision you’ve made along the way–whether it’s your monetization or simply to get a ping pong table for the office or not.

The panel after that consists of VCs from Madrona, Maveron, and Crosspoint on the next big themes. Aside from cloud, big data, mobile, and consumerization of IT that we’ve heard of quite a bit already, a few other things grabbed my attention. Internet of things, which quite similar to Intel’s vision of Compute Continuum, is about how anything that can be connected to the web, will. We’re already seeing some of this with home security systems or sensors in homes. Perceptual computing, most popularized by Google Glass, still has more ways to go. Shrinking of supply chain, currently just in the form of 3-D printing will see a new wave of makers revolution soon enough.

We close out the day with Ben Casnocha about The Start-Up of You. I had already read the book over spring break in prepping for this event. You can read more about my thoughts on the book, but I just love how he opened with the Apple “Here’s to The Crazy Ones” spot. The easiest way to change the world is to be an entrepreneur. Identify a problem. Find a solution. In fact, entrepreneurship is not just a business idea, but a life idea. As the (job) market changes, we have to constantly tweak our skills to match it.

I remember when I was applying for MBA programs I saw other schools had conferences like this. Although we have EntreWeek at UW, this was more of a TED or SXSW style. I’m so excited to hear the positive feedbacks from my peers and I certainly hope Foster will find a way to make this a regular event.

Alright, enough listening, talking, and blogging. Time to get out there and start doing, and change the world.

• Main Site – Community Wealth Building
• Illinois – Budgeting for Results
• Background on Budgeting for Results (Via Donors Forum)
• Case Study – Anchoring Institutions

This page will be updated with more resources, and our next meeting date will be announced soon.

Global concepts in philanthropy such as social entrepreneurship, venture philanthropy and impact philanthropy are advanced as models that provide a more resilient funding structure in times of limited resources while at the same time achieving greater impact in their social mission.

The Conference: The 2013 East Africa Grantmakers Conference will explore innovative strategies developed to link social impact and financial returns at both national and regional level.

The Conference will seek to underscore the place of business in philanthropy’ and ‘the place of philanthropy in businesses by answering questions such as: Are these new changes and shifts relevant to Africa? What roles do/can philanthropists and impact investors play in their efforts to alleviate poverty and bring about sustainable social change? What will create the shift from the traditional forms of philanthropy involving charitable contributions towards more strategic forms of philanthropy that leverage on unique corporate capabilities?

Conference Objectives;

• To interrogate the emerging business approaches in philanthropy and determine their relevance to East Africa.
• To explore the space of Business in enhancing social justice in East Africa
• To challenge philanthropic organizations to adopt entrepreneurial models as a sustainability measure.
• Discuss strategies that ensure philanthropy attains maximum social impact
• Provide a platform for networking among Grantmakers and stakeholders

“A sizable and growing number of consumers want to buy socially responsible products and services.

But many don’t know what a social enterprise is.

And a lot don’t have any intention of buying from a socially responsible company.

Those are the mixed bag of results of a just-released poll surveying 1,015 Americans. It found that nearly 30% of consumers plan to increase the amount of goods and/or services they buy from socially responsible companies in the coming year. Eighteen percent said they bought more from such companies in 2012 compared to 2011. Twenty-five percent avoided buying products from an enterprise because they thought it wasn’t socially responsible.”

1- There is always more talent in the room than on the podium

Every session began with this line and to date, it is what rings true most of Oxford Jam. The sessions that were least enjoyable were the ones which had a dominant speaker. The ones which shared most of the learning for me had a particular structure. Either there was a clear objective of the session and the moderator made sure it was achieved. Or the discussiosn were participant led and involved brainstorming along a definitive theme.

2- Learning something new can be as refreshing as a smoothie

I love smoothies because they are cold and bursting with fresh fruites and yoghurt which makes them refreshing. In the space of three days at Oxford Jam, I learnt a little bit of ballet, how ethical stock markets work, tea can make you feel much better than water and how to speed-brainstorm a sales pitch.

3- Creating the Right Eco System:  As long as you have a good teacher and a supportive community, daring to go to new places can be rewarding

I had the pleasure of listening to Hackney Pirates and it was so inspiring to see how learning pirate-style can increase academic performance of children. It’s a Steiner-esque idea of making use of the abilities and talents of kids of different ages to work on projects which can range from a magazine to producing a T-shirt collection. This is as applicable to adults as it is to 9-13 year olds.

4- There is a lot of unnecessary nomenclature in the business world. Strip it off like a plaster and things are simple to understand

It continues to amaze me how many useless abbreviations we can come up with and how alien they sound to most people.

5- Ethics are central to all kinds of interactions

60% of people said that buying goods from socially-responsible companies is important to them. Last year at Oxford Jam, the predominant theme in sessions was the importance of being commercial and competing in the market just like any business. However this year, the vibe at Oxford Jam was that social enterprises were failing to communicate their commitment to society through their brand.

6- It’s important to Self-Reflect

It is so important to have a work-life balance and self-reflect how far you’ve come and where and how to get where you want. For me, even though I graduated last year – I have a list of things I want to learn more about. I started doing three online courses to learn more about Operation Management, Gamification and Creativity. Through an amazing session with Mind Apples – I found tea is more uplifting than water; and laughter and cuddles are the universal now-I-feel-better techniques for most people.

If I had to say one thing that still rings true of Oxford Jam and any other conference/event I attend, then it is this:

Corridors are still the best place for networking…

What was your key take-away from Oxford Jam? I would love to know what resonated with you. Sound off in the comments below!  If you want to my compilation of the best tweets from Oxford Jam and figure out what penguins have to do with social enterprise and oxford jam, then check out my Storify.

And the best conference wrap-up video you may have ever seen:

Misc…