ESF-Works

21.02.2007: How big can the Social Enterprise sector get?

Equal-Works guest:

John Bird, Founder of The Big Issue

Moderator:

Jeremy Harrison, Equal-Works Editorial Director, Tribal Education and Technology

This debate is now over. Thank you to all who took part. A downloadable video file and a summary of the debate are available below.
Summary of the Social Enterprise debate with John Bird:
John Bird, the founder of The Big Issue, Big Invest, and a candidate for Mayor of London, was Equal-Works’ second guest for the live online debate on 21 February 2007.  He spent an hour giving his views on the social economy.

‘A social enterprise’, he said, ‘is and enterprise which is sociable.’
Which big company would John Bird most like to invest with social enterprise values? The Post Office, ‘so that it could be converted to something which reflected more what customers want’.

Questions from Equal development Partnerships and other site users raised the role of the public sector. ‘When government gets involved in social engineering’, he said, ‘it often does it clumsily’.  He defended the US approach to creating businesses to solve social problems.

Children should be trained as social entrepreneurs. We need an academy or a university ‘to train the sharp and feisty sort of people who will fight for the social enterprise movement’.

More open public procurement could result in ‘more entrepreneurial enterprising local small people being brought forward and allow them to make mistakes to learn from’.

If government and local authorities are serious about social change, they should imitate the best practices of business and take risks. ‘I want a national bicycle chain where people rebuild bikes and sell them back the community.’

The social economy has a big international role. ‘I want Africa to start making stuff I can use and that I can sell throughout the world. There’s so much to learn from Africa – it hasn’t been decimated by commodification, consumerism and all that.’

The theme was, use business to get people out of dependency – reinvest the profits back into the problems.

You can now replay the whole debate if you missed it by clicking here.

Further information



Questions debated

Question 1

Welcome and introductions to John Bird.
How to define social enterprise.  An enterprise which is sociable….a business response to a social crisis rather than a charity or governmental department.  An enormous number of groups doing work formerly done by the government or local authorities.  We set out to decriminalise homeless people…and legalised them by giving them something to do on the streets.  I’m always reminding The Big Issue, the centre of our activity is not to produce a newspaper or to sell advertising, it is to help homeless people.




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Question 2

Does it matter how big a Social Enterprise gets?
Setting up organisations creates a ‘them’ and ‘us’…you have to create a little bureaucracy for memories and records.  Just make sure the bureaucracy doesn’t become an end in itself.  We have in a sense Big Issue-ised the world.  We’ve got an investment bank called Big Invest – this year it might invest about £10 million.  I’d like to see the Post Office converted to something which reflected more what customers want.




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Question 3

Relationship between Social Enterprise and the public sector:
Housing Associations were entrepreneurial enterprise created locally.  Now they get most of their big money from the government.  When government gets involved in social engineering it often does it clumsily.  In America you can get a number of business people together to create a business to solve a social problem.  Over here you suggest you make a profit, pay someone a good wage to change the lives of hundreds and thousands of people, and people say you can’t do that.


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Question 4

What could be done for Social Enterprise in London?
Forms of entrepreneurial training should be given at an early stage – in schools.  Bring children into the entrepreneurial world - they will build tomorrow.  Training for social enterprise.  We need someone to cough up some money and let’s have an academy or a university to train the sharp and feisty sort of people who will fight for the social enterprise movement.  We’ve also created Best Practices for Change – bringing together loads of information about social enterprises so that we stop people reinventing the wheel.


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Question 5

Public Procurement, risk and social enterprises: 
Everyone’s incredibly frightened about public money.  Need more entrepreneurial enterprising local small people being brought forward and allow them to make mistakes to learn from.  My definition of an entrepreneur – someone who sometimes gets it right.  Most of the things that succeed are backed up by things that have failed.


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Question 6

Regeneration and the Future:  Get rid of mystifications around budgets; involve the public in the decision-making process for participatory democracy.  We created the Big Invest for business that has a social delivery.  We do need to look at ways we can get investment into the sector.  If government and local authorities are serious about social change, they need to imitate the best practices of business and take risks.  I want a national bicycle chain where people rebuild bikes and sell them back the community.


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Question 7

Internationalism and the Social Economy:
Never got excited about things like Make Poverty History.  I want Africa to start making stuff I can use and that I can sell throughout the world.  There’s so much to learn from Africa – it hasn’t been decimated by commodification, consumerism and all that.  Giving them money takes away their struggle for independence and ability to provide for themselves.  Here there’s real money to be made out of unemployment, and in training.  Getting people out of dependency, and then reinvesting it back into the problems.


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8 March 2007 15:24
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Pleased to hear that response. In fact I've been networking recently with Africans wanting to do just that in areas such as dry land fruit farming in Kenya fish farming in Ghana and leveraging support for training Ugandan doctors in the former Soviet Union. That's where we've been working over the past decade, leveraging funding aid for pro-poor targetted economic development and all of the funds have come from the US. As a social enterprise in the UK, we're completely off radar, though we know people like Sir Nick Stern advocate precisely what we've been doing.
Jeff Mowatt, People-Centered Economic Development >>
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