The Emerge Conference

The Emerge Conference took place this weekend in Oxford with successful social business leaders from around the globe speaking to a few hundred delegates, mostly post-graduate students.

Application of technologies featured heavily. Ken Banks, the founder of kiwanja.net, spoke about his NGO’s provision of a free, open-source platform to send, receive and aggregate bulk text messages all from a non-internet enabled phone. One recent application of this service is for Mothers to Mothers, who prevent transmission of HIV from mother to child through a peer to peer advice service and currently 1 in 5 of HIV-infected pregnant women in Africa. They are integrating SMS messages into their services to remind mothers to take medication and attend. This exemplifies the fact that technology solutions work often because they are simple, effective and focussed on the nuances of communication and delivery, rather than any technological innovation.

In two impact investing conferences, it was striking that the vast majority of investors shunned rigorous measurement of impact for a simple metric of measurement, a story that resonated, and a balanced portfolio covering different human needs (education, health care etc). It’s probable that with the inadequacy of impact measurement, investors prefer simply to be wooed by an entrepreneur’s story and assess their ability to deliver on it.

Regarding the legal structures of companies, there were a number of not for profits that used hybrid models of funding. The profit arm of Embrace handles manufacturing, distribution and R & D, whilst the NFP arm makes a loss on delivering to the most needy and performs monitoring and evaluation. The not for profit holds the IP, which the for profit arm pays a royalty for its use, and therefore supports the unprofitable part of the business.

The conference closed with some wonderfully articulated pearls of wisdom by James Chin, founder of the World Toilet Organisation (check it out: it’s brilliant, http://www.worldtoilet.org/wto/). He recommended taking calculated risks: for example, naming your organisation the WTO because getting sued by the better known organisation by the same name would be worth it for the PR storm. Another gem of many: “There’s no such thing as work that’s easy or hard, just that which is fun or boring.”

The case for talent

Sir Ronald Cohen was recently praising, in the Daily Telegraph, the virtues of the innovative social impact bond and predicting the rise of social finance.

Along with it, he emphasises both the importance of attracting the best people to social enterprise and the commitment that many people feel towards this field: 

"Some of the most talented people are being drawn to it [social finance and social enterprise]. We are appealing to peoples' sense of social obligation and of social mission.

"About a fifth of recent Harvard Business School graduates have been drawn to social enterprise type organisations."

The social enterprise field is, of course, already populated with hugely inspirational and talented people. Like all industries though, it will only continue to be as good as the talent it is able to attract, develop and retain. 


Social enterprises need to offer the career prospects, development opportunities and salaries that compete with other top employers, not only during a recession, but also once the big private and public sector guns start hiring again. 


Managing a social enterprise is a difficult undertaking. It requires not only solid commercial skills but also well-honed social sector know-how. Developing leaders who spend significant amounts of time in social enterprise from an early age, who know and can manage the tensions, quirks and intricacies that are unique to these organisations has to be a priority for the sector. 


Neglecting to develop the next generation of talent risks social enterprise delivering on its promise; bringing in the best and brightest minds will mean that innovations like the social impact bond will be but the first steps towards a brighter, fairer and more inclusive economy.