The case for the social entrepreneur

IN 1998 Jim Bacon established the Tasmanian Innovation Advisory Board and tasked it with developing a culture of innovation in Tasmanian business. The Board has spent its life to date developing what I would call a system of innovation for Tasmania.

A system of innovation is effectively a set of pathways for innovators to travel towards commercial success. These include early stage programs such as Commercialisation Ready and networking programs such as i-cubed. It also includes grants programs and linkages to other funding sources.

I have often referred to a system of innovation as something akin to a frog pond. Government needs to ensure that lily pads are placed at strategic places within the innovation pond so that innovative frogs can hop to the other side and find commercial success. I would argue there are still missing lily pads in our innovation frog pond such as second stage capital raising and academic rigor around innovation policy. However Tasmania’s system of innovation is a long way improved on where it was in 1998.

So if we have put significant resources into building a system of innovation with goals around business and economic growth — why haven’t we done the same for our social entrepreneurs? Why don’t we have a Tasmanian Social Entrepreneurship Board to over see the development of a system of innovation focused on social outcomes? Such a board would also provide a focus on skills, access to funding and networking as, to me, the same principals of innovation apply— whether the outcomes are economic or social.

I recently met Mike Duval Smith who runs a highly innovative program in Moonah called Chance on Main. The program deals with kids who are right on the edge — last chance kids. For these kids its either jail, a life of crime and disconnectedness or Chance on Main — their choice, as Mike would say. The program seems to be having results. Indeed following my visits to Chance on Main I can personally vouch for an atmosphere of trust and growth inhabited by some of our most vulnerable young people. But like many programs Chance On Main struggles to get Government support due to its innovative and often non-conventional nature. As Mike says it may be that Government support — and all the rigour of dealing with the bureaucracy — would kill the goose that laid the golden egg anyway.

Innovation is often the natural enemy of bureaucracy

Mike’s comments started me thinking about the way innovation is often the natural enemy of bureaucracy. For example, Chance on Main is, of course, concerned with recidivism rates — that is how many kids that enter the program go on to lead lives connected with the community through paid employment or education versus the number that continue on the path they are on that often ends in incarceration. However, when dealing with recidivism rates Governments want to set targets for programs like Chance on Main that they have to meet before the next lump of grant funding arrives. What this does over the course of time is push the inputs that conservative program managers are prepared to accept to a safer, less on-the-edge set of clients. What we actually need from a program such as this is in fact the opposite. We need to push the program inputs towards the edgy, the difficult and the insoluble. So what if the recidivism rate ends up being 15% and not the 85% that the grant deed requires — if this program is really at the pointy end of the problem.

Some commentators have defined Social Entrepreneurs as people who develop social programs that are essentially enterprises that return a financial benefit to keep the program sustainable. Tasmanian organisations that have been operating with great success in this field include Oak Enterprises, established in the sixties as Walkabout.

However I don’t subscribe to this definition of a Social Entrepreneur. I prefer the definition that says a Social Entrepreneur is a particular type of person who recognises when a part of society is stuck and is able to provide new ways to get it unstuck. He or she finds what is not working and solves the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution and persuading entire communities to take new leaps. This is the definition espoused by entities such as Ashoka and other world leading Social Entrepreneurship organisations.

Anglicare and Colony 47 do a fantastic job

There continues to be a significant need for organisations that provide social services to those in need in our communities. Organisations such as Anglicare and Colony 47 in Tasmania do a fantastic job in this area. However, I believe it is not enough. Just as we need to continue to invest in innovation to develop a diverse and high value economy – we need to do the same thing in the solution of our social problems. We need to identify, nurture, link and support Social Entrepreneurs to think up and implement new solutions to old and emerging social problems.

Mike Duval Stewart of Chance on Main is one such Social Entrepreneur. There are hundreds of others. Governments need to be able to rapidly identify these people and their ideas, and then back them. Not just with money, but using Government’s power to convene to ensure they are linked into support networks of their own, that they receive appropriate personal development and that they too have a pathway to success. Just as Government would nurture a young innovative technology company to grow and hopefully provide jobs to many in the future. So too, we need a mechanism to nurture our Social Entrepreneurs to find and implement new solutions to our social problems. The establishment of a Tasmanian Social Entrepreneurship Board with appropriate resources assigned would be one way of achieving this.

David Bartlett declares an interest having previously been employed as executive officer to the Tasmanian Innovation Advisory Board. He is currently the State Labor Member for Denison. For an excellent read on Social Entreprenuership take a look at http://www.ashoka.org/global/yespaper