Bees and Trees: Social Innovators collaborating with large charities

I attended a fun and inspiring workshop this week. Hosted by Ruth Marvel and Owen Jarvis, both Clore Fellows. They are co-authoring a paper on how large organisations (mostly large charities) can help scale up social innovations. Given my passion for this topic I was delighted to be interviewed for the paper and then invited to the follow-up workshop.

One of the best things about the workshop was the diversity of people there and the range of organisations represented (in a sector where 95% of events share 95% the same attendees!). There were some familiar faces: Jenny North from Impetus PEF, Dan Sutch from Nominet Trust and several entrepreneurs I’ve met and worked with, including Zoe from Insane Logic. But also a great range of larger charities I dont normally meet but clearly share a passion for social innovation and scale: Mencap, NSPCC, Macmillan, Unicef etc. The session was expertly facilitated by Roland Harwood from 100% Open, who kept things pacey, fun and challenging.

The report will follow and I don’t want to steal any thunder in terms of its content but it examines pretty closely the barriers to big organisations working with entrepreneurial start ups.  Its subtitle is ‘Bees and Trees’ – as in Geoff Mulgan’s:

“Social change depends on alliances between what could be called the ‘bees’ and the ‘trees’: the bees are the small organisations, individuals and groups who have the new ideas, and are mobile, quick and able to cross-pollinate.

The ‘trees’ are the big organisations – governments, companies or big NGOs – which are poor at creativity but generally good at implementation, and which have the resilience, roots and scale to make things happen. Both need each other.”

This is closely aligned to the position I’ve been advocating in this blog for some time.  But whilst my thinking has been around large private sector companies benefitting from working with social innovators, the majority of Ruth and Owen’s focus is on large charities doing so.  Their rationale is that innovative new start-ups can help large charities find more effective and efficient means of achieving the social outcomes that they exist to achieve.   The large organisation’s existing networks, skills, resources, reach (and cash) can help the start-ups accelerate and de-risk the innovations and take them to market.

One very impressive example of this I had learnt of earlier in the year is Teach First, who are running an incubator/accelerator programme for social start-ups working in Education (initially only those run by Teach First alumni, but, I believe, with a view to widening this).  Teach First share their networks, skills and, not least, the credibility of their brand – and in return they get to aggregate the outcomes of all of these companies and use them in their overall outcomes targets they have set.  This is something approaching the ideas that Joe Ludlow researched around Impact Networks when he himself was a Clore Fellow.

This struck me as a strong parallel with the work UnLtd have been doing with Telefonica/Wayra.  In exactly the same way that Telefonica have the credibility, skills and networks in the tech space to accelerate tech start-ups, Teach First have them in the Education space to accelerate Education start-ups.  It adds phenomenal value to the start-ups – vastly more than any cash that could be provided.

This is, I think, the model that Ruth and Owen are trying to build on.  And it’s a model that can be replicated: NHS spin-outs incubating healthcare start-ups; housing associations investing in social enterprises that provide skills and employment to their tenants; care groups accelerating start-ups in the care sector…

The question is how… Many barriers – around culture, collaboration and communication – were flagged and discussed.  Key areas to work on included education around risk/innovation and the role of intermediaries in raising awareness of what’s out there and brokering relevant connections more proactively (something Big Venture Challenge are trialling this year with the work of Shaftesbury Partnership and our BVC Super-Connectors).

The workshop asked for practical suggestions on how to catalyse this work across the sector.  One idea mentioned by several people was around a formal programme, building on existing models like the Social Incubator Fund – but exclusively targeting themed impact networks: getting large organisations to handpick cohorts of start ups to collectively deliver a clearly defined outcome or outcomes over a period of time.

Funding could even work on a Outcomes based approach – akin to a mini Social Impact Bond model: relevant commissioners define the outcome(s); large organisations (private sector or charities) tender to win the work and commit to providing co-investment to the programme to fund running costs and investment, incubation, acceleration of start-ups. Once selected, the large organisation uses all their existing resources, reach and networks to accelerate the disparate innovations and aggregate the impact. They could buy in expert acceleration skills if need be.  As the outcomes targets are reached, the commissioner pays incremental sums – paid to the lead contractor to further their work and/or invest further in the start-ups.

Good on paper.  But making this succeed needs more than just good programme design, it needs a cultural change – something flagged again and again in the Bees and Trees session.   In short, large charities (including staff, trustees and funders) need to better understand innovation.  Part of this is about attitudes to risk and part of it is around understanding what innovating really means: trying new things, testing them, learning and moving quickly to act on the results.  Not just bandying around the latest fancy jargon.  Numerous parallels were made with how Silicon Valley operates: start-ups explicitly set out trying to disrupt existing business models from established players, because they know the big players are constantly seeking out new talent for acquisition.   If the start-ups business model sufficiently threatens theirs, the simplest thing to do is buy them.  This creates a thriving, functioning eco-system that drives innovation and incentivises new entrants.  What’s more important is that the big players are very aware of – and comfortable with – the risks involved in innovation, be that their own or that which they acquire.  Google and the like constantly embrace – and indeed celebrate – failure.  Something so wildly unlike anything that goes on in the charity sector!  If large organisations in the social sector do have a role to play in adopting and accelerating social innovation, they need more Google Logic.