Inspiring Sustainable Enterprise Futures
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Sunday, 13 November, 2011 - 17:14
Save the Children New Zealand has recently launched called Hear Our Voices Values Exchange. It gives all New Zealand children and young people the chance to have their say on issues that matter to them, and allows them to compare their views with what their peers are saying on the same issues, immediately.
It is the next step in the Save the Children Hear Our Voices We Entreat project launched in 2010 where they asked 199 young New Zealanders what they thought about life in Aotearoa New Zealand. The Hear Our Voices We Entreat report was presented as part of a Child Participation Report to the UN Committee of the Rights of the Child and also to the New Zealand Government. Some of the issues that young people wanted New Zealand to address were bullying, gangs, domestic violence and relationships with police. We believe that the Hear Our Voices Values Exchange will allow...
Thursday, 13 October, 2011 - 10:19
Mention the term 'corporate social responsibility', and you'll often get a "yes, but" type of reply. Yes, it's a good idea, but doesn't work in practice. Yes, we should be doing it, but don't know where to start. Yes, we'll do it when everyone else starts doing so.
Of course 2008's global financial crisis hasn't helped, with companies intent and focusing on pure survival, and any thoughts about triple bottom line reporting and/or greening up of the image and actuality well and truly on the back-burner. Under that 2008 collective mental model of corporate social responsibility, being 'good' was defined as not being bad, and most company strategies were defensive risk management plays never designed to produce new value or to solve social problems, says NextPlays director, Peter Salmon.
"In 2008 there was an expansion of some of the shortfalls of CSR 1.0, and a growth...
Wednesday, 5 October, 2011 - 19:50
Recent research from Peter Dixon at the New Zealand Charities Commission reveals a wopping 38% of all income generated from registered charities comes from service and trade. So when is a charity a business and when can a business act like a charity?
People sometimes seem to be a little wary of the Charities Commission - and in some cases they may be right to be.
In particular, some have expressed concern that registration with the Commission may in some way limit the development of their social enterprise in New Zealand.
There’s no hard and fast rule to relieve these fears. However, we can share some facts and figures that may give you greater confidence as you drive your particular social innovation.
Question - “From a Charities Commission perspective, when would a registered charity become a social enterprise and what is the likely impact of that on...
Monday, 19 September, 2011 - 16:38
Modeling nature to design new enterprises
Nature has been dealing with dynamic change for over 3.8 billion years. Skilfully self-organising into diverse and integrated communities and making the most of available resources. In doing this, nature has been able to cope with challenges and endure over the long term.
The greater the resources within the system and the capabilities to use them, combined with the shared relationships between all the varied parts and players, the more resilient the system becomes and the greater its ability to adapt to changing conditions.
Evolution continually strives to increase this potential and connectivity. The Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest is in reality the survival of most interconnected.
We are entering an era where connectivity brought about through information technology platforms is...
Monday, 19 September, 2011 - 10:25
A good wrap up of some of the insights from this years SOCAP Conference in San Francisco by Heather King from Triple Pundit.
As SOCAP 2011 – a conference focused on “accelerating the flow of capital to social good” – drew to a close last Friday in San Francisco, there was a prevailing sense of optimism and opportunity. Here are 7 hot topics people were discussing in the halls and along the breezy Bay side Fort Mason conference grounds:
1. Mobile technology opens huge new markets – in developed and emerging countries.
Worldwide, there are over 5 billion cell phones in use. There are now three times as many phones as computers. Increasingly, phones serve as the primary technology for business, especially in large emerging markets. This is no more evident than in applications of mobile money and micro-transactions where the cell phone will...
Tuesday, 13 September, 2011 - 11:30
If you know only one thing about Ashoka, chances are you know about Ashoka Fellows.
After all, the work of finding all-star innovators (work known as “venture,” in Ashoka speak) is where it all began. That was in the late 70’s, when Bill Drayton set out across the globe in search of people merging a saint’s sense of social injustices with a businessman’s sense of strategy. He found them simply by asking questions. Lots of questions. First to community members (“Who is making big change in your community?” “Where can we find them”) and ultimately to the changemakers themselves (“What is the problem you’re addressing?” “How are you fixing it?”). After learning of an innovator, Drayton and his search team would write the name down on a three-by-five card. A couple of years and a couple of hundred cards later, Ashoka was ready for its first “selection panel,” and in...