The 8th Doing Good and Doing Well conference opened today with an address by Pamela Hartigan, director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, Oxford University's Saïd Business School. Hartigan looked back along the journey since businesses first began thinking about bringing entrepreneurial solutions to social problems 10 years ago. Pointing to a change from advocacy models to market orientation, she said she disliked the term "social" because it smacked of charity, whereas entrepreneurs were about finding innovative solutions, whether for financial gain, as in the case of Google, or to offer a service, such as Wikipedia.
Social entrepreneurs work in areas where government or business have failed to address social issues. Innovation, opportunity and resourcefulness are the defining characteristics of an entrepreneur, she said. Many social enterprises don't have a proper business plan and as a result find it hard to attract investors, she said, adding that we still need philanthropy, not as charity but to get viable projects investment-ready. Social enterprises need more business-savvy people, she said. A major change over the past 10 years is that many industries are moving towards embedding social values into their core values, she said, but that it is still largely a case of learning as we go along. "We are laying the tracks as the train is coming," she said.
The conference then broke up into a series of sessions on such topics as responsible tourism, managing a career and a family, venture philanthropy, responsible urbanization and the challenges of an elderly society. A session on investing in large sporting events such as the Olympics or the FIFA World Cup revolved around the question of whether the money is well spent and how much it benefits the host nation or city. Chris Daniels of Lloyds TSB, an important sponsor of the 2012 London Olympics, said that the Olympics are part of a 30-year plan for the regeneration of east London, which is among the poorest areas in Europe. While there is a direct business benefit in construction and supply chain as well as for sponsors, he said, there are clearly other benefits, although they may seem intangible at first, as was the case for Barcelona which used the 1992 Olympics to rebuild and rebrand itself.
Joana Pérez Martorell of Unicef said "the sporting world is hugely influential. It reaches people everywhere and at every level of society. Sports stars have a huge capacity to raise awareness of issues such as poverty and HIV." Unicef's sponsorship of FC Barcelona's shirt not only brought the charity huge attention, she said, it had also turned Unicef into a cool brand.
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