Bottom up sweet spots for the Big Society

March 10, 2011 by
Filed under: The RSA 

A few days ago I wrote about big business and the Big Society.  Businesses can lever their relationship with customers to encourage changes in behaviour which then loop round to support the company’s commercial strategy and so on. The example I gave was the support Nike gives to sporting participation. There is also Flora’s ‘how old is your heart’ site which encourages people to think about the health and reduce their cholesterol by measures including… buying Flora’s cholesterol-cutting spread.

A third example is provided by B and Q stores which provide DIY training courses for their customers (and very popular they are too, apparently). In my post I called the point where the brand supports socially-benign behaviour change which in turn supports the commercial strategy ‘the sweet spot’. It is hard to identify, hard to reach and hard to sustain but offers a major opportunity to channel private investment into social capacity and to strengthen brands.

This morning I heard a way of commercialising the Big Society from the bottom up. This is a Fellow who has started a company which provides neighbourhood safety services not through a narrow and reactive security model but through workers who seek to build the community’s own capacity and resilience .

As the company says on its web site: ‘we also ask customers to be part of the solution joining a neighbourhood watch, being a peer mentor, or taking forward volunteering opportunities in conjunction with our charitable partners’.  

The company calls itself a social enterprise even though in governance terms it is a conventional small commercial business. This opens up the question of what counts a as a social enterprise and whether it is purpose, ethos, impact or governance that matters most.

Many social enterprises I come across are constituted in ways that lock in their social purposes, for example as Community Interest Companies. But many of these also have business model which rely on grant funding or some form of philanthropy. There are many great ideas for new social businesses, but there is a displacement issue; at some point new calls on government funds or public donations simply compete with existing demands.

In contrast, the community safety model takes something which would have been done commercially – but in a way that didn’t engage the community – and turns it into a model which has a positive multiplier; the better the company is at levering community capacity the more effectively they will do their job and the more contacts they will win.

Of course, in this model there are tensions. Most obviously will the community members be happy that their efforts are feeding into the bottom line of a commercial venture?  Invovlecsp will have to show that it reinvests most of its profits in enhancing its social impact. And if it works it will have to look out for dodgy imitators. I remember my grandmother, who lived in Crosby on Merseyside, being persuaded on the doorstep to join the local ‘neighbourhood crime watch’ scheme, paying £25 for a information pack and a window sticker only to find out the whole thing was a scam!     

Still, I am impressed by the idea that the sweet spot is something than can by hit from the bottom up through innovation as well as from the top down through corporate strategy.

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5 Comments on Bottom up sweet spots for the Big Society

  1. Steve Brunt on Thu, 10th Mar 2011 6:03 pm

    2. Hi Matthew,

    I wonder if I could offer another example. Have you noticed/ heard about the Co-operative’s current campaign “Join the Revolution”? it’s part of an ambitious plan to re-engage people with the business’s social goals. I must declare an interest as the campaign is partly my idea*, but I think you’d be interested.

    It’s business as part of society, it’s bottom up, and it’s all about acknowledging, rewarding and supporting active citizens. Plus there’s a competition for £5000 awards, open to anyone with a project for which they want support.

    If you have a chance to check it out, I’d think you’d be supportive.

    Best wishes,

    Steve Brunt
    *Communication Agency planner, and regular reader (so it’s partly your idea too).

  2. Noel Hatch on Fri, 11th Mar 2011 8:26 am

    3. Would you consider the People’s Supermarket the sweet spot? I’m a member and in many ways we consider it the other way round that we need to get as many people to shop so we can continue sustaining our model of “we are what we do” – a supermarket owned by people for the people.

  3. Links I like 11.03.12 « Benlowndes on Sat, 12th Mar 2011 10:20 am

    4. [...] Bottom up sweet spots for the Big Society – Matthew Taylor’s blog  Taylor writes about examples of the commercialisation of the Big Society, where businesses get involved in activity that benefits customers. He calls this area of action ‘the sweet spot’. Others may see it as rebranded Corporate Social Responsibilty (CSR), which has been around for years and is proved to be beneficial to businesses that do it properly. Scepticism aside, this is what good business and the Big Society should be about. [...]

  4. Ben Lowndes on Sat, 12th Mar 2011 10:29 am

    5. Isn’t this just good business, or CSR even?

    Not sure about the Flora example, which seems to be just good marketing. But decent businesses have known for decades that what’s good for their customers is good for them. Those who embrace that (rather than use it as a PR tool) are well placed to drive the Big Society forward, and benefit as a result.

  5. Christopher McCracken on Mon, 14th Mar 2011 4:35 pm

    6. I believe there is a important distinction between a ‘Big Society’ company and what has gone before in terms of CSR. The latter – while worthy and admirable – tends to be a bolt on to the main business model. The former actually integrates the concepts of Big Society into the DNA of the company and delivers a powerful social mission through a sustainable commercial model. And Big Society includes public sector reform so, in the words of the 2020 Commission, it is about empowering customers with the design and delivery of the service. Modern management theory is very relevant – putting trust, engagement and commitment at the heart of the company and practicing level 5 leadership – having humility in leadership and removing ego. As for good business? Yes in the sense that is a more sustainable, internally cohesive, and (depending how you measure it) more effective. But just be open to the fact that the social mission tends to erode the margins (although in my view this is not a bad thing as long as the overall model is sustainable)

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