The Problems and Perils of Scaling
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Session Description
Scaling to achieve systemic change is enormously difficult and fraught with external and internal challenges. Here social entrepreneurs will share with delegates how they have spread their innovations and changed the lives of millions, their challenges and victories, their mistakes and successes.
Time & Location
Time:
14:00 - 16:00, Wednesday, March 28, 2007
BST
Speakers
-
Speaker
President and Co-Founder, Homeless World Cup
Mel Young is recognised as one of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. In 1993 he co-founded The Big Issue in Scotland, with Tricia Hughes. The weekly magazine is sold by homeless people in the streets of Scotland and now has a circulation of 40,000. With the success of The Big Issue in Scotland, he helped set up the International Network of Street Papers, a global network of over sixty street papers sold in every continent, of which he is Honorary President. The combined annual circulation of these papers is over 30 million helping 100,000 homeless or long-term unemployed people throughout the world every year. It was in Cape Town, at the end of the 2001 INSP conference, that Mel and Austrian born Harald Schmied attempted to invent an international language to enable homeless people to communicate with each other around the world. When they realised one already existed – football – the Homeless World Cup was born. The first tournament was held in Austria in 2003 with 18 teams attending from around the world. This was followed by Sweden 2004, Edinburgh 2005, Cape Town 2006 and was staged in Copenhagen in July 2007 with 48 teams taking part. The Homeless World Cup is creating a level of change never before seen by social inclusion initiatives. Following 2005, more than 94% of participants said that it had a positive impact on their lives and 77% had made significant changes in their lives as a direct result of their involvement. In June 2002, recognising the potential of Fair Trade as a successful tool to alleviate poverty, Mel founded New Consumer Magazine, the UK’s fair trade and ethical lifestyle magazine, enabling consumers to use their purchasing power to change the world. Mel is the author of GOAL: The story of the Homeless World Cup, published by Birlinn. He is a life long supporter of Hibernian Football Club.
-
Speaker
Mechai Viravaidya’s work centered on reducing births (family planning), reducing deaths (fighting the spread of HIV), reducing dependency (establishing social enterprises), eradicating poverty (community empowerment) and reducing ignorance (reinventing Thai education).
He was also appointed to key positions as Thailand’s Cabinet spokesperson, Deputy Minister of Industry, Minister of the Office of the Prime Minister, and Chairman of several of Thailand’s largest government-owned enterprises.
Mechai was presented with the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service (1994), recognized as one of Asiaweek’s “20 Great Asians” (1995), the United Nations Population Award (1997), one of TIME Magazine’s “Asian Heroes” (2006), the Bill and Melinda Gates Award for Global Health (2007), the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2008). He was honoured with the Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health (2009). More recently, the Global Humanitarian Award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute (2022)
-
Speaker
Director (2009-2016), Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship
Dr. Pamela Hartigan was Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Said Business School at the University of Oxford from 2009 until her passing in 2016. She was also founding partner of Volans Ventures, an organization focused on building innovative scalable solutions to challenges affecting our future.
Prior to starting Volans, Dr. Hartigan spent eight years as the Founding Managing Director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, a sister organization of the World Economic Forum, where she was also a member of the Managing Board.
Of Ecuadorian origin, Dr. Hartigan first came to the United States at 17 years of age to study at Georgetown University; she went on to complete a PhD in human developmental psychology at the Catholic University of America. Throughout her career, she held varied leadership positions in multilateral organizations and educational institutions, as well as in entrepreneurial ventures. She was responsible for conceptualizing and creating new organizations, departments, and programs across a variety of institutions and platforms.
Dr. Hartigan was a frequent lecturer on entrepreneurship and innovation at graduate business schools in the USA, Europe, and Asia, and an Adjunct Professor at the Columbia Business School and at the University of Technology Sydney. She co-authored a book with John Elkington, founder of SustainAbility (UK), entitled The Power of Unreasonable People: How Entrepreneurs Create Markets to Change the World, which was published by Harvard Business Press in 2008.
She was a trustee of social investment organizations, publicly listed companies, and social impact focused organizations around the world.
Dr. Pamela Hartigan died on August 12, 2016, at her home in France.
-
Speaker
Chairman, Development Alternatives Group
Ashok Khosla is Chairman of the Development Alternatives Group, a consortium of social enterprises based in India whose mission is to create technologies, businesses and markets for large scale generation of sustainable livelihoods. He is also co-Chair of DESI Power Pvt Ltd, a company dedicated to delivering energy services to village communities in rural India. Earlier, he was Director of the Office of Environment, Government of India, and then Director, Infoterra in the United Nations Environment Programme. He is currently President a.i. of the Club of Rome and has been a Member of the Governing or Advisory Bodies of the World Economic Forum in Davos, IUCN, WWF, IISD, the Stockholm Environment Institute, WETV, EXPO 2000 and several other international organizations. He was Special Advisor to the Brundtland Commission and Chairman of the NGO Forum at the '92 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. He has been board member of many government, industry and NGO bodies in India, including the National Security Advisory Board, the Science Advisory Committee to the Cabinet and the National Environment Council. Ashok Khosla studied at the Universities of Cambridge and Harvard. He was awarded the Stockholm Challenge Award in 2002, the UN Sasakawa Environment Prize in 2002 and the Schwab Foundation's Award for Outstanding Social Entrepreneur in 2004.
