During the past 12 months, politicians have become aware of the importance of social entrepreneurs and community businesses in delivering solutions that actually make a real difference to deprived areas.
Last week’s statistics showed that child poverty in Wales and the UK as a whole is getting worse. As a result, leading figures have called for an end to the “old-fashioned mechanisms of bureaucratic top-down state intervention” to deal with critical issues such as this and have called instead for a greater emphasis on ensuring delivery from social enterprises that understand the needs of their local communities.
Given this, many will welcome a recent publication from the Aspen Institute in the USA which calls for a greater partnership between government and social entrepreneurs to find creative and sustainable solutions to society’s problems.
So what were the key findings of this groundbreaking report?
Firstly, it showed that social entrepreneurs are in a unique position to help government to address social problems. They can do this not only by leveraging public and private resources but also by operating on the ground close to communities. In effect, social entrepreneurs are in a unique position to develop and test solutions to social and economic problems
Secondly, it is clear that the public sector is not starting from scratch and there are examples of government support for social entrepreneurs at a local, regional and national level.
In the USA, these include the provision of seed funds to examine the feasibility of new initiatives and the introduction of policy changes to remove barriers to innovation. Successful initiatives include support for replicating a successful model to other communities and research support to provide a detailed understanding of an organisation’s target social audience.
In this respect, the report suggests that the role of government should be to ensure that more ideas are able to be developed and tested through removing bureaucratic barriers, providing funding and helping develop human capital within social enterprises.
Thirdly, government holds the key to unleashing the full potential of social entrepreneurship to advance solutions to the toughest social problems. It is often easy to forget that the financial resources government has at its disposal are enormous when compared to the funding of many charities in the UK.
However, money is not the only issue and as the report points out, whilst government spends the largest amount of money on social issues, it also has access to other levers such as tax incentives, education and transport.
Finally, the report argues that a new way of thinking about social problem-solving is required.
This is because, in the past, the government has identified social problems, developed programmes to address them, and managed the delivery of them, and yet many of the problems still exist.
Today, academics and politicians alike argue that it is not just a case of creating another programme or initiative but is about finding out what works and supporting it.
For Wales, with its own devolved government, there may be the opportunity to break free from previous conventions and to create a new class of government officials who support social entrepreneurship and who look to individuals, communities and social enterprises as partners to take forward the agenda in order to create sustainable, innovative and result-driven solutions to some of the more intractable problems within our most deprived communities.
If these new “public innovators” could encourage social innovation and new approaches to solving social problems, then an “enabling environment” could be created which helps to ensure that social entrepreneurs overcome any bureaucratic barriers in progressing their ideas.
However, their role should not only be about innovation and new ideas.
The public innovators should produce measurable standards and data by which performance can be benchmarked to inform future policy.
Indeed, relating funding directly to performance using such measures will ensure that those solutions that work will have the greatest impact and, most importantly, that they can be given the financial resources to expand the project across a region to enable real transformation.
Certainly, there are deep social and economic problems within the more deprived areas of Wales that need a completely new approach if workable solutions are to be developed to deal with the poverty-related issues facing these communities.
Indicators such as child poverty measures and incapacity benefit data show that the current programmes are simply not making the step changes needed.
I would urge policymakers in Wales to examine the Aspen Institute’s report in detail and to begin a process by which we can achieve greater innovation within our public sector and greater partnership between government and social entrepreneurs.
Last week’s statistics showed that child poverty in Wales and the UK as a whole is getting worse. As a result, leading figures have called for an end to the “old-fashioned mechanisms of bureaucratic top-down state intervention” to deal with critical issues such as this and have called instead for a greater emphasis on ensuring delivery from social enterprises that understand the needs of their local communities.
Given this, many will welcome a recent publication from the Aspen Institute in the USA which calls for a greater partnership between government and social entrepreneurs to find creative and sustainable solutions to society’s problems.
So what were the key findings of this groundbreaking report?
Firstly, it showed that social entrepreneurs are in a unique position to help government to address social problems. They can do this not only by leveraging public and private resources but also by operating on the ground close to communities. In effect, social entrepreneurs are in a unique position to develop and test solutions to social and economic problems
Secondly, it is clear that the public sector is not starting from scratch and there are examples of government support for social entrepreneurs at a local, regional and national level.
In the USA, these include the provision of seed funds to examine the feasibility of new initiatives and the introduction of policy changes to remove barriers to innovation. Successful initiatives include support for replicating a successful model to other communities and research support to provide a detailed understanding of an organisation’s target social audience.
In this respect, the report suggests that the role of government should be to ensure that more ideas are able to be developed and tested through removing bureaucratic barriers, providing funding and helping develop human capital within social enterprises.
Thirdly, government holds the key to unleashing the full potential of social entrepreneurship to advance solutions to the toughest social problems. It is often easy to forget that the financial resources government has at its disposal are enormous when compared to the funding of many charities in the UK.
However, money is not the only issue and as the report points out, whilst government spends the largest amount of money on social issues, it also has access to other levers such as tax incentives, education and transport.
Finally, the report argues that a new way of thinking about social problem-solving is required.
This is because, in the past, the government has identified social problems, developed programmes to address them, and managed the delivery of them, and yet many of the problems still exist.
Today, academics and politicians alike argue that it is not just a case of creating another programme or initiative but is about finding out what works and supporting it.
For Wales, with its own devolved government, there may be the opportunity to break free from previous conventions and to create a new class of government officials who support social entrepreneurship and who look to individuals, communities and social enterprises as partners to take forward the agenda in order to create sustainable, innovative and result-driven solutions to some of the more intractable problems within our most deprived communities.
If these new “public innovators” could encourage social innovation and new approaches to solving social problems, then an “enabling environment” could be created which helps to ensure that social entrepreneurs overcome any bureaucratic barriers in progressing their ideas.
However, their role should not only be about innovation and new ideas.
The public innovators should produce measurable standards and data by which performance can be benchmarked to inform future policy.
Indeed, relating funding directly to performance using such measures will ensure that those solutions that work will have the greatest impact and, most importantly, that they can be given the financial resources to expand the project across a region to enable real transformation.
Certainly, there are deep social and economic problems within the more deprived areas of Wales that need a completely new approach if workable solutions are to be developed to deal with the poverty-related issues facing these communities.
Indicators such as child poverty measures and incapacity benefit data show that the current programmes are simply not making the step changes needed.
I would urge policymakers in Wales to examine the Aspen Institute’s report in detail and to begin a process by which we can achieve greater innovation within our public sector and greater partnership between government and social entrepreneurs.
Comments
The motivations for being an entrepreneur are, at their simplest, ambition to become 'rich and famous' and to avoid entanglements with the world of real work and line management. How does this psychology translate over into the social realm? It doesn't.
Moreover, entrepreneurs are all about financial 'profit'. Where is the profit in 'social enterprises' which are often a shambles of amateur management and misdirected 'do gooders' who cannot get a job in the real economy (like politicians and many academics).
Therefore, the whole concept is a misnomer.
Obviously, we need more people with a 'vocational' and social attitude to run business(like) activities that support the needs of rural and underdeveloped communities. But why do we need to label these good folk 'entrepreneurs'? Only asking.
welsh walker your right most people don't understand social enterprise, in England at lot of them are multi million pound business with real social impact, our welsh politicians don't have the imagination to see the potential in areas like health or education where social enterprise cold have a real impact.
If you want more information just check out the Social Enterprise Coalition website.
Also, I have met 'social entrepreneurs' - I know this title has some ambiguity - with great passion, commitment and courage, and with the sort of visionary focus that would benefit any organisation.
Sorry if I sound a bit preachy!
The potential is great and we have people ignored here in Wales who were pioneers of community enterprise. WAG pay lip service and pour money to their mates - Edwina Hart in particular to the Co-OP center who she worked for at one time. Until like everything else they actually let the people who know what they are doing take charge ,like everything else , nothing other than the same old ,same old will happen.
To answer some of the questions raised above, we define social entrepreneurship as the practice of responding to market failures with transformative and financially sustainable innovations aimed at solving social problems. Social entrepreneurs are people who combine a passion for social change with a practical, rigorous mindset for finding a way to actually make change happen. They are entrepreneurial because they see more than just the problem - they see an opportunity for change that most people don't see as well as a path toward financial sustainability (for more on this, visit http://www.publicinnovators.com/se).
We firmly believe that public innovators – government officials who accept risks to their own careers in order to open the door to both innovation and accountability in social problem solving - hold the key to maximizing the reach and impact that social-entrepreneurial solutions can offer. Our nonpartisan Public Innovators initiative introduces government leaders at the city, state, and federal levels to social entrepreneurship and guides them in identifying and advancing transformative and sustainable solutions to today's toughest social problems.
To read our 13 recommendations and the 5 roles for public innovators, we invite you to visit: http://www.publicinnovators.com/recommendations
Get some new bods in
This is how it happens - a putative social entrepreneur (and his/her mates) enthusiastically write a proposal/initiative and approach the WAG or County Council for support. Invariably,(and probably rightly) this proposal will be viewed with the deepest suspicion.
The thought bubble above the head of the official will include such words as .. what are they trying to pull? what kind of scam is this? who are they trying to con? they must be kidding.
If it gets past this first hurdle then there will be intense scrutiny of the documents to see if they contains a high enough 'buzz word count' or pushes politically correct buttons. This process will take approximately 1 year during which time the proposers have starved to death, got bored, moved on, hung themselves from the nearest oak tree, drowned in a lake, whatever.
Unfortunately, the skills needed to be able to sustain the long attritional bureaucratic battle that this process requires do not match the skill set of the typical entrepreneur - it is more suited to the skills of the Enterprise Agencies most of whom have now disappeared with the ending of Objective One funding.
However,coming back to the trust issue, these enterprise agencies are ideally placed (and set up organisationally)to launch and run social enterprises but the WAG no longer trusts them. This is because of past history of inefficiency, greed, fraud and other misdemeanors.
So we are stuck, because there is no way that funds will be given to individuals, or to busineses - no matter how well intentioned. Thus, we are left with the Charities and County Councils. However, are charities really the institutions that we should use to deliver social enterprise initiatives? Does it square properly with their constitutions or motivations? I doubt it. Also County Councils should really stick to what they are set for - there isn't an entrepreneurial bone in any of them - it is systematically weeded out at job interview.
Yours is an interesting and valuable contribution to the discussion and note should be taken by our country's leaders.
My take on your summary conclusions are below.
Roles for the New Public Innovators
1. Encourage social innovation
I agree that there should be innovation but not for innovation's sake. Do we really need innovation? I think there are already well tried solutions - they just need implementing not innovated
2. Create an enabling environment for social innovation and entrepreneurship
Absolutely. Easier said than done.
3. Reward social-entrepreneurial initiatives for exceptional performance
This is key. Reward of some kind is the main motivator for entrepreneurs (or all people for that matter). This reward has to be of real value in either monetary terms or social status. Award ceremonies and dinners are not enough.
4. Scale successful approaches
Well yes if you think so but a successful enterprise will have its own dynamic and may not need outside interference. However I accept that there will be problems of growth and evolution that will need management.
5. Produce knowledge
You mean monitor the situation and produce reports that nobody reads? I think not.
I don't comment on what i know very little about and your making yourself look rather ignorant with your comments on this to date.