Social Venture News from Yale SOM

Be unreasonable and fix the world | The Jakarta Post.

In times of financial crisis, many businesses do what is considered perfectly reasonable: Lay off workers, cut costs and wait until things get better.

Setting up a new enterprise in the middle of a downturn does not sound quite as reasonable. But being unreasonable could change the world where waiting might not.

After all, as Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.

Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

This notion is driving the growth of social enterprises and community entrepreneurs in many parts of the world, including Indonesia.

The British Council has identified 11 “champions” of such community entrepreneurs who set up social enterprises. Although the list includes celebrated names such as designer Oscar Lawalata and animator Wahyu Aditya, its less well-known entrepreneurs have changed the world just the same.

Through its recently launched Community Entrepreneurs Program, the British Council wants to inspire more young people to be “unreasonable”.

“We aim to identify a greater number of people who emphasize social benefits they can bring through successful business practices,” Keith Davies, director of British Council Indonesia, said at a recent press conference.

To spread the idea, the council organized several events from March 18 to 20.

The first public event was a book discussion at Bina Nusantara University, featuring John Pepin, a UK expert on social enterprises. The discussed book was The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets that Change the World by John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan.

A meeting with corporate people was the next on the program. Davies said the council wanted to link community entrepreneurs to corporate social responsibility.

“Champions Talk”, where four selected community entrepreneurs talked to mostly young people at a mall in South Jakarta, was arranged for the second day.

On the third day were another talk and a party to mark the beginning of a series of programs by the British Council to promote the idea of community entrepreneurs.

Why is the British Council doing this?

Davies said the UK was a leading example of thriving social enterprises. Data show the third largest sector in the UK, the NGO and voluntary sector, has established 55,000 social enterprises that contribute a total 8.4 billion pounds (US$11.8 billion) to the economy.

“Community entrepreneurs are the new generation of entrepreneurs,” said Yudhi Soerjoatmodjo, the British Council’s team leader for learning and creativity. “What the older ones did was mostly trading, the new ones more on ideas, innovations and social mission. We also want to distinguish them from social activists.”

Yudhi added that community entrepreneurs did not seek donations but did business; they are commercial but social at the same time.

“Since 2006, we have identified about 400 such entrepreneurs; we want to have 1,000 by 2010,” he said.

The British Council has sent entrepreneurs from the creative industry to take part in a competition in the UK. So far, four Indonesians have returned home victorious; three of them clinched the first prize. Most recently, Oscar Lawalata was won first prize of the British Council International Young Creative Entrepreneur (IYCE) Fashion Award 2009 in February, outshining champions from Brazil, India, Poland, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Tunisia and Vietnam.

Sakti Parantean won the IYCE Screen Award in 2008 and Wahyu Aditya got the same award in 2007. In 2006, Yoris Sebastian was runner-up for the IYCE Music Award.

“Clinching four prizes breaks the record. No other country has ever accomplished that since the award was first established in 2005,” Yudhi said.

The three first-prize winners of the young entrepreneur award were selected as champions for the British Council’s community entrepreneurs program.