11-28 March 2013
This course is open for bookings for one, two or three weeks
Teachers include Giles Hutchins, Alan Moore, Ed Mayo, Pat Conaty, Tim Crabtree, Jonathan Dawson and Dirk Rohwedder
This course explores the rapidly changing world of enterprise forms and models, helping to make sense of the revolution currently sweeping through the ways in which we do business.
Information technologies are permitting the emergence of more dispersed, distributed and localized forms of enterprise and facilitating a resurgence in cooperative models.
In parallel, many large-scale businesses are explicitly looking to nature as their model and mentor for the development of new technologies and forms of organization.
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New, dynamic and innovative partnerships are emerging involving multiple stakeholders – large-scale business, social enterprise, charities and the state – in the delivery of goods and services of true social and environmental, as well as economic benefit.
This course explores all these trends and provides the tools to would-be social entrepreneurs seeking to create their own initiatives.
Week 1: Radical Redesign for Business
With Giles Hutchins and Alan Moore
In the face of increasing energy and commodity prices, there is a growing interest among entrepreneurs at all scales in the elegant and efficient ways in which natural systems work. This manifests in innovations in biomimicry, cradle-to-cradle production systems and more collaborative organizational forms. But to what degree are these innovations providing mere greenwashing, keeping alive the intrinsically destructive corporate form at the heart of consumer capitalism? Or are new ways of doing business emerging that truly carry the seeds of a revolution in our organizational forms that can contribute to a sustainable future?
Week 2: The emergence of dispersed enterprise networks
With Ed Mayo and Pat Conaty
‘Centralised versus distributed: this is a battleground even more profound than that between public and private. It is being fought out in food and farming, in health care, water, education, the media, retailing, and not least finance’ – Robin Murray. This week will explore the emergence of a range of new enterprise models based on ecological principles of clustering, symbiosis and networking. Facilitated by the information technology revolution but firmly based in much older cooperative principles, these innovations open up the potential for a more locally-based, decentralized and values-driven economy.
Week 3: Tools for the creation and management of new enterprise models
With Tim Crabtree and Dirk Rohwedder
Those seeking to create new types of enterprise have a host of critical issues to address, including legal forms, sources of finance, governance mechanisms and so on. This week will be hosted by experienced practitioners and educators and is geared to helping budding social and ethical entrepreneurs to better navigate the institutional and financial challenges they will face. The sessions will draw on the insights of ecology, complexity and systems thinking, and help participants to design appropriate products and services, management models and production operations consistent with these principles.
Giles Hutchins
Giles is a business change agent with over 15 years of business and IT transformation experience with KPMG and Atos International. His passion is exploring ways of applying nature’s inspiration to sustainable business transformation. His work draws on a range of theories and practices (such as biomimicry, cradle-to-cradle & industrial ecology) applying them to the challenges businesses face today, providing practical insight and guidance to help businesses redesign for resilience in these volatile times. He is the co-founder of BCI: Biomimicry for Creative Innovation.
Giles regularly guest lectures at leading universities, presents at global conferences and blogs for a number of sustainable business sites. His book on The Nature of Business can be found here.
Video:
The Nature of Business >>
The Future of Business >>
Audio:
The Nature of Business on Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme >>
Read:
Blog post for The Guardian >>
The Nature of Business >>
Alan Moore – Founder of SMLXL
Alan is described as a charismatic visionary who has a firm grasp of the significant and disruptive trends which are currently reshaping our world. Through his most recent project No Straight Lines: making sense of our non-linear world, he interprets these complex themes into their most salient points, taking concepts from various sources and detecting the previously hidden relationship between them. With his unique insight, Alan enables organisations and companies to address the challenges we now face to develop transformational and winning ways for ‘what next’ practically looks like.
He is the founder of the innovation consultancy firm SMLXL and co-author of “Communities Dominate Brands” in which he coined the phrase ‘engagement marketing’ and explored the significant implications for business and organisations of living in a wired-up, networked, socially orientated world.
He sits on the “board of inspiration” at the Dutch Think Tank Freedom Lab. He acts as “Head of Vision” for the Grow Venture Community, and is as a special advisor to a number of innovative companies and organisations including publishing, mobile, the theatre and finance. Alan is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Read Alan’s full biography here >>
Read Testimonials for Alan’s book No Straight Lines here >>
Ed Mayo – Secretary General of Co-operatives UK
Ed is Secretary General of Co-operatives UK, the membership network for co-operative businesses, and has spent his career working to bring together economic life and social justice. From 2003-2009, he was Chief Executive of the National Consumer Council, and before that he rose to prominence as director of the New Economics Foundation. He led nef from two to fifty staff, creating the leading ‘think-and-do tank’, looking at ethical market activity, local economies and public service reform. He was described by the Independent as “the most authoritative voice in the country speaking up for consumers”, while the Guardian has nominated him as one of the top 100 most influential figures in British social policy.
Pat Conaty – Fellow of New Economics Foundation
Pat worked as a researcher at the New Economics Foundation for eight years, becoming a nef fellow in 2007. Educated at the University of California with a degree in Political Economy, Pat is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham, a Research Associate at the University of Salford and an Executive Director of Rebuilding Society Network, a social enterprise in Mid Wales. Formerly the Development Director of Birmingham Settlement, an inner city community regeneration organisation, Pat played a pioneering role in setting up several social enterprises fostered there: including Business Debtline and the Aston Reinvestment Trust – the first mutually owned, local Community Development Finance Institution (CDFI) in Britain. He worked for many years in the debt advice field as Director of Money Advice Services for Birmingham Settlement and he is a founder and former Executive Director of the UK Social Investment Forum – the national association of socially responsible investment organisations. Pat also works as a community development finance trainer and consultant with NACUW.
Tim Crabtree – Senior Lecturer in Economics, Schumacher College
Tim has been actively involved in the development of Community Enterprise and Co-operative Economic Systems since the 1980’s, when he was one of the first co-ordinators of the New Economics Foundation. He is an experienced social enterprise advisor, working with a range of initiatives such as development trusts, city farms, arts organisations and community nurseries. He developed and worked for one of the south west’s leading social enterprises – Wessex Reinvestment Trust, which is a community development financial institution. The Wessex group has pioneered the development of new financial mechanisms including community share issues – Wessex Community Assets has registered 39 organisations as industrial and provident societies using specially developed rules, and assisted 19 of them to raise £3.2 million in aggregate.
Tim was also the founder of Local Food Links Ltd, one of the UK’s most prominent community food enterprises. With Local Food Links, he set up Dorset’s first Farmers’ Markets, the UK’s first Local Food Centre, and an ethical catering enterprise serving meals to children at 23 schools. Recently, he has also been involved in the development of Bridport Renewable Energy Group CIC and Bridport Energy Services Ltd, an industrial and provident society. He is also a founder director of Bridport Area Development Trust, which is involved in two asset transfer projects.
Dirk Rohwedder – Director, School of Social Entrepreneurs, Dartington
Dirk founded and lead Taurus Crafts, an arts and craft centre and tourist attraction in the Forest of Dean. In 2009 Dirk left Taurus Crafts to become Business Development Manager at RISE, the social enterprise network support organisation in South West England. There he led the successful national roll-out of the Social Enterprise Mark, the ethical consumer brand for Social Enterprises.
In 2010 Dirk joined Devon SSE as Programme Consultant, assisting with the running of the core programme, building funding partnerships and developing new courses. In June 2011 he took on the role of Project Development Manager at Devon SSE and currently studies for an MSc in Responsibility and Sustainability at Ashridge Business. His particular interest lies in the interface between social purpose and environmental sustainability. He is keen to develop the concept of the green social entrepreneur.
Jonathan Dawson, Co-Head of Economics
Jonathan is a sustainability educator, currently working as Head of Economics at Schumacher College in Devon. Until recently a long-term resident at the Findhorn ecovillage and a former President of the Global Ecovillage Network, he has around 20 years experience as a researcher, author, consultant and project manager in the field of small enterprise development in Africa and South Asia.
Jonathan is the principal author of the Gaia Education sustainable economy curriculum www.gaiaeducation.org, drawn from best practice within ecovillages worldwide, that has been endorsed by UNITAR and adopted by UNESCO as a valuable contribution to the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. He teaches this curriculum at universities, ecovillages and community centres in Brazil, Spain and Scotland. He has also adopted the curriculum to virtual format and teaches it through the Open University of Catalunya in Barcelona.
Any One week £750
Any Two weeks £1,400 (Save £100 over weekly course price)
Three weeks £2100 (Save £150)
For further information about Schumacher College please see About the College
Click here to book this course via our on-line booking system >>
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We will hold the place for five working days for reservations – three weeks before a course or earlier. After five days we will automatically offer your place to someone else if we have not received your application.
