Archive for Social Enterprise

Mr Tickle and Collaboration

June 19, 2012 Business, Creativity, Social Enterprise, Uncategorized No comments

I was fortunate enough to have spent this morning with some of the South’s most driven social entrepreneurs. The topic of every conversation was very much about taking collaboration to the next level. We have of course collaborated many times in lots of different ways, but what does real progress look like? With the dangers of the UK heading towards the 50% unemployment levels of young people seen in Spain as mentioned by Prof Niall Ferguson in the Reith Lectures, what can we do to change the game?

Co-creation was on the breakfast menu today.  Less about paddling your own canoe through the rapids and more about finding some folk you want to build a dam with.  How many metaphors can I fit in this post? And more importantly what has this to do with Mr Tickle?  We could make something up about his long arms being able to gather in lots of collaborators, but no.  It’s just an acronym for collaboration folks: TICKLE.

Mr Tickle

Trust: The success of anything is built on trust.  How can you build trust with the people you want to work with?

Inspiration: How can you work with people who inspire you and how can you inspire others?

Creativity: I’ve just had the pleasure of working with Alan Donegan on developing innovation and creativity.  We are in need of creative solutions now more than ever.  How creative are you?

Kigyoushin: Well I had to get it in somewhere.  Where is your enterprising spirit and how can you add it to your creation?  The best ideas are wasted if they aren’t sustainable.

Leadership: One of our topics this morning was the lack of real leadership in tackling our toughest challenges.  When will you be ready to step up to plate?  What leadership do you need in your camp and what do you need to do to get it?

Energy: Have you got bouncebackability?  How will you react when things don’t go your way?  Are you crackling with energy?  What do you need to do to crackle with energy?

This post was inspired by The Collaboration Company and Mr Tickle

How many entrepreneurs does it take to change a lightbulb?

January 5, 2012 Business, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Progress, Social Enterprise No comments

This ‘joke’ format is as old as the hills, but how would we answer that question for the entrepreneurs of the 21st century? How many such entrepreneurs DOES it take to change a lightbulb? The answer is apparently none, because of progress:

1. They are too busy looking for investors for their patented kinetic glowing ceiling;
2. They have outsourced home improvements to India and arranged for it to be done while on vacation at Lake Tahoe;
3. The bank of LEDS are controlled by an app on their smart phone;
4. The re-engineered lightbulb regenerates automatically;
5. They are busy examining what change means – does it mean replace the bulb or alter what we consider the function of a lightbulb to be.

We probably will have lightbulbs for a little while yet, but emerging entrepreneurs should be learning the business case for making our world a better place, in terms of both the planet and individual consumers. i.e. Does your product improve my world? If not forget it because I’ll tell everyone in my network who will tell everyone in their network and so on and you won’t make it out of the blocks.

So how do entrepreneurs determine what products will do the job of improving our planet to creat wealth, add value? Business models based on monologue with consumers (create something and people will buy it) seem arrogant and risk being out of touch. Business models that have authentic dialogue with consumers are more likely to have the resilience that the pace of change demands. Furthermore there are clearly huge amounts of data that we can already access, and the platforms to create and analyse yet more are becoming increasingly sophisticated. But progress lies beyond dialogue and crunching data. This is about creating a level of engagement that not only invites the customer to create content and develop products, but also entrusts the responsibility for future growth with the conscious and unconscious ‘consumer collective.’

Perhaps the question ‘how many entrepreneurs does it take to change a lightbulb’ is therefore the wrong question. A better question for nextgen entrepreneurs might be ‘how can we change light together?’