For more than 3 decades, population ageing research has been firmly established in many leading academic institutions. The impacts of global ageing will be enormous across economical, social and technological dimensions. Its potential for driving disruptive and transformative changes is recognised by policy makers, businesses and non-profit organisations. Researchers and practitioners are increasingly in agreement that further knowledge generation and the implementation of adaptive changes will rely heavily on multi-disciplinary (and multi-sectoral) collaborations looking in considerable detail at how real world activities work - which means more data - and the sustainability of the ecosystems in which they work. Social enterprises have the potential to accelerate these positive impacts.
A social enterprise is a business which has been created for a social purpose. It can be structured as a profit or a non-profit, and it can take many different forms and operate in different ways. In recent years, investment in social enterprise has become something of an emerging trend (with claims even being made about its having reached a tipping point), as many businesses face growing pressures to demonstrate positive social impacts. EU law requires commercial organisations to include corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in their annual reports, with pressure being brought to bear from NGOs and policy makers for CSR to be reframed using measurable standards such as the UN Sustainability Development Goals or the Active Ageing Index.
At the same time, many non-profit organisations are becoming more commercial (to generate income) with a view to ensuring that their beneficial activities are sustainable impacts. If organisations only rely on donations to achieve their social purposes, there is a high risk that their activities will grind to a halt once the income stream from donations dries up.
One major reason for the growing interest in social enterprises is their potential to drive innovations for social and economic values. For academics, involvement in a social enterprise can bring benefits such as continuous (directly or indirectly) research funding, a new kind of capacity to foster and evaluate projects for their social impacts (with the collection of data that goes with is essential to evaluation), and the learning that comes with multi-disciplinary collaborations. This is why, to give one example, Oxford University Innovation (OUI) started providing dedicated social enterprise support in late 2018.
The task of setting up a sustainable social enterprise has to include: an agreement by the founders on the social purpose, an explicit understanding of value propositions and the identification of the sources of initial funding. In the case of populating ageing, a social enterprise would define a specific social issue by means of various contextual descriptions (e.g. regions, sectors, approaches). The founders would design the appropriate governance structures to safeguard the intended social purposes. And if an academic institution, such as a university, is involved, there will have to be an extra set of hoops to go through in the approval process. There seems little doubt, however, that universities are becoming more willing not only to support but to encourage the development of commercial activities by faculty. Witness the consultancy and education unit of Cambridge’s Institute of Manufacturing.
The plan for a social enterprise has a lot of questions to answer before it can get going. How will it generate revenues to sustain itself over the longer term? Who will be the customers? How will the values be developed and delivered? What will be the business model? How to deal with profit or loss? While the founders are developing a business plan, they might be surprised by the gaps in their own competencies to develop the value propositions, let alone the skills needed for operating the social enterprise and the negotiating the relevant ecosystems. Entrepreneurship and experimentations will play a significant role to overcome obstacles and bring innovation solutions. Furthermore, the founders will need to recognise, align and select suitable sources of initial funding (NGOs, private sectors, foundations, VCs, angels etc.). The process of developing the business plan and securing the initial funding will often be highly iterative, and both the social enterprise and the relevant ecosystems will engage in loops of learning.
Population ageing is a global phenomenon and much of the fundamental research has been firmly established. To enhance the well-being of the population and bring more impacts, researchers can try to bring more social impacts through social enterprises. The timing might be excellent for such types of interventions and the societies are getting ready to embrace adaptive changes.
About the Author:
Luc Yao is a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing. Luc is based in Darmstadt, Germany and is active in the display industry, related start-ups, and the Open Innovation networks. His research at the Institute focuses on the adjacent domains of population ageing, digital health and developing countries.
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