The pandemic has been a clear example of this, where smaller scale entrepreneurs were able to pivot their businesses to better serve community needs: producing masks, making hand soap or acting as information hubs in hard to reach areas, all within a very short timeframe
Completely agreed: Social innovation and change take time, so you have to inspire and build the case on a multi-year horizon while engaging and delivering value near-term, on your businessā time horizons. One of the ways Iāve seen this managed effectively is to focus on various types of value. Mapping, measuring and taking credit for all the value created by social innovation (eg: brand equities, employee engagement, new partnerships, risk reduction, new social sources of funding, etc.) can unlock resources and build the organisational patience required to do this work well.
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A key challenge we have encountered during the Venerable Supply Chains Facility is that particularly in the pandemic context, many businesses just donāt have the time to think long-term - they are too busy fire-fighting the daily pressures on their businesses. We have had farms and factories drop out/turn down FCDO support for lack of time and head-space to consider longer term options right now. Weāve tried to overcome this through leveraging longer-term partnerships between these farms/factories and our retail/brand partners where possible - but it has been a major challenge, and one that flags the inherent link between the ability to be able to think long-term and levels of social impact a business can have.
Justin agrees with Justin (again !) Having a supportive set up around the process itself, notably in terms of both overall risks and rewards, will of course be different to a ācoreā business.
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Totally Amalia! The paradox is that smallholder farmers are the more adaptable, but they are also the most isolated, without negotiating power.
How do you manage to connect them? In Peru, Colombia and Bolivia, we developed EcoBodegas, an intermediary between food producers and ātiendas de barrioā (the millions of pop and mom local shops in the region). It takes time, effort to go visit every entrepreneur, earn his trust by showing the benefits, but it allows to build large networks that give more bargaining power with corporate stakeholders.
The trickiness I experience here is that need for metrics and indicators to keep justifying the expenditure over time. This is particularly difficult where you are contributing to systems change. Thatās not a ānumbers of toilets or microgrids builtā type set of impact indicators. Having faith to keep funding when the mindset is on direct impact indicators is hard. Perhaps itās a bit of the āletting go of the handlebarsā that the other Justin is referring to
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Hi Asa, top operation you have in France indeed. Do you plan on expanding such initiatives in Latin America?
A2:
The biggest challenge to me in corporations is the mindset. The mindset is the source of other barriers such as bias, silos and egos.
People donāt often see intuitively opportunities in the intersection of social innovation and core business. To address this, we need to help individuals, teams and organizations to re-frame boxes, meaning that they have the capabilities, incentives and resources to be able to think about innovation constraints as boundaries that we can shape, and as challenges that we can address to create value.
Drive social innovation require a mindset shift and we need to equip our strategy in three levels: cognitive, emotional and political.
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Ver true Anna. Metrics to evaluate the impact on societal innovation is important to assess whether the solutions are working
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Totally agree - businesses often need to see value (profit) in doing good for them to want to do thisā¦
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Doesnāt a lot of this link to basic incentives? Current business models can be profitable, even if they are not sustainable. Itās why a clearly evidenced business case for how societal innovations benefit all sides is essential.
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Agree Amalia! Combining philanthropy and business when working in the social innovation phase is a way to combine impact and finding new solutions, until you have found scaleable models to replicate
I completely agree. The best thing you can do with a silo is to try and kick it over so it becomes a horizontal flow of information, ideas and actions. Sometimes the resources a project needs are already there, but are in the wrong place.
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Gracias Mario, the cultural factor is the main barrier to corporate innovation in general ā¦ and unfortunately it also applies to social issues even more.
How do you manage to convince top-leaders of your organization to unlock long-term budgets to such issues?
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Agree Anna. As a contractor to the FCDO, weāre in the interesting position of having to hold our partners to contracts which state these sort of output targets as the basis for them receiving aid money, but at the same time realise the need for flexibility on these to catalyse adaptability and innovation by the businesses themselves. Weāve had to retain a fine balance as the facility manager of the VSCFā¦
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Through running our social enterprise, we have found that stakeholders and investors are more hesitant to engage in social/sustainable initiatives as it might come at a cost to overall sales and profit. However, social innovation does not necessarily include creating an idea from scratch but rather intelligently using available resources. NaTakallam employs displaced and host communities to teach their native language online- an inherent skill most communities have regardless of location, education and life situation through the worldwide web. Another hurdle is the extent of social impact a company can achieve and to that, we stress: cross sector collaborations. NaTakallam has managed to partner with hundreds of NGOs as well as corporations and academic institutions. Lastly, it is crucial to embed social innovation into business as 91% of global consumers are likely to switch brands to one associated with a good cause, given comparable price and quality, and 50% of global consumers are willing to switch brands to one associated with a good cause even if they have to pay more for their goods and services (Cone Communications/ Echo Global CSR).
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Hi Maxime, yes we already have an accelerator with New Ventures in Mexico and one with NESsT in South America, have a look here Accelerating for impact (ikeasocialentrepreneurship.org). Also working with WWF in Mexico on Community Conservation Enterprises.
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Absolutely. And where the evidence or a business case isnāt yet available, use a logical framework and/or theory of change that leadership sign off on and that defines measurable outputs while you execute and build the dataset.
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I agree, there is an opportunity to work together as ecosystem. Probably one barrier we may need to address is the āwhat is in it for meā for all. I think this a legitimate expectation, but sometimes it is a hard conversation. A shared value ecosystem business case could be an approach to address these concerns and enable cross sector collaboration for the long run.
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canāt beat a theory of change!
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