Adam Smiths stern profile adorns the back of the new £20 note celebrating his innovation in ‘the division of labour in Pin manufacturing’. Anyone with experience of factory work would probably rather forget this particular innovation but it does raise the consideration of where the next innovation in how we work could be coming from.
Social enterprise has been portrayed as a cure to all social ills but critics claim that social enterprise is doing what government should be doing. Social entrepreneurs argue they can reach the parts that governments can’t.
The Bank of England may have missed the irony in using Adam Smiths portrait just as the final death knolls of British manufacturing are heard. Pictures of despondent Welsh workers were recently seen in the news losing the fight to keep open the Burberry manufacturing plant in Treorchy, South Wales. This follows similar kinds of closures from Peugeot, HP, Clarks and Dunlop in recent years.
Service industries have mostly replaced the smoky factories with nice shiny office buildings. Now increasingly our jobs don’t even rely on us being at the office any more, a connection to the internet is often all that is needed. One entrepreneur saw an opportunity in this change.
Two years ago, the recently graduated Jonathan Robinson realised that many social entrepreneurs were ploughing a lonely furrow in home offices and back bedrooms and all that was preventing them coming together was access to the ideal space. So he set about creating one. In North London he rented a large property and contacted everyone he knew that may be interested in working there. It very quickly became full and a second Hub is now planned for London. Already there are sister branches in Bristol, San Paolo, Mumbai, Johannesburg and Edinburgh is in the pipeline.
Robinson had a ‘sense that there were a lot of people with brilliant ideas, particularly social business ideas, but they were stuck at best in the bedroom and unable to access the right funding and resources to get their idea off the ground.’ He was inspired to get his own idea off the ground after building the Soweto Mountain of Hope at the World Summit.
Robinson found a backer in Gordon Roddick, husband of The Body Shop founder Anita, who has been giving him advice, support and investment. Roddick was also an early backer of The Big Issue. The idea was to create a space that combined the best elements of working from home, a café and a serviced office. The rates are based on a mobile phone style ‘pay as you go’ tariff and the space offers hot desk space to freelancers, social enterprises and start-ups.
Robinson insists that The Hub is more than just a mini business park, ‘I believe social enterprise is a very powerful force. There is a wave of really good ideas for the world that also stack up financially, we have moved beyond the charitable model.’ So if not a charity, why a social enterprise? ‘There was a sense that big business wasn’t doing it for us, just maximising profit they are too often part of the problem and we wanted to prove that you can create viable social businesses.’
MySpace is a very successful version of an online social networking forum; so successful in fact it was swallowed up by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Robinson doesn’t fear a similar corporate take over bid, ‘they have tried already and they will continue to try but our magic is hard to recreate. There have been copycats already but there has been missing something, the glue and magic between the members of The Hub is hard to copy.’
This seems to be backed up by people at working at The Hub, ‘We looked at lots of serviced office space and it was all completely soulless, The Hub is great as there are like minded people and organisations here, if anything we spend too much time networking’ says Katie Harrison. She is a director of Frank Water, a not-for-profit social enterprise based at the Bristol branch of The Hub. They produce bottled water which donates 100% of profits to water projects in the developing world.
The Hub seems to be picking up all the lost souls that are busy beavering away in cottage industries and giving them a home. Robinson disagrees, ‘I wouldn’t say lost souls. Hub members are often on a mission; the social element is what gives them the drive and determination. The most powerful ideas and innovations happen with people collaborating and sharing. To draw an analogy with relationships, we see messy one night stands but also long term marriages.’
Corporate Social Responsibility programmes and charity giving are often trumpeted as examples of sharing, caring corporates. Robinson however is convinced that we are seeing the death of the traditional corporate, ‘Twenty five years from now if you aren’t a social business your chances of success will be much less, if you just consider the bottom line I think your days are numbered.’
Robinson believes that the days of Japanese style devotion to big business is dwindling, fuelled by their lack of interest in their employees, ‘There is a sense that work isn’t working. People are stuck in businesses that don’t care, people are becoming increasingly frustrated from being stuck in jobs that offer no meaning. The Hub is offering a place to come and kick off their dream business idea.’
Changing the world may just be starting to look more appealing, people like Robinson and Anita Roddick are pushing the woolly jumpers aside and showing the kind of drive, determination and eye for profit of traditional business leaders. If social enterprise can truly change the world then perhaps many of the fledgling organisations that are flocking to Robinsons Hubs across the world will be leading the vanguard. In another 200 years time the £20 of the day could be carrying a picture of one of today’s social entrepreneurs.
