Creativity, Social Benefit and Job Creation in Ontario: A Report

Submitted by Tonya Surman on February 13, 2009 - 7:36pm

Creativity, Social Benefit and Job Creation: The Potential for Social Entrepreneurship in Ontario is a Working Paper Series: Ontario in the Creative Age written by Andrea Baldwin. It is good! and it is about time!

Yeah! My colleague Andrea Baldwin, from Canadian Business for Social Responsibility has written an excellent working paper on why it is essential that the Ontario government needs to invest in social entrepreneurship and social enterprise.... there is even a nod to CSI in the paper... which is super nice... and much appreciated.

But more importantly, it is great to have a strong voice in support of market transformation in this province.... as I work away with a great group of leaders as a part of the Ontario Nonprofit Network on a letter to Premier McGuintyabout how to support the nonprofit sector through this economic recession, I am constantly pushing the idea that innovation, market transformation and a solutions economy are at the core of our future success.

Toronto and Ontario could fast become the nations hub for green business, social enterprise, creative clusters, social entrepreneurship, green jobs... god knows, I seem to be talking about that and other social innovations (like open systems and complexity) all day long... but to have this paper as a part of the creative age series means that someone out there is making the connection between creative communities and social entrepreneurship... they are making the connections between social innovations and economic competitiveness... they are starting to get that in order to haul ourselves out of the manufacturing dependence, we will need to look at how to harness the power ofour values to create a new economy that lives in harmony with people and the planet.

It is great to have another, much louder, voice for social entrepreneurship....

Okay, now that I have said the good things... I must take issue with a few things too...

1. I question the assumptions of scale in here... bigger is not always better...old ideas of scale may be seriousoly problematic. Haven't we learned that with this market collapse? We know that a large portion of our economy is driven my SME's... why wouldn't this also be the case with social entrepreneurship? what will gov't do to support the small in this sector? This also seems inconsistent with Florida's work on the creative class... small, independent... hhmm...

2. I take issue with what they are proposing will make this work. It seems to lack the depth and reality of what it will take. And it doesn't really point to who is working to move this work forward.The ideas are very big and broad... we need the details....

3. It has also let the government off the hook on ways that they could really bring about this change... like a fundamental change in government procurement policy...

But let's argue the details later... for now, congrats on a great addition to the field.

Tonya

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Hope at the time of Economic Crisis

Submitted by Prestito (not verified) on June 12, 2009 - 2:38am.

At current time of economic crisis, countless person has lost their job and because of this no of imbalance started to prevails in the market. the activity of job creation at this time can benefit countless people. But it required to be carry on such activity on a large scale.

http://www.prestiti-online.org

 

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Submitted by sakasa (not verified) on May 3, 2009 - 6:30am.

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Scale and the "Agency Model"

Submitted by Matt Wood (not verified) on February 18, 2009 - 4:42pm.
Great paper, but its too 'cheerleader' for me. Where are the opposing views? The issue of scale in social enterprise has to do with retaining talent (on the assumption that bigger orgs can pay higher salaries) and developing efficient operational systems (on the assumption that one overhead system costs less per unit than many overhead systems). There are many exceptions to the rule, but these are mostly true. Some exceptions that prove the rule are those excellent non-profit managers who leave large non-profit organizations to become consultants (small organizations) because they can pay themselves more appropriately. I take issue with the treatment of for-profit and non-profit as so similar. Non-profits are required to publicly audit their books and individuals cannot benefit from their sale. These controls ensure a greater focus on social outcomes within a social entrepreneurial setting. Without these controls, for-profits are more able to hijack social services for the profit motive. There is no structural benefit to for-profit participation, other than that they already have the scale discussed above. The "agency model", thriving in my sector of employment services, has within it this tension of for- and non-profit service providers. Incidentally, the largest provider of government funded employment services in Canada, as well as the largest provider of child care in Canada, both to the tune of several million dollars annually, is a non-profit, the good old YMCA of GTA.

Agree on the caveats

Submitted by Nick Temple (not verified) on February 17, 2009 - 5:14am.
Hi Tonya - hope all well. I'd agree with you (and Allyson) that this is welcome; it's good to have the debates going on...as long as they lead to action! I'd also agree on the caveats. The Osberg/Martin definition, IMHO, is not a great place to start...and even Skoll has moved away from it in more recent times, having been critiqued strongly by Paul Farmer and others at its own Forum. See my take on it in this post for why we disagree, and why there is a need for a long tail investment/infrastructure as well as the short, scaling head.... [not to be confused, as the guy at the MaRS summit did, with being anti-scale!....it's an and-and argument, not an either-or]

Baldwin Report of Social Entrepreneurship

Submitted by Allyson Hewitt (not verified) on February 14, 2009 - 10:41am.
Message to Andrea, thanks for the work. Great to have an Ontario-based thought piece out there. Just a reminder, since we are all vested in the success of social innovation and social entrepreneurship, maybe an advisory panel with your colleagues working on these issues would help with pick-up, driving to details and policy change. Anyone want to work on this so we don't lose this opportunity?

I was thinking about

Submitted by Tonya Surman on February 14, 2009 - 3:59pm.

I was thinking about something similar Allyson.... perhaps tying this in with the OSER - Ontario Social Economy Roundtable and the Social Finance Ontario (and thus ONN) and the Social Enterprise Council.... these groups can do the work, but having a high level advisory that is aware of these issues and looking for ways to integrate in our economy would be great...

Tonya

 

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