We’ve all had the “What is social entrepreneurship?” discussion. The topic was even the recent focus of Stanford Social Innovation Review’s cover article. Yet the definitions we apply to social enterprise continue to vary widely based on a range of considerations. Is a social enterprise necessarily for-profit or non-profit? How much profit is acceptable for [...]
On Friday, the city of Derry, Northern Ireland was put on high security alert by the Real IRA while the people of France were still brewing over the death of what is thought to be the first French police officer to be killed by the ETA. I was in the Basque Country – geographically and [...]
The United Kingdom has never had the best track record for taking care of its wanes – from public school horror stories to the infamous Green Street Hooligans – they could do better, but they are trying. This week brings forth the application deadline for ThanksTo.com’s six week Social Enterprise Challenge aimed at helping UK [...]
When I watch the shiny, intent faces of my Basque students as they stumble awkwardly over their English vocabulary in thick accents, it’s impossible to fathom that any of them could become a serious danger to society. Granted, they have to barricade the ground floor of windows to prevent the weekend prowlers from making a [...]
Winding down my top ten New Year’s Eve and Post-NYE destinations, I’m formerly inviting you to my house in Bilbao, Spain. Bilbao was never designed to be a sustainable city and it still remains a far cry from it, but it is an interesting case study considering it’s noxious beginnings. In reality, Bilbao has come [...]
Helsinki is just one of the many Scandinavian cities that are holding it down on the sustainability front. Scandinavians have long since been doing their own thing and it always seems to be the right thing, Finns included. Helsinki is a relatively small capital city, population 564,000, but its residents are purported to be some [...]
Like Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, this is an aspirational award. London is not usually ranked as one of the world’s most sustainable cities, but it’s a hard market to crack when you’ve got a sprawling population in one of the oldest industrialized regions of the world. They have to erase old habits that reach a [...]
Everyone wants to let themselves go before the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, but sometimes it’s nice to retain at least a few of your morals to help rebuild your dignity in the morning. For those of you who are older, I bet you’re less concerned about retaining morality and more worried about [...]
Understanding human relationships is an essential part of being a successful businessman and a socially conscious individual. You need people to sustain your business and you need your business to sustain the right people. It’s cyclical and therefore, it sounds relatively easy, right? It’s not. Just as there is a myriad of ways to run [...]
It has been made official that the 2011 Global Microcredit Summit will be held in Valladolid, Spain – not too far from where I am living in Basque Country. My friends and I working in the social entreprise fields here are decidedly pleased. As the second largest bilateral donor to international microfinance, Spain deserves the [...]
This is essentially the question raised by Theo Vermaelen, professor of finance at INSEAD, in a recent post arguing that MBAs should NOT sign the MBA Oath. The MBA Oath, started at Harvard Business School, aspires to apply to business management a formal oath and code of ethics, similar to the Hippocratic Oath taken by [...]
The Prime Minister met those working in the third sector, including the winners of the Social Enterprise Awards in England, and the nominees for Best Social Enterprise in Schools at a reception to mark Social Enterprise Day last week. The Prime Minister said that communities are stronger as a result of social enterprises: “Whatever job [...]
The Fun Theory is simple: the best way to change people’s behavior for the better is to make what previously required effort to become enjoyable. Ideas like the Bottle Bank Arcade Machine, the Piano Stairs, and The World’s Deepest Trash Bin were all put into application around Europe and the results have been obvious. People [...]
