Steve and the business model of social works

I attended a lecture at Enterprise Tuesday last entitled "Increasing the odds", about social entrepreneurship and the challenges of financing for research and Not-for-Profit ventures.

http://www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/events/index.html

Let me tell you about one of the speakers:

Steve Shirley came to the UK as a WWII Jewish unaccompanied child refugee. Steve did not speak English, yet learned and thrived in education. Steve received a degree in mathematics and started a software company in the 60's that became highly innovative and a leader in its field. Steve became a social entrepreneur after a son became diagnosed with autism, starting a series of support infrastructure for patients of the disease. Steve retired and is now dedicated full-time to funding autism research and support, and software initiatives, donating millions of pounds to these causes.

Any person with a story like this is admirable, but here is the catch: "Steve" is actually Dame Stephanie Shirley. And there are three more things that Steve makes clear:

1) She acquired her nickname when, during the first years of her business, she discovered that she received more favorable responses if she signed her communications under a male acronym.

2) She received her title for services in technology, not for her philanthropic work

3) She is an entrepreneur by heart: she "starts" things

As mentioned before, the lecture focused on financing for social entrepreneurship. As a ardent philanthropist, Dame Stephanie proposed her view that any social venture she agrees to finance has to have a viable business model, clear goals and strategy, and a plausible plan to measure success. Results are, in her view, as important in traditional for-profit businesses as they are in social entrepreneurship and the not-for-profit sector.

So, I'm sharing this experience with you all today, not because I can summarize any of it to a satisfiable extend by because of the very interesting topics that emerged from the lecture. On one hand there is the case of this woman, who overcame a male-dominated industry (and cultural era) with some rather innovative and unconventional methods. Secondly, there is a question of the business nature and returns that should be expected from a modern social entrepreneurship model.

I'm opening the blog to discussion and encouraging your exploration of Dame Stephanie's website and a December NYTimes Nicholas D. Kristof opinion column on social giving:
http://www.steveshirley.com/default.asp
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/opinion/25kristof.html?_r=1

AJ

Steve and the business model of social works