Following are some thoughts after attending the recent forum in Melbourne, hosted by Donkey Wheel House, on creating a social enterprise incubator. However, with our Talking Sydney Unconference on this past weekend it’s the first chance I’ve had to post my thoughts.
At 4.30 am Monday I was seriously questioning my sanity as I got out of bed for the early flight to Melbourne. I am so glad I made the effort.
The Donkey Wheel House team had pulled together a great bunch of engaged individuals from across the spectrum of Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship communities in Melbourne to discuss some of the big issues around developing a Social Enterprise Incubator (or whatever the appropriate vehicle is) in Melbourne.
We were in the underground meeting rooms all day – a great metaphor for ‘planting seeds’ to develop something good. There were large group and small group sessions and discussions around what Social Enterprise is, how it can be encouraged and supported and what this support would look like. Five things that came up in the conversations that struck a chord with me were:
- A need to develop more and easier models for measuring impact of Social Enterprise.
- Big idea! – Create a Social Stock Exchange along with other sources of sustained funding for social enterprise startups. This needs to last long enough to get the enterprise going.
- More case studies – both success and failure in social enterprise ecosystem are needed.
- A social enterprise incubator should create community, provide support and deliver education.
- Social Enterprise happens at all scales so there is no one size fits all model.
So what can we do to support this great initiative?
I think we can help immediately by starting to develop some case studies. I’m willing to write them if any of you would like to participate. Please add a comment below if you’d like to help with that.
We can continue to develop the ecosystem here in Sydney and feed back what works.
We can interact with and earn from what is happening in Melbourne.
Social Innovation Sydney 
This probably came up in discussion but my immediate thought upon reading this is – how about looking to more mature models of incubation in North America (Canada, US) and connect with them? A couple of examples: http://unreasonableinstitute.org, http://projectwildfire.ca/
As for social stock exchange – interesting concept. Would love to hear more about it. Tanya Surman, Centre of Social Innovation in Toronto, presented the idea of community bonds last year at TEDxTO. http://tedxtoronto.com/blog/tedxtalks-tonya-surman/
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Social entrepreneurship is such a hot topic as there’s so much potential to earn well and do good for this world. Social Startup 48 is an excellent initiative that encourages social entrepreneurship and provides a platform for these businesses to come to life. Check out http://www.ss48.org for more info
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