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Is there a new spirit in Serbia?

posted on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 03:36 PM

Before my recent first trip to Belgrade i asked people in Britain what they thought about when I said ‘Serbia’. The answers very much depended on the age of the person I asked. If they person was typically over 30, they remembered the past conflicts most. If the person was in early 20s they most likely said “music”, especially the Exit festival.

For many people in Europe, Serbia is a new country. Those lucky enough to visit Belgrade see a vibrant, even chic city with many new cafes, bars, restaurants, alongside beautiful historic buildings displaying a rich blend of cultures. But like many other countries, Serbia shares common problems of high unemployment and a familiar set of economic, social and environment problems.

At the invitation of the British Council, I met government officials, NGOs, university professors and some of the country’s leading business people. My purpose was to illustrate what social entrepreneurs can do to bring economic benefit to the country. But not only in terms of jobs and growth; for social entrepreneurs focus their business ideas on trying to solve social and environment problems as well.

Famous social entrepreneurs from the past include people like Anita Ruddock who launched a cosmetic brand, Body shop, void of any animal testing. Jamie Oliver who’s restaurants Fifteen are staffed by newly trained local young people who were previously in unemployment along with a television series which has dramatically improved the quality of school dinners in the UK. Or John Bird, who turned an army of homeless into street sellers of a popular magazine, Big Issue.

This is only in the UK. Across the world social entrepreneurs are tackling social and environmental problems, and in turn transforming their national economy. Muhammad Yunus’s Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has pioneered access to micro finance for poor communities around the world. Fairtrade and Cafe Direct source commodities from developing countries at a fair price to the producers. Social entrepreneurs around the world are using their creativity to design solutions in education, crime prevention, health, and helping to discover alternative sources of energy. Almost every aspect of economic activity in Europe and elsewhere is benefiting from social entrepreneurs.

So who are social entrepreneurs? Quite simply, it is individuals who seek to address social and environment problems through business means. They establish social businesses; sometimes not-for-profit, often for profit commercial businesses to pursue their aims.

Several factors have contributed to their growth. Progress governments have begun to realise that community based businesses are often better placed to tackle social problems than the state apparatus and hence outsource much of their work. Climate change and the need to a low carbon economy has been a major development. Consumers increasingly want to buy ethical based products and services and are in most cases prepared to pay a premium to do so.

Corporations are pulling their traditional work on corporate social responsibility programmes into the centre of their business model. Energy companies like Shell and BP see their future in renewable energy, much of it developed by a new generation of social entrepreneurs. Retailers like Tesco seek new partners providing organic and ethical produce. Even banks are working with social entrepreneurs to educate their consumers in sound financial management. Top entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Richard Branson, or the presidential duo Bill Clinton and Al Gore have become champions of this new way of doing business – champions of social entrepreneurship.

Attitudes towards work are another major factor. Young people increasingly want more than a simply a job, they want a career whereby they can do good in their community and often this means starting up their own business. Seasoned professionals are prepared to forgo their existing career to take up the challenge of applying their skills and knowledge to solving social problems.

These trends are becoming big business. According to a recent study by Delta Economics, the UK has almost a quarter of a million social businesses contributing almost £100bn to the British economy. According to government figures, another 68,000 are from the not-for-profit sector, over 300 have a turnover of £3million and cumulatively they contribute almost £8.9 billion to the UK GDP.

A study by Obi-one showed that 4% of the Italian economy was made up of the ‘other economy’ i.e. organic food, waste recycling, fair trade and so forth. The United states has two million business in the non profit sector alone and a research by John Hopkins School of seven countries – UK, USA, Japan, Israel, Hungary, France and Germany showed that the ‘civil’ economy created three times the number of jobs than did the wider economy as a whole.

Brazil, India, South Africa, Thailand, even China is seeing the social economy making up an ever larger proportion of their GDP. The world of finance is catching up fast. Increasingly investors want to see a social return for their investment as well as a financial return. In the UK, new investment trusts focusing on health, renewable energy, education, and much more are being created in what seems like a weekly basis. This year is likely to see new ‘social stock exchanges’ created in London and Singapore. In Britain’s recent general election, the three largest political parties had social entrepreneurship playing a central part of their manifestos.

Most good universities and business schools have faculties or courses devoted to social entrepreneurship or sustainability. My own organisation, i-genius, a world community of social entrepreneurs has members in over 90 countries, including Serbia.

Ironically, a global recession can be good for business. Economic downturn and new social and environment problems require new solutions. Social entrepreneurs are spring up almost everywhere to take up the challenges. But this recession has been different to previous downturns. There is a powerful determination from governments, corporations, media commentators and entrepreneurs not to just return to the old business as usual ways of doing economic development. Instead, there is an opportunity to create a new global economy with the main drivers are focused on providing social and environmental benefit.

Social entrepreneurs around the world are leading the way in helping to tackle some of society’s biggest problems, meeting the needs of modern consumers, creating jobs and a injecting a new spirit of creativity and independence. My visit to Belgrade and the people I met convinced me that Serbia too has the potential to become one of the pioneer countries in this new trend.


Article published in Poslovna Znanja, Serbia by Tommy Hutchinson is founder of i-genius. http://www.i-genius.org

Comments

Jeff Mowatt

Sunday, August 22, 2010 06:22 PM

Tommy, if you\'d have asked me I\'d have said social enterprise. That was the context of my most recent involvement with Serbia. Back in 2004 on the invitation of a local community, my colleague, P-CED founder Terry Hallman wrote a preliminary proposal for the Bor/Majdanpek region which was heavily polluted from ining activity with many locals suffering the effects of toxicity. http://www.box.net/shared/jv7nqni5et He was suggesting a local microfinance initiative based on his earlier successful efforts in leveraging a development initiative in Tomsk Russia, a country with much in common culturally with Serbia. Finding any form of funding assistance at this time proved pretty hopeless. I noted recently that the British Council followed us into Ukraine, now Serbia too. Can you tell me what they\'re up to, as they seem to be falling over backwards to avoid those of us actually doing social enterprise in these countries. Isn\'t Big Society was about encouraging those who took the initiative in social endeavour?

Tommy Hutchinson

Thursday, September 02, 2010 08:34 AM

Hi Jeff Interesting work you\'ve been doing. The British Council have mostly been doing awareness raising and capacity development (training) in Serbia. Tommy