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Reflections on the 2016 Skoll World Forum

Shaking things up, this blog is putting things in reverse order from what is typical:

  • Potpourri of Insights
  • Three Key Pillars (The Skoll Awards, Al Gore Keynote, Discussion on The Future of Social Impact and Entrepreneurship Education)
  • Introduction

Potpourri of Insights:

  • Switching your operations from a beneficiary to a customer mindset is an epic change.
  • When you have a solution, ask “who asked you to do that?”
  • Social entrepreneurs face the basic options of riveting or pivoting. Sometimes they need to ‘batten down the hatches’ (riveting) and just keep pushing on in the face of adversity (riveting), and sometimes they need to change (pivoting).: We love that both are options, and they are diametrically opposed. Of course, the trick is know when to do which.
  • If you have a specific goal you can evolve your strategies.
  • The trick of measurement is to not sacrifice progress while figuring out if you are making progress.
  • Better to be specifically wrong than vaguely right.: An oldie but a goody that bears repeating.
  • Exposing your thinking (to yourself, your team and others) increases the chance of learning how you will fail before you actually fail.
  • Partnerships need a pre-nup agreement because getting out of them can be hard.
  • Most ideas fail, not because they are bad ideas, but because they didn’t maneuver through the system properly.
  • Market timing is just as important a factor in success as having a great idea.
  • A key driver of social enterprise success: do you have empathy for those who will have to change as a result of your efforts (not just beneficiaries but those who are currently benefiting from a dysfunctional system)?
  • When you scale you often have to rethink your model.: This reflects a growing trend we see where social enterprises are scaling as a result of variations to their initial model (we are calling them ‘pivots’, reflecting what they are called in the traditional business world). Many of these pivots happen in ways that would have been hard to predict at the beginning of the venture. This has huge implications for those who want to dismiss social enterprises that do not look scalable right out of the gate. We touched on this a bit here. A new blog may be forthcoming.
  • If your answer to those opposing you is “they are stupid or evil”, good luck (aka, you’re in trouble).
  • The best models are those that empower people to better themselves.
  • It is crucial (for your own organization as well as the social enterprise movement in general) to give visibility to results and how they occurred.
  • Business is in a historic transformation of rethinking its relationship to social progress.: While this is good news in and of itself, there is an added bonus for the social enterprise movement insofar as this transformation will create more partnership opportunities and chances for cross-pollination/sharing of insights between the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors.
  • Data should be renamed “business intelligence” so people can more easily grasp its importance. As well, make sure your data makes its way back to your people in the field.
  • Trust within an organization is another critical success factor. The key elements of trust are vertical (Am I getting the ‘straight goods’ from those ‘above me’?) and horizontal (When things aren’t working, do you ‘have my back’?).
  • Organizations (presumably non-profits) need business skills (e.g. accounting), even if they aren’t social enterprises.: This insight is included because we hear it often. For our part, we struggle to identify the skills the business community has mastered to such a degree – that is, so much better and so much more often than non-profits – that they can be labeled ‘business skills.’ Accounting is actually a good example in this regard. Lots of non-profits, whether they sell goods or not, are fantastic at accounting. So why is accounting considered a ‘business skill’? Our thinking is echoed (actually, it was inspired), by Jim Collins’ wonderful pamphlet, “Good to Great and the Social Sectors.” It is worth quoting the pamphlet at length:
Jim Collins
Jim Collins

“We must reject the idea – well intentioned, but dead wrong – that the primary path to greatness in the social sector is to become ‘more like a business’.

….

“I shared this perspective with a gathering of business CEOs, and offended nearly everyone in the room. A hand shot up from David Weekley, one of the more thoughtful CEOs – and a man who built a very successful company and who now spends half his time working with social sectors. ‘Do you have evidence to Collins Booksupport your point?’ he demanded. ‘In my work with non-profits, I find that they’re in desperate need of greater discipline – disciplined planning, disciplined people, disciplined governance, disciplined allocation of resources.’”

“‘What makes you think that’s a business concept?’ I replied. ‘Most businesses also have a desperate need for greater discipline.’”

….

“That’s when it dawned on me: we need a new language. The critical distinction is not between business and social, but between great and good. We need to reject the naïve imposition of the ‘language of business’ on the social sectors, and instead jointly embrace a language of greatness.”

This is not mere semantics, for it betrays a negative attitude from the business community towards the not-for-profit sector that hampers legitimate and mutual collaboration between the two sectors.  We may do a blog on this issue (perhaps we just did).

Three Key Pillars (The Skoll Awards, Al Gore Keynote, Social Impact Education Discussion):

 

  • The Skoll Awards

The Skoll Awards provide $1.25 Million each to “transformative leaders whose organizations are disrupting the status quo, driving large-scale ‘equilibrium’ change, and are poised to create even greater impact on the world.”  2016 saw six awards presented:

  • Vivek Maru, founder of Namati, “Putting the law in people’s hands”
  • Oren Yakobovich, founder of Videre, “Exposing and ending violence and abuse”
  • Mallika Dutt and Sonali Khan, founders of Breakthrough, “Stopping gender-based violence”
  • Chuck Slaughter, founder of Living Goods, “Saving lives door-to-door”
  • Bryan Stevenson, founder of Equal Justice Initiative, “Building a just criminal system”

Of the recipients, Chuck’s organization stood out to the Trico Foundation as it was the only one using the power of a business model. However, that does not alter the fact that that of each of the recipients’ stories were incredibly powerful.  Skoll also produces videos of each recipient organization. They are very well done, but the acceptance speeches are where the magic happens. You can check out both the videos and the acceptance speeches here:

Video of Namati:

Acceptance speech:   

Video of Videre: 

 Acceptance speech:

Video of Breakthrough:

Acceptance speech:

Video of Living Goods:

Acceptance speech:    

Video of Equal Justice Initiative:

Acceptance speech:  

 

  • Al Gore Keynote

Al Gore can be a polarizing figure, but no one can deny his mastery of his topic or his captivating presentation style. We strongly recommend his Skoll presentation for anyone interested in climate change and anyone who ever has to do a presentation.

One side note:  in his presentation, Al Gore suggests smart phones became ubiquitous because  1) costs dropped, 2) quality improved, and 3) low-income individuals were able leap-frog into participating (i.e. their locales didn’t need huge infrastructure investment like phone lines). He believes clean energy is going to benefit from the same process, and one wonders how many other social enterprise models can/will tap into a similar development path.

Al Gore’s 2016 Skoll Presentation:

 

  • Discussion on The Future of Social Impact and Entrepreneurship Education

This Skoll session looked at how universities, accelerator programs, and social entrepreneurship training courses can expand their focus from the social entrepreneur to positive social transformation.

While the discussion was great (a number of the items are featured in “Potpourri of Insights”), what is extraordinary, and perhaps even transformative itself, is the group is attempting to maintain that discussion post-Skoll. Anyone who is interested can join the process in Google docs (if you are interested, simply email Trico Foundation at info@tricofoundation.ca).

While the ongoing discussion is largely focused on information sharing at this point, it is hoped the group will:

  1. Share resources that might be of use to others
  2. Ask/answer questions of the group
  3. Make valuable connections and collaborate.

A special thanks to Daniela Papi-Thornton Deputy Director, Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship,  (@danielapapi), who conceived of and leads this initiative.

Introduction:

The Trico Charitable Foundation was honoured to attend the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, held in Oxford, England from April 13 to 15, 2016. The Forum shines a spotlight on best practices, new innovations, and connecting leaders to one another to advance global social progress. Each year over 1,000 Forum delegates, representing nearly 65 countries, discuss, network, and engage in a range of interactive events in inspiring Oxford locations.

The conversations are not always perfect. They can stay too high level/philosophical and often get sucked into an either/or paradigm. For example, is the key incremental social impact or transformative impact?; which is the greater force for good, business or philanthropy?; which is the higher impact model, for-profit or not-for-profit? But that can be expected with an event that covers such a broad philosophical spectrum (Skoll includes “social entrepreneurship” in the sense of using markets/business models to solve social problems and “social entrepreneuhsip” in the sense of any model that achieves transformative change).

Even with a lot of general discussion, the wide array of sessions and experts showcased plenty of inspiration and insight, as will discussed in “Potpourri of Insights”.

Some have criticized Skoll for being exclusive. In many ways, that is the nature of the beast when you are a truly global forum and only have space for around 1,000. To its credit, Skoll seeks to address this through an additional delegate application processes (the forum is typically by invite only), by live streaming much of its content, and posting all of its material online. For our part, delegates lucky enough to attend have a duty to share what they saw and learned to help inspire and empower the efforts of social changemakers who could not. Hopefully, this galvanizes a wider two-way conversation that not only relays the insights from Skoll, but taps into a wider base of knowledge that, in turn, can enhance Skoll.

While we are grateful to all of the staff/team that help make the Skoll World Forum possible, a special thanks goes out to Dr. Pamela Hartigan and Jeff Skoll. Pamela is Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Said Business School at the University of Oxford. Not only did Pamela make our attendance possible by extending an invite, she was good enough to be a keynote (one of the most popular, no less) when the Trico Foundation hosted the 2013 Social Enterprise World Forum. The Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, a leading academic entity for the advancement of social entrepreneurship worldwide, was created in 2003 with an initial and ongoing investment by Jeff Skoll. On stage, Jeff’s genuine sincerity and deep commitment to social progress is palpable. The fact that he is a Canadian and leading these crucial conversations and activities on an international scale is a very nice bonus.

skoll collage take 2

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