The world of business is primed for change. Social entrepreneurs represent a new breed of business men and women who aim to bring sustainable solutions to answer social needs. The believe they can make a change through revolutionizing the way we do business. It appears that many of us here at the LSE believe the same.
Imagine you could earn a decent living and contribute to society’s progress every time you go to work. For the aspiring LSE social entrepreneurs, it is ‘the best incentive one could have’. This is because you can both ‘feel the positive impact of your work’ and ‘know that your economic activity has the primary goal of tackling a social issue’.
The idea behind social entrepreneurship is that businesses must be responsible for the externalities they produce, affecting our environment, the way we live and the future we will face. The social entrepreneur’s message is, really, that we can improve the capitalist system from the inside. We must seek ways to produce and consume so that we do not shoot ourselves in the foot but instead we foster social progress and education, reduce poverty and protect the environment.
On Tuesday 2nd March LSE students embodied the social entrepreneur, and brought their ideas to fruition in the final of the LSE 2010 Pitch It! Social Enterprise Competition. The Old Theatre was packed and the panel of judges was composed of high profile figures, the likes of Julie Meyer, of the BBC’s Dragons’ Den and founder of Ariadne Capital; Jorn Lyseggen, founder and CEO of Meltwater Group; John Dixon, Head of Media at RBS Finance and Cliff Prior, Chief Executive of UnLtd.
The winners of the first prize, as well as the audience vote, were a team called ‘Versus’. Their innovative concept is to introduce an ethical brand, called Versus, that brings customers and shops together to fight poverty and its related issues. Customers engage by choosing to shop in Versus’ partner stores, but do not have to spend an extra penny. Prices in Versus shops remain the same; what the brand is giving retailers is a broader range of shoppers as well as customer loyalty. In exchange for this, shops give a percentage of their profits to charity. Versus aims to spread socially responsible shopping by creating a redistribution process in which every time someone buys something, some profits are given back to society through charities’ actions. So you shop and they give. This is collective buying power for charitable causes.
The idea is for brands to be able to say, for example, “LSE versus Ignorance”, or “Adidas versus Human rights violations”. Customers shopping in major high street stores will be given a unique card that allows them to give the points collected in different shops to the charities of their choice. Web shoppers can raise funds by simply clicking on the logos of online retailers before purchasing anything on their websites. A donation box scheme operates in smaller shops where a small amount is contributed for each purchase made by a customer who recognizes the Versus box. Look out for the Versus launch in September 2010, incorporating a spectacular ‘Sing versus Poverty’ concert.
Second prize went to Adia Beading, a socially conscious jewellery company that seeks to provide women in the UK and US with a unique, stylish, cause-related jewellery shopping experience, while providing women in Ndathi, Kenya with jobs and stable incomes to support the development of their community.
The third prize was won by Technojagriti, a social enterprise that offers expertise in developing socio-environmental solutions for companies, social enterprises, governments, communities and individuals in the UK, Europe, USA and India. Technojagriti partners with its customers to develop green investment strategies, realign business needs, nurture entrepreneurship and create public-private partnerships to develop and sustain a low carbon economy.
So can we all become social entrepreneurs? If we all have the ability to imagine and create, then we must all have the ability to shake the reality around us too. The truth seems to be that we are all architects of the system we live in without suspecting it. However, it is only us, privileged individuals in terms of education, choice of life, personal wealth and so on, that can help the ones in need, not the other way around.
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