̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Social enterprise

Running water

skbf2 — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 11:08:50 +0000

Meet social enterprise founder, Francesca O'Hanlon whose tech start-up is partnering with local plumbing businesses to bring clean water to communities in Uganda.

̽��ֱ��social enterprise greenhouse that helps businesses bloom

lw355 — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 09:40:36 +0000

Oliver Armitage wants to make bionic limbs effective and affordable for amputees everywhere. Kate Nation wants to help young women gain confidence and self-esteem through work. Riaz Moola wants to tackle the educational inequalities he saw growing up in Africa by offering programming tuition online.

Oliver, Kate and Riaz are part of a movement of entrepreneurs that’s been growing rapidly in the UK since the mid-1990s. United by a passion for addressing deep-rooted societal problems, they aren’t looking to solve them with cash, instead they want to have a positive impact through business and enterprise.

Social enterprises like the organisations that each of them runs (respectively Cambridge Bio-Augmentation Systems, Turtledove and Hyperion Development) are designed to improve people’s lives. According to the UK’s Department for International Trade, social enterprises also contribute £55 billion to the economy through jobs, goods, services and investing in local communities; no wonder it’s been said that “when a social enterprise profits, society profits.”

But, say Professor Paul Tracey and Dr Neil Stott, ensuring a social enterprise thrives is not always straightforward. “Doing good has increasingly been seen by government and others as the new game in town and investment and policies – including those launched by the UK government’s ‘Big Society’ in 2010 – have swiftly followed,” says Tracey, Professor of Innovation and Organisation at Cambridge Judge Business School.

“Social investment in the UK is growing by 30%, and a report last year suggested the UK is leading the way globally in effective policy around social enterprise and social investment.”

“This is of course excellent,” says Stott, who with Tracey co-directs the Cambridge Centre for Social Innovation. “But we felt that there were a few problems – that the rhetoric of success and the reality were a long way apart. Social enterprises are often started with great intentions but a lack of understanding about what’s needed to make them sustainable. Too many great ideas wither and die. Everyone – policy makers, academics, practitioners – think it’s a good thing per se. We wanted to lift up the stones and see what’s underneath.

“Even though we’d like to see a thousand flowers bloom – lots of people being social entrepreneurs – if you want to make change in the world, having this passion is not enough,” adds Stott. “ ̽��ֱ��challenges can be both immense and unique to any particular social venture.”

Stott cites Keystone Development Trust, a social enterprise he ran in a part of the UK that has experienced a significant influx of migrants. Keystone was one of the organisations in the area that offered a dedicated programme of support. What the organisers didn’t expect was that some members of the established local population, many of whom also benefited from Keystone’s activities, would ultimately stigmatise them.

In fact there was a positive outcome, he says, in that this withdrawal of support was compensated for by increased support from others who saw the organisation as representing a set of values they wanted to uphold.

Tracey and Stott realised that businesses could learn much from understanding both the failures and the successes of others, and so an integral part of the Cambridge Centre for Social Innovation’s work now revolves around an incubator – Cambridge Social Ventures – which supports social entrepreneurs to start and grow a social venture.

We’re not looking for entrepreneurs who happen to create benefit, as good as that is. We’re looking for people who are passionate about social change and are designing their venture for that purpose.
Paul Tracey

Initially funded with £1m from the government, Cambridge Social Ventures began life as Social Incubator East, a partnership between Cambridge Judge Business School, Allia, Foundation East and Keystone Development Trust, and has since become embedded in Cambridge Judge Business School. Nearly 100 early-stage and well-established social entrepreneurs – including Oliver, Kate and Riaz – have now come through a 12-month mentoring and support system, and a further 500 have been helped through weekend programmes.

“We’re not looking for entrepreneurs who happen to create benefit, as good as that is,” says Tracey. “We’re looking for people who are passionate about social change and are designing their venture for that purpose.

“We’re helping them with business advice, and we’re also studying them. We want to get a sense of motivation, ideas and practices, how – or if – social objectives are traded off with business objectives – and how all of this affects the way a social venture develops.”

They describe it as a greenhouse – where the ‘doing’ of social enterprise feeds both research in the Centre and teaching on a new Master’s course, which in turn is training future social innovators. “Our unofficial strapline is Think Teach Do,” says Stott.

“Once people have identified as a social entrepreneur and are suddenly in a room with others, they learn and they forge partnerships,” says Belinda Bell, Programme Director of Cambridge Social Ventures.

One example is Oliver Armitage and his team at Cambridge Bio-Augmentation Systems (see panel below) working with John Willis and his charity, Power2Inspire, which encourages people of all ages and abilities to take up sport together.

Cambridge Bio-Augmentation Systems aims to make the most advanced bionic technology affordable and effective for anyone who needs it. After meeting Willis, who was born without fully formed arms or legs, Armitage and colleagues designed four different devices to attach to a prosthetic socket that would help him kayak, row and play archery and tennis as part of his successful challenge to take part in 34 Olympic and Paralympic sports. ̽��ֱ��designs for the devices are now freely available to download and print in 3D.

Tracey and Stott say this is ‘extrapreneurship’ in action – the creation of novel solutions by partnerships that come about through support mechanisms like Cambridge Social Ventures. They realised that a new framework was needed to describe how social ventures work in practice. While ‘extrapreneurship’ is the building of support networks like the incubator, ‘entrepreneurship’ is the creating and growing of a venture, and ‘intrapreneurship’ is the embedding of social objectives in the activities of established companies.

“There are many different approaches that individuals and organisations can take when addressing social problems, and these may have relatively little in common with each other,” says Tracey. “ ̽��ֱ��result is researchers sometimes talk past each other and end up comparing apples with pears, which is a barrier to knowledge creation.”

Their research has also suggested that social entrepreneurship in isolation is not enough: “If you want to make real change you have to involve the corporate sector and the public sector in business,” explains Tracey. “ ̽��ֱ��businesses that fail quickly are frequently operating at a small scale, in some of the most challenging areas of the country – places where regular businesses don’t flourish because people don’t have that much disposable income. Working with corporate and business sectors can provide security and sustainability.”

“We’re excited because there’s a real zeitgeist – right place, right time,” adds Stott. “Young people are as concerned today about making a difference as they are with making money. Social enterprises are taking off and we want to help them flourish.”

Neil and Belinda were recent winners of a Vice Chancellor’s Award for Public Engagement for their work in establishing Cambridge Social Ventures.

When it comes to starting social enterprises, Paul Tracey and Neil Stott would love "to see a thousand flowers bloom". But doing good for society isn’t as straightforward as it sounds and even the best ideas can fail. Their research aims to understand the elements that are needed to help social ventures thrive.

We’re excited because there’s a real zeitgeist. Young people are as concerned today about making a difference as they are with making money. Social enterprises are taking off and we want to help them flourish.

Neil Stott

̽��ֱ��District

Bionic bodies: redefining the limits of the human body.

“When the team showed me their plans, it dawned on me that this could change my life,” says James Young. “If I was offered a human arm and leg now I wouldn’t want it.”

Young is a double amputee and is describing when he first started working with the team of entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers and doctors behind Cambridge Bio-Augmentation Systems (CBAS).

CBAS is led by Cambridge alumni Oliver Armitage and Emil Hewage, who were undergraduates and postgraduates at the ̽��ֱ��. When they were engineering students, they discovered a mutual interest in how technology could be used to push the boundaries of what’s possible in healthcare.

“My first idea was to make the best prosthetic arm or leg. But what is the best?” says Armitage. “It’s a limb that’s attached so well that there is complete control, where the hand moves without deliberate thought, where the machinery listens to muscles tensing, where the sensory feedback is complete. That’s when I started thinking about the connector.”

̽��ֱ��connector is an interface. It’s the boundary between man and machine that can enable an amputated limb to become fully functioning, or ‘bionic’. ̽��ֱ��vision at CBAS is to make the technology affordable and available to as many as possible, and the best way to do this for amputees, they believe, is to develop standardised interfaces on which to build prosthetic devices.

“Integrated bionics unlocks a cheaper and far more effective model for treating chronic conditions,” says Hewage. Amputees can suffer discomfort and limited functionality with conventional prostheses. Instead, CBAS is developing a permanent connection, a prosthetic interface device (PID), between bionic devices and neural and soft-tissue systems within the body of any amputee. “It’s like a USB port,” he adds. “ ̽��ֱ��user would ‘plug and play’ whatever limb or device they need. They could even print the add-ons using a 3D printer at home.”

̽��ֱ��PID should not only lower the cost of artificial limbs by around 60% but also reduce the time-consuming adjusting and refitting of custom-made prostheses because any prosthetic limb can be designed to attach to the standardised interface. ̽��ֱ��implant also shifts the weight of the limb to the patient’s skeletal system, reducing uncomfortable friction.

“There are growing numbers of amputees globally,” adds Hewage. “Diabetes and cardiovascular disease cause a lot of planned amputations, and for patients with these conditions using this standardised approach reduces the cost.”

CBAS hopes for a first in-human use of a fully neurally connected implant for an amputee in 2018. Armitage explains that their aim is for two-way brain communication: “Full control of the arm or leg with the brain, with pinpoint accuracy, and full sensory feedback to the brain. We want it to be possible to do something as complex as writing.”

He and Hewage set up CBAS two years ago, at the same time that Hewage was working on his PhD in computational neuroscience in the Department of Engineering.

Ensuring that what they make is not only effective but also accessible and affordable was a goal from the start. “We’re not interested in building a single product for a single condition,” Armitage says. “We’ve seen the amazing things that can be done with amputees but it’s always a research study costing millions that benefits just one person. We want to have a larger impact.”

He describes this social enterprise aspect of CBAS as an ‘impact venture’. “Wanting to run a company and have an impact – they aren’t separate, they can’t be,” he explains. “If you have a piece of technology that you believe could have a huge positive impact on a large number of people, the only way to do this at scale is as a commercial venture.”

“Many chronic conditions depend on long-term use of pharmaceuticals or devices,” he adds. “We believe that innovative engineering could offer significant patient benefits in terms of avoiding side effects, increasing comfort and functionality, and reducing healthcare costs, whether it’s in the form of a smart pacemaker, insulin dispenser or prosthetic limb.”

What drives Armitage, as it did during his PhD research in Cambridge on the engineering of biological systems, is the desire to understand how nature might work better with the aid of technology. “Evolution is a progression and we’re at a point in it,” he says. “Let’s see where we go.”

Inset image: James Young; Credit: CBAS.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Study identifies different ways to help social businesses grow

sc604 — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 01:00:00 +0000

Social businesses – those with a socially beneficial objective – can play an important role in developing countries in addressing needs such as healthcare, energy, education and sanitation, but such businesses have faced a difficult time scaling up to significant size and reach.

A new study by researchers from Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� has identified four key strategies and two methods for social businesses to scale up, which could help them reach many more of the four billion people in developing countries who could benefit from the services of such businesses.

Meeting these needs through affordable and sustainable solutions offers businesses a vast opportunity for future growth. As developing markets emerge from low-income to middle-income status, their development offers businesses the potential to make profits while also delivering significant social impact.

̽��ֱ��study, published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, identifies market penetration, market development, product development and diversification as the four key growth strategies at different stages of business maturity for social businesses. In parallel, the study found two ways of increasing income generated through these four strategies – increasing revenue per stream and diversifying revenue streams.

Previous studies in this area had focused on scaling up conventional for-profit businesses and NGOs, but there had been little research on scaling up profit-generating social businesses.

Social businesses have had difficulty scaling up in developing countries due to a lack of infrastructure such as roads and electricity, coupled with a lack of clear property rights and well-functioning courts. On a more encouraging note, new technology such as mobile phones and new business structures such as public-private partnerships now make it easier for such businesses to find ways to reach new consumers.

“Social businesses have enormous potential to provide important services to billions of people around the world – but they need to scale up in order to meet these needs,” said study co-author Professor Jaideep Pradhu from Cambridge Judge Business School. “This study is a first step to greater understanding in this area, but we need a lot more work to support the development and growth of such businesses.”

̽��ֱ��study focused on three successful social businesses – development organization BRAC, eye care company Aravind and Amul Dairy.

BRAC, one of the world’s largest NGOs, serving 135 million people in 11 countries in areas ranging from nutrition and sanitation to microfinance, uses “replication and diffusion” as a key to its successful efforts to scale up. To reach people in dispersed regions, for example, BRAC used village societies and village intermediaries to train people, testing solutions in local communities and improving them before expanding to larger communities.

Aravind Eye Care runs a number of hospitals and eye care centres in India, treating more than three million people a year to fight blindness in the country. In order to scale up, Aravind chose to increase the number of hospitals and centres in a given region – and then diversified activities by adding a manufacturing unit, staff training and a research department.

Amul Dairy, an Indian co-operative of three million milk producers, began to scale up by increasing the number of milk producers in the state of Gujurat followed by establishment of a processing plant to produce dairy products from excess milk. A partnership with the government then helped Amul to expand across India and into other countries.

All three companies used almost all the different scaling-up methods at one point in their development, suggesting that all strategies are important to achieve scale and that companies need to mix and match different strategies.

Based on the case studies, companies with a clear single purpose (Aravind and Amul) might start with ‘simpler’ strategies such as market penetration, while companies like BRAC with broader goals will need a more diverse approach.

Reference:
Nancy M.P. Bocken, Alison Fil, and Jaideep Prabhu. ‘Scaling up social businesses in developing markets.’ Journal of Cleaner Production (2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.08.045

Adapted from a Cambridge Judge Business School press release.

New study identifies four strategies and two key methods for scaling up social businesses in developing countries in order to meet the unmet needs of more than four billion people.

Social businesses have enormous potential to provide important services to billions of people around the world – but they need to scale up in order to meet these needs.

Jaideep Prabhu

Aravind Eye Care System

Community Eye Health

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New partnership promises social enterprise funding for staff and students

sjr81 — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 15:35:18 +0000

Cambridge will be finding, funding and supporting emerging social entrepreneurs following the announcement of £30,000 worth of funding from UnLtd HE Support.

UnLtd is the leading national provider of support to social entrepreneurs in the UK. ̽��ֱ��aim of the UnLtd Social Entrepreneurship Awards scheme at the ̽��ֱ�� is to develop the expertise, skills, knowledge base and business support structures for staff and students to get involved in setting up and scaling up social enterprise activity.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has been chosen as one of the 56 partner higher education institutions for the UnLtd HE support programme offering grants and tailored support to selected social entrepreneurs at each institution.

̽��ֱ��Public Engagement team, the Cambridge Hub, the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (based at Judge Business School) and the ̽��ֱ�� Careers Services are working together to offer the UnLtd Social Entrepreneurs Awards scheme in 2012-2013.

Support for staff and students who are interested will include consultations and advice from local partners; participation in mentoring networks; and workshops, training and networking events offered through the Social Entrepreneurship Awards programme. As part of the scheme, the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning is to run a 12-hour 'Starting a New Enterprise' course to support social entrepreneurs in developing business models.

For staff and students with ideas for a social enterprise that could benefit from support, training and funding opportunities, an information session is being held on Wednesday 7th November from 18:30 to 20:00 at the Queen’s Building, Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Speakers will present existing student social enterprises, including Alora, which sells handmade bespoke dresses and contributes to the training of women including those with disabilities, in Vietnam.

There will also be speakers from the local social enterprise sector, and information provided on the forthcoming support and award scheme. Students, staff and representatives of the local social enterprise and voluntary sector are invited to find out more via the website.

Social entrepreneurs among the university’s staff and student population could receive financial backing for their enterprise activities after a new partnership was announced.

Alora

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