Wednesday 24 July 2013

Social enterprise: Stop focusing on definitions and just do it!

Following the #futureofsocent hashtag on Twitter tonight, there's all the usual talk of definitions and how social enterprise needs to go mainstream. While those subjects generate debate, they also slow the sector down. Too much is focused on talking whereas what we need to do is act!

In my day job I run The Pitch, a pitching competition for small businesses. Today I discussed some of the entries with our judges and one of them has potentially huge benefits for the NHS. I can't go into detail as we've not yet revealed the shortlist publicly but the company in question isn't a social enterprise; it's a business. A business out to make the world a better place. That's what matters.

So while all the chat about 'what is social enterprise?' and 'when will social enterprise go mainstream?' generate pages and pages of copy for us bloggers, we need to move on and (excuse my French) just bloody do it!

1 comment:

Jim Brown said...

Why is it every couple of months or so, someone is inspired to write a blog like this one, complaining about other people for trying to define social enterprise? My guess is that these anti definers don't like the idea that social enterprise might be a different ideology from capitalism. Anyhow, your time is up now. The government, at last, has been minded to define social enterprise by legal form; restricting it to CICs, community benefit societies and trading charities.