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2007 Skoll World Forum on
Social Entrepreneurship
— some notes from Oxford / UK — March 2007
vivian Hutchinson
Social Innovation Investment Group
New Zealand Social Entrepreneur Fellowship

Report Summary

• This was easily the best conference I have been to in a long while ... it was well run, it attracted a unique diversity of participants, the content had a great deal of depth to it, and there was robust debate that was engaging and extending.

• There were 700 participants from 40 countries including a rich mix of social entrepreneurs, human rights activists, academics, business leaders, philanthropists and funders. Many of these people could be counted amongst the most remarkable change-makers of our generation. The Forum provided an unique opportunity for the exchange of legitimacy, insight and creativity between the different communities of these participants.

• The conference lived up to its reputation of being the main World Forum in the field of social entrepreneurship. As part of developing our projects with the Social Innovation Investment Group and the New Zealand Social Entrepreneur Fellowship, I have been researching and studying who are the key “movers and shakers” in the international scene of social entrepreneurship. Almost all of them were present at this gathering.

• There was so much going on, with up to seven workshops happening at the same time as well as breakfast sessions and Master Classes at the lunchtime breaks. But it still hung together well, particularly around the main plenary sessions which were held in Oxford’s historic Sheldonian Theatre.

• Highlights for me included:

— sessions from Geoff Mulgan, Bill Drayton, Charles Handy, Muhammad Yunus and Larry Brilliant

— the inevitable sharing of inspiring stories from the many social entrepreneurs, but particularly Gillian Caldwell and Peter Gabriel, Karen Tse and Taddy Blecher.

— the widening of the sense of social entrepreneurship from elite “celebrity” stories towards recognising the social innovation and entrepreneurship that is also found in groups and movements.

— a sense of the growing literacy about just what makes up the process of social innovation, understanding the life cycle of innovations and how to foster innovation more effectively in many different sectors.

— the “open source” example of Ashoka Changemakers, which represents a innovative model for sharing emergent knowledge and practice.

— the practical sessions aimed at Foundations and philanthropy about how to be more venturesome in giving financial support to new ideas and programmes.

• I’ve come away with an immense amount to think about, as well as links, contacts and ideas to follow up on. I’ve also had the opportunity to renew some of the international contacts I made at the gathering of “outstanding social entrepreneurs” organised by the Schwab Foundation at Davos last year, and at the Innovation Funders meeting in San Francisco.

• This report contains my personal diary notes from the Forum. It is a combination of a description of the sessions I went to, my thoughts at the time, and the links and research I have been doing on the people and their projects since the Forum took place.

— I have created a “blog” website of this report which contains live internet links of all the contacts and references mentioned in this document. You can also view video of the conference directly from these webpages at http://vivianoxford07.blogspot.com

— An online album of photographs which I took at this conference can be found at the Flickr photosharing website

• There was an obvious pressure from the sheer numbers of people around the world who would have liked to have attended this Forum, and the Skoll Foundation had an interesting process in stage-managing just who was going to be there. You could apply to go on a pre-registration list, and the organisers obviously did some digging into backgrounds before inviting a core group of people to come. After this, the formal registration gates were only open for a very short time before it was announced that the Forum was full.

• Beyond the 700 people attending at Oxford, there was a large “virtual” participation at this Forum, thanks to the live streaming of the plenary sessions and the blogger contributions of many people involved with the socialedge.org website.

• One of my roles as Executive Officer of our Investment Group and the NZSEF is to help build our international links and relationships with other social entrepreneur networks and philanthropic foundations that are fostering social innovation. At our first NZSEF Fellowship retreat in February, there was some discussion about how our local work in New Zealand needs to be put more into an international context ... and that there was much that we could learn from in the good ideas and practical strategies for change that are emerging overseas. Participating in the Skoll World Forum is an excellent entry point into these opportunities to network and learn.

• Beyond this learning and networking, the Skoll World Forum is providing a very timely focus of hope in a world faced with deep-seated and complex problems. It is nearly impossible to feel cynicism and despair when surrounded by the stories and examples of literally hundreds of inspirational people who are just getting on and making a practical difference.


vivian Hutchinson
Executive Officer
Social Innovation Investment Group
New Zealand Social Entrepreneur Fellowship
www.nzsef.org.nz

April 2007

Resources.
— The website for the Oxford Said Business School Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship
— The Forum website homepage at the Skoll Foundation
— The Forum website homepage at Social Edge

— a PDF copy of this report (40 pages, 1.5MB) can be downloaded from www.nzsef.org.nz/dox/pdf/vivianoxford07.pdf

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• Well, that’s my notes from the week at the Oxford and from my time in London. There was so much going on at this World Forum that I would imagine that there could be 700 completely different reports of what happened and 700 different maps of connections to inspiring people, ideas and projects.

• As I was writing up my notes in a London hotel, I was struck by the contrast between the positivity generated by this global gathering ... and the much less hopeful headlines appearing in the daily British newspapers.

During the time of this Forum, the OECD reported that aid from Western developed countries to tackle global poverty had fallen by 5% last year, which was the first time that the level of aid had dropped in a decade. This was because the world’s richest countries were basically reneging on their Gleneagles pledges to give an extra $50 billion in financial assistance by 2010. (Remember Bob Geldof and Bono’s Live8 concerts?)

Also during the Forum, a report was released on Britain’s child poverty statistics. The latest government figures show that the number of children officially living in poverty in Britain has risen by 200,000 to 3.8 million children. These new figures mark the end of a sustained period of falling poverty since statistics were first collated in 1961. They also bring a bit of “reality” back to Blair and Brown’s ambitious social promise that they will abolish all child poverty in the UK by 2020.

These reports are a not-so-gentle reminder of just how far we still have to go. Larry Brilliant’s inspiring journey in ending Smallpox may prove to be a walk in the park compared the social justice struggle of ending the widening gap between rich and poor.

• Being my first Skoll Forum, I had no real way of comparing just how the social entrepreneur movement, at this series of annual gatherings, was evolving its own sense of balance between “hype” and “reality”. I was interested to read the following post-Forum comment on a Social Edge Blog by Dennis Whittle, the founder and Chairman of GlobalGiving:

“ Around 2001 there was a Cambrian explosion of ideas [on social entrepreneurship], and conferences were all about who had the best idea — and too often about why other people's ideas were dumb or inferior. Over the next couple of years, several of the people with ideas actually launched real initiatives, with great hopes and fanfare and excitement and hoopla, and often hyperbole. The conferences during those years were dominated by the swaggering of those people launching these start-ups.

“ [But] many of us have been through the wringer. We are making great progress now, but the last few years have been full of setbacks and reversals and S-turns. All of which have served to make us a lot more humble — and a lot more interested in reaching out to others to tell our stories and hear theirs in return. I think we all realize now that there is no silver bullet in this field — no “best idea.” Instead, we need — and are forming — a community of good ideas, and of good people. The way forward is through this community...” — Dennis Whittle

• I think this is a community we should be keeping in touch with ... and we should endeavour to maintain a New Zealand presence at these World Forums at Oxford. In future years I would like to try and ensure that both a member of our Social Innovation Investment Group and a member of the Social Entrepreneur Fellowship are able to attend. There is certainly many advantages to being on the spot, making connections with a huge diverse network, being within the dialogue, and having the time to think things through —away from home projects and responsibilities.

• But beyond this — bearing in mind all the carbon-miles involved in getting New Zealanders over to the other side of the world — perhaps we could also work with the Skoll Foundation or the Social Edge people to convene a satellite summit gathering at the same time in New Zealand. This would make it open to a wider range of New Zealand social entrepreneurs and philanthropists ... with the main plenary and keynote speakers from Oxford beamed into our satellite conference, accompanied by our own keynote speakers and our own workshop sessions.

Imagine if there was a whole network of these satellite summits in various countries ... with the best of their local keynote contributions being shared around the network. This would also be another way to extend the reach and impact of the important ideas and practical role models for change that are found within this Forum.


vivian Hutchinson
Social Innovation Investment Group
New Zealand Social Entrepreneur Fellowship
www.nzsef.org.nz

April 2007