Would love to learn more. Will ping you for a catch up!
A3: I think my other panel members are better placed to answer this. I can only highlight some of the examples I know. Through our grant scheme we supporting one of the initiative arising from Pearsonās excellent Tomorrowās Markets Incubator for example (and thanks for the shout out @paul.ellingstad). @clive.allison the grant scheme is also helping Unilever to reach new low income customers in Ethiopia.
We are also very excited by an initiative that Hamzahās colleagues in Pakistan are leading that is bringing high quality hygiene products to women and also empowering women entrepreneurs at the same time. This showcases an innovative approach in which RB and 4 other companies have made equity investments in a new kind of distribution company. We will be publishing a case study on this soon. In this regard, I think the report that Endeva have produced under Inclusive Business Boost which looks at āMake or Buyā decisions should provide companies with some interesting food for thought in how they can extend the range of a their approaches to social innovation.
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Definitely. Itās about distributing power and collaborating across silos. Weāre starting to talk about collaboration IQ as a real competence that needs investment.
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100% with you. Checkout the leagueās work, itās fantastic. Another concept which iām getting off the ground in coming weeks is a āpurpose councilā. Creating a millenial board who are owning and driving social impact / cultural change
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@gibbulloch Bingo! Spot on re: understanding of innovationā¦ in the least, need to always be doing a calibration w/ those were speakijng withā¦ too easy to be using the same words but realise later in the dialogue that somethingās been lost in translationā¦
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Executive sponsorship is key to ensure continued access to resources. Engaging customers as partners in the venture can also be effective. When customers are engaged the business will work to prioritize and ensure successful outcomes.
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Love that!! Giving voice and power to next gen!
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Thanks Maggie . Trying to design it in a way to ensure we all have own agenda so we can create a āpurpose gateā. All business decisions to pass through us a council to ensure conscience at heart. Would love to talk more. Any ideas on how to create our own brand and boost credibility?
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@ Paul.ellingstad, yes we have strong champion at ExCo level. Itās the clay layer below (refer to earlier remarks) that is hard to get through to achieve scale-up. We are one of the front runenr with innovative business models.
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I see that a good system level action to unleashing social innovation is more fluid job descriptions and work discretion. Rather than prescribing how work gets done, managers, give space for some discretion and creations. I was particularly impressed with Salesforce on this.
and then having clear open calls for anyone to participate, and funding. I think we already have great examples on this forum.
one more that I am aware of from our study is Boehringer Ingelheim Making More Health, competition inviting employees from all over the world to submit ideas for improving health outcomes and delivering business value. Manuela Pastore, who leads this, told us that she recognized the need to break silos and have cross-functional space for this to thrive and this has proven a great transformational echo inside the organization
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A3: We briefly talked about systems innovation at the beginning and actually this is something that we at Barclays are focusing on a lot more recently. We get a lot of support from an organization called Finance Innovation Lab, whose Head of Intrapreneurship Lydia Hascott is taking part on the discussion also I believe, so @lydiahascott feel free to add, but the definition that the team there came up with resonates well with us. They understand that systemic innovation is more than just new products and services (which would be the tip of an imaginary iceberg), but more broadly it is also semi-explicit structures (i.e business models, incentives, metrics, reporting, governance) and implicit mental models (i.e culture, values, languages, power dynamics).
Even at the product level, you can think about designing those in a more systemic way. For example, a situation that is close to our heart in the retail banking sector. When you think about innovating for customers in financially vulnerable circumstances you could take one of two approaches. You could take a segment of customers that are financially vulnerable and design a product to help them tackle that, letās say for example a gamified savings product that would encourage them to save more. Or alternatively, you can think about what are the actual underlying roots that made them vulnerable in the first place ā is it financial illiteracy?, is it lack of empowerment? - and target those. Itās a harder task but you are serving your customers in a more systemic way.
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@gibbulloch Sorry to say Iām not familiar with the League of Intrapreneurs but already have the site up from reading @florencia-league comments! I have heard of the Circle though. At the UNGC, weāre currently working with some partners on a youth intrapreneurship and innovation programme tapping into our 10,000+ companies to better engage young professionals. Itās both focused on engaging and empowering young professionals to play a stronger role in integrating the SDGs and social impact into their company and also serving as a incubator where they have the space, time and support (by joining the programme, companies must commit to assigning the young professionals a senior level āChampionā and allowing them company time to participate) to create and innovate what commercially viable sustainable business solutions could look like for their company.
awesome. look forward to it, thanks Gib
you can take different approaches, some of which were mentioned earlier. Think about co-creating your product with them, rather than just collaborating. Think about getting them to co-invest in your innovation, even if itās with non-monetary resources, so that there is a degree of alignmentā¦ Happy to discuss in more detail!
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I also recommend for folks to look into Aspen Business & Society Program and the First Movers Fellowship-- another fantatstic community of corporate social intrepreneurs https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/business-and-society-program/first-movers-fellowship-program/
Disclaimer-- Iām a bit partial here-- am part of the community 
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Thanks @Nkiru_Chiemelu. Iād really commend you to reach out to @florencia-league and @MaggieDP from The League of Intrapreneurs as they could offer a whole lot of knowledge.
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Couldnāt have said it any better @dfdezalvarez
This blog shares some of our thinking on that: https://financematters.co/intrapreneurs-in-finance-creating-positive-change-from-within/
And hereās one on The Dangers of Purpose-Driven Business: https://financematters.co/the-dangers-of-purpose-driven-business/
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For many of the companies we work with, the concept of intrapreneurship is still relatively unknown (unfortunately) and still if young people/middle management want to be able to make an impact, the most common response is to āstart your own thingā but that kind of splintering of breakthrough thinking just leads to incrementalism within major established corporations. So itās about creating a space, even if a small one to test out new ideas within the company without seeing entrepreneurship as the only avenue for social impact for business. Thereās a lot that big corporations can learn from social enterprises and this is how these ideas can scale.
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Please take a look at this page as well for more resources:
http://socialinnovation.pages.ontraport.net/
This has been great fun.
If anyone is interested in my book The Intrapreneur: Confessions of a corporate insurgent they can get a copy here.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intrapreneur-Confessions-corporate-insurgent/dp/1912618400?ref_=mw_olp_product_details
Similarly, would love people to sign up for the pilot of my new bsuiness ādeceleratorā on 18-22 November in Scotland
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