Sunday 18 December 2011

Christmas Presents from Social Enterprises?

Still looking for a last minute gift? Social Enterprise UK has collected a number of social enterprise examples that offer Christmas presents with a social edge.

Monday 12 December 2011

CBS ranked in Top10 worldwide on Social Impact research


At CBS we are  happy to share a bit of self promotion. In the latest Aspen Institute's survey of global MBA programs CBS has been found to be world class when it comes to Social Impact research (just next to UC Berkeley and Columbia Business School two of the original Social Entrepreneurship schools). 

Read more about the Aspen rankings:
Read more about social impact research at CBS:http://www.cbs.dk/cbsCSR

Wednesday 7 December 2011

Lessons to be learned from ShoreBank's failure

This August one of the leaders in social enterprise funding had to close its doors. For 37 years ShoreBank Corporation has engaged in community development funding in the U.S. The Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) has now published an analysis of ShoreBank's failure.

Read more:
http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/too_good_to_fail

Thursday 1 December 2011

And the winner is...

In last week's class our team of judges have selected the winner of this year's business plan writing class. The winning business plan was written by a team of students around Mikkel Kinnerup the co-founder of Tangerine District. In their submission the student team has developed a plan for providing the Tangerine District Software to Nigerian SMEs.

Read more about Tangerine here: http://www.tangerinedistrict.com/ 

Friday 18 November 2011

The Business Plan ideas are served

Now that the 2011 Minor in Social Entrepreneurship is coming to an end I would like to share with you the results of the "Business Plan Writing for Social Enterprises" elective. Nine student groups have identified opportunities for social change and written detailed business plans.

Start-up ideas include:

  1. a portable cooling box for vaccines, 
  2. ERP Software for African SMEs, 
  3. organic roof top gardens, 
  4. a healthy fast food chain, 
  5. a vocational training program to help indigenous Bolivians become chefs and restaurant owners, 
  6. a Social Entrepreneurship conference in Denmark, 
  7. an IT platform to help immigrants integrate in society, 
  8. a green markerting website, 
  9. and a market place for philanthropic ideas.  


You can see their brief overviews here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/J28-Business-Plan-Writing-for-Social-Enterprises/263780646986240?sk=wall&filter=1

Tuesday 15 November 2011

A Social Enterprise since 1964: Minnesota Diversified Industries


MDI | Minnesota Diversified Industries

When reading about social enterprises one might get the impression that this is an invention of the last decade. But in reality social enterprises have been around for much longer. An interesting social enterprise is Minnesota Diversified Industries which has employed people with disabilities for nearly half a century. MDI describes what it does as offering progressive development and employment opportunities in competitive business enterprises. Its goal is to create real jobs that create a sense of pride, value and independence in its workers’ lives.

Read more: http://www.mdi.org/index.php/about-mdi/


Wednesday 9 November 2011

Food for thought

The Danish NGO Ibis has just launched a new collaboration with Danish food entrepreneur and celebrity Chef Claus Meyer. Meyer recently visited Bolivia where he and ibis looked into the possibilities of opening a "food culture and cooking school" for indigenous people of Bolivia. The project will train 15-19 year olds recruited locally with help from several Bolivian social organizations. Bolivia, which is South America's poorest country, has a large and vulnerable indigenous people, but also a fantastic commodity basis. Meyer wants to explore how Bolivians "can use food, as an effective instrument in providing unskilled and disadvantaged young people a reason to be a generation of grassroots entrepreneurs who will be able to lift their families and communities out poverty and hunger."
Read more at: http://www.clausmeyer.dk/da/claus_meyers_fond.html

Tuesday 1 November 2011

New book out on Aravind Hospital


On the 7th of November BK Business press will launch a new book "Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World's Greatest Business Case for Compassion". The book describes the story of Dr. Venkataswamy who has founded Aravind Hospital, an Indian eye-clinic, which has put conventional business logic on its head by allowing patients to choose whether or not they pay for the services they receive. As a result millions are treated for free (making Aravind the largest provider of eye care on the planet). One key source of success is Aravind's ability to provide its services at a hundredth of what providers in developed countries charge. The study of fast food franchises has been one source of inspiration for this amazing success story.

Wednesday 12 October 2011

The Social Capital Fund

A key challenge for social entrepreneurs is the access to capital. "Den sociale kapitalfond" (The Social Capital Fund) is Denmark’s first social venture fund. The fund, which has received start capital from TrygFonden, plans to make 5-6 investments of approx. 2-4 mio. DKR (€270.000 – 540.000) in social entrepreneurs working with/for marginalised groups in society over the next three years thus enabling them to build proof of concept.

SKF's founder, Lars Yannick Johansen (picture left) is now looking for successful entrepreneurs and venture capital capacities as well as social sector experts (particularly within work-integration) for its Advisory Board and network of senior experts.

Read more at: http://www.social-capital.dk/about-ipc

Saturday 8 October 2011

Kaospilots - Where social innovation goes to school

An interesting article about Danish social entrepreneurs (S-ENTs) has been published by Tina Broberg and per Krull in the Journal of Corporate Citizenship. 

The paper is based on a study of the Scandinavian-based three-year educational programme, the KaosPilot School of Leadership and Social Entrepreneurship. The school presents an exciting case by employing action- and design-based approaches to learning and by integrating sustainability, social innovation and cultural diversity as cornerstones of the curriculum with the aim of developing creative and responsible leadership.

Read more: http://www.perkrull.dk/wp-content/uploads/Abstract.Broberg.Krull_.pdf and www.kaospilot.dk

Saturday 24 September 2011

Baisikeli: On a roll

One of Denmark's probably most interesting S-ENT start-ups in last years is Baisikeli (http://www.baisikeli.dk/). The organisation, which was launched by two cousins, aims to help African community acquire cheap and reliable transporationin the form of bycicles. Baisikelis products are special designs aimed at the African market - sturdy, easy to repair and affordable. Apart from normal bikes Basikeli offers also hospital bikes (that can be used to transport the ill).

Baisikeli - cykler for et bedre liv from Henrik Mortensen on Vimeo.

Baisikelis business model draws on a number of elements: it collects old bikes and bike parts in Denmark which are then transported to Tansania and Sierra Leone where bike repair shops produce for the local market.Moreover, Baisikeli produces also bikes in Denmark which are rented to private as well as business clients as an earned income model which finances the shipping of bikes to Africa.

Thursday 15 September 2011

New article: The Greening Dutchman - Philips' process of green flagging to drive sustainable innovations

This month's issue of Business Strategy and the Environment contains an article on intraprenership in the area of corporate sustainability that I have written together with Marlen Arnold from the TU Munich. 
 
Check out our article on the "Greening Dutchman" here:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bse.700/full

Wednesday 14 September 2011

40 years Christiania: Denmark's original social enterprise?

What a birthday! A 40 year process is now resulting in the formalization of one of Denmarks oldest social innovations: The Freetown of Christiana is a self-proclaimed autonomous neighbourhood of about 850 residents, covering 34 hectares. While it had been tolerated by the Danish government for a long time, Christiania become increasingly threatened over the past decade as politicians wanted to recover some prime real estate in the heart of Copenhagen. Now Christiania is in the process of formally buying the land on which it is build from the state. To raise the funds for this Christiania is issuing cooperative ownership shares which are sold as part of the birthday celebration which will take place between the 16 September and the 1st of October. It will be interesting to see how the shares will impact the future of Christiania. Read more: www.christiania.org

Tuesday 13 September 2011

What Seven Days can achieve ...


As part of the CBS Minor elective "Business Plan Writing for Social Enterprises"
six teams of students were asked to develop and execute a social project within just 7 days. In total they raised over 5000 DKK as well as awareness for six important social causes.


Here are some of the results:











And two more links:

Prezi Presentation for Elderly IT Course

Cookies against famine



Wednesday 7 September 2011

Minor in Social Entrepreneurship started this week

This week the third round of the CBS Minor in Social Entrepreneurship (S-ENT) has started. The Minor features courses in "Social Entrepreneurship," "Business Plan Writing for Social Enterprises," and the "Instant Innovation Camp". Accross all three courses 140 student are enroled for Minor classes. Read more: www.cbs.dk/s_ent.

Tuesday 6 September 2011

Impact Investing - New Book out today

Just today Jed Emerson, who brought us the term "blended value", has launched a new book entitled "Impact Investing". Jed  is executive vice president of ImpactAssets, and has spurred many notable innovations within the S-ENT field as founding director of REDF and founding board member of Pacific Community.  He wrote the book together with co-author Antony Bugg-Levine who leads the Rockefeller Foundation's impact investing initiative. Antony convened the 2007 meeting that coined the phrase impact investing and is the board chair of the Global Impact Investing Network.

Read more:
http://www.impactassets.org/about-us/team/jed-emerson 

Friday 2 September 2011

Nation of Social Innovation

Only few ideas have been as successful as Social Entrepreneurship (S-ENT) over the past decade. And yet we still face a myriad of views on what S-ENT actually means. Given the very innovativeness of our area of interest it is not surprising that its boundaries seem to shift permanently. So how is it that this blog claims the existence of a `Nation of Social Innovation´? Renan speaks of a nation as a daily referendum. Following this idea our blog wants to contribute to this public vote on what S-ENT is by providing a regular stream of ideas and examples of Social Entrepreneurship from Denmark and from around the world. Let us together live and redefine the Nation of Social Innovation day by day.