Small Fish and Blue Chips: Shining a light on how social entrepreneurs can deal with big business

Yesterday saw the Shine Unconference for Social Entrepreneurs.  I hosted a panel (Small Fish and Blue Chips) on how and why social entrepreneurs and corporates can work together.  Joining me were Richard Tyrie (founder of Jobs Go Public and The Good People), David Barrie (co-founder of The People’s Supermarket amongst many others), Bob Thust (Head of CR at Deloitte) and Nick Temple (Director of Business and Enterprise at Social Enterprise UK). 

They are a group of people from very different backgrounds and with varied experience but a shared viewpoint in this regard – that the gap between social businesses and big businesses can be closed.  Turns out they have different views on how it can be done, which led to some lively debate…

I’ve only just met Bob but from what I’ve seen so far, his views are pretty close to many I’ve expressed in previous posts here.  Deloitte seem to be taking a very bold position in the CR market and are doing some great things specifically with social entrepreneurs, not least the Pioneers Programme.  I loved that Bob said any good CSR team should act not as a means to an end in itself but as a conduit or gateway for social ventures to reach the rest of the business.  He went further, saying that CR professionals should be in the business of doing themselves out of a job.  Deloitte, of course, act as a gateway to many, many more companies.  As Bob said, the real prize isn’t getting in Deloitte’s supply chains, but getting in Deloitte’s clients’ supply chains.  This brokering role for CSR teams fascinates me.  We at UnLtd, increasingly see our role as being around connections: providing access to finance, support, networks and customers. But I’ve said for some time that , to really achieve this, we need people alongside us who have credibility and networks in the corporate world that we don’t have.

Richard Tyrie always impresses me when he stresses the importance of ‘weak tie theory’ in these discussions (in summary “weak social ties..are responsible for the majority of the embeddedness and structure of social networks in society as well as the transmission of information through these networks. Specifically, more novel information flows to individuals through weak rather than strong ties.”).  Richard’s view (one I share) is that ‘weak ties’ between individuals in the corporate and social sectors need to be in place before any meaningful organisational connections can thrive on a serious level.   This approach is, again, something I’m keen to build on with UnLtd Ventures – focusing on our role in building relationships on an individual level, on the basis that these will organically grow into something much stronger.

I was also pleased to hear Richard reinforce his view that we always need to talk about the financial value of social impact created – more than ever when talking to corporates.  In his words, “until I buy food for my kids with social capital” we need to talk money.  As I’ve argued before here, I believe the CSR world does itself a disservice by giving the impression that corporates are driven by anything other than profit.   Success, for me, will be when social businesses and big businesses can sit down and have ‘adult-to-adult’ conversations about how this relationship is going to make both of them more money.

David Barrie is a serial social entrepreneur and a brilliant, creative thinker and innovator.  His views on this subject seem to be that corporates can strengthen his work as an individual, provide immediate infrastructure, resources and key skills around his visions.   He wants full incubation or adoption even within a corporate environment.  I can certainly see the benefit of this, but care needs to be taken.  I think its important that social ventures build their own robust organisations without completely relying on ‘outsiders’ who may walk away at any time.  

David’s secret double life is as a highly successful TV producer.  He drew interesting parallels with the creative industries, where the major commissioners invest (in the widest sense of the word) in production companies in their supply chain.  This may be ‘grant’-like investments in infrastructure, access to their back-office resources, incubation, staff secondments (in both directions), guarantees of long-term contracts and ultimately equity investments / acquisitions.  A compelling vision for a future social innovation marketplace.

As for Nick… well it’s great to have him in the centre of the action at Social Enterprise UK.  He’s exactly the sort of pragmatic, unifying force needed right now to galvanise disparate parts of the sector who all-too-often focus on splitting hairs on technicalities.   Without a united front we’ve no chance of being taken seriously by the corporate world.  They will look on bemused at our bickering and get on with the job at hand without us….

The panel was a blink-and-you’ll-miss it 45 minutes.  But I hope the conversations we started can continue for some time to come…And even, who turns… turn into action!

 

Co-Producing Shared Value

I attended three very different events last week – all of which in some way strengthened my confidence that there’s a real market for  shared value supply chains.

The first event was the CUTEC (Cambridge University Technology and Enterprise Club) Technology Ventures Conference.  One of the key speakers was Mike Addison, Global Head of Business Development at P&G speaking on open innovation.  You don’t tend to think of P&G as a hugely open company, but he had some strong examples and ended on a plea to all the entrepreneurs in the room to approach P&G and challenge them on how they do everything and help them co-create better products.  A call-to-action for co-production between supplier and customer.  No explicit reference to social entrepreneurs or social value – but an interesting insight into how even quite traditional businesses are now thinking.

Later that evening I attended Matthew Taylor’s excellent President’s Address at the RSA – Enlightened Enterprise.  Matthew focused a great deal on the power of big business as a tool to instigate behaviour change amongst consumers: “by helping us to align our desires, needs and social values, companies can themselves align commercial opportunity with social purpose. By doing so, they can create both deeper customer relationships and new business models.” – and followed with great examples from Nike to Dove.  He also referenced ‘downstream’ CSR – how consumers behave after they have purchased a company’s product.   Finally, he ended with “If an enlightened company has insights and capacities which can improve the efficiency and sustainability of those in its supply chain, it will see the benefits of sharing that wisdom around. Some of the best and most innovative responsible practices are in the SME and social enterprise sectors; enlightened partnering by larger companies can tap into and enhance this potential.”

The Video is embedded below and I’d recommend anyone to take an hour to watch it.  Hopefully it will be RSA Animate-d soon.

Matthew was joined by Ian Cheshire, CEO of Kingfisher (parent organisation of B&Q). Ian seems genuinely to have a sustainability agenda at the core of his beliefs and has worked hard to integrate it through the company.  But he admitted that convincing shareholders of the value was much tougher, lamenting that  there is nothing in the valuation of a company that reflects its sustainability.  “You just can’t discuss life beyond 5 years with investors.  I only do it because I think it’s right”.  He added  that in order to do this we must change pension funds from quarterly reporting to longer term. (Interesting aside – the comment from Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever at a recent conference: “We cannot choose between growth and sustainability – we must have both. If you buy into our approach to long-term value creation… then invest in us, if not… don’t”).

Matthew Taylor ended his talk by saying he sees success as an end to the use of CSR as phrase – as it suggests it’s not a mainstream and inherent part of business.  I couldn’t agree more. 

Finally on Friday I attended UnLtd’s Social Futures event: a coming together of social entrepreneurs, UnLtd staff & trustees, civil servants, private sector staff and some of our partners to help co-produce some of our new products (insightly written up by the ever-insightful Nick Temple here).  One key piece of research, commissioned by UnLtd and delivered by Sidekick Studios, showed that for our Award Winners  the most important step along their journey was finding the first big customer.  It was also the number one request for support they didn’t feel UnLtd currently offered.  I took the opportunity to lead one of the break-out groups tasked with developing products that UnLtd might launch to target this problem.  It was a rapid exercise, resulting in a poster and 2 minute presentation – but we developed a concept of brokerage: UnLtd providing a consultancy service to big businesses (understanding their supply chain needs) and then scouting, filtering and connecting relevant social businesses to them.  Richard Tyrie of Good People was in the team and he is obviously very interested in this area.  His research suggested a £150bn market for the Social Value bill alone.  And he had strong examples of other areas where consumer-facing companies make financial benefits from social value creation including Tesco’s mobile phone recycling initiative that saw huge growth in sales of new phones for Tescos – great shared value through what Matthew Taylor would call downstream CSR. The 9 pitches went to the public vote and ours won (positive comments ranged from ‘this is bringing CSR into the mainstream…’ to ‘this is bringing social entrepreneurs into the mainstream!’).  Sadly no big money prizes – but a good indication there is support from varied stakeholders for the initiative.

One of the other key findings of the UnLtd research was that there’s a commitment gate that entrepreneurs pass-through.  Confidence is needed to get through each gate.  I feel these three events mean I’ve past through one commitment gate.  This blog is now live…