Recently I have been both encouraged & excited to
discover that, whether by design or accident, there appears to be an uncanny
resemblance to a Universal Deming Chain Reaction/ Cycle in practice within what
appears to be referred to as the world of ‘Social Entrepreunership’
In the foreword of Tania Ellis’s book “The New Pioneers ”
(Wiley 2010 ISBN 978-0-470-74842-8),
Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder & Executive Director of the World Economic
Forum, states that:
“The main idea is that leadership is meant to
serve all stakeholders of a company – and, at a higher level, serve the global
community. Leaders must act as the trustees for the long term prosperity of the
community.”
The book contains many specific examples of this
principle in play. One that particularly strikes me is the LifeStraw produced
by a Swiss based Danish company, Vestergaard Frandsen, a textile business which
used to produce work uniforms but now specialises in disease control textiles
& other innovative life saving products & concepts. The LifeStraw is a
25cm long water filtration straw which – at a price of less than 6 dollars for
governments or international relief organisations – can be used by a person for
up to a whole year to turn most dirty water into safe drinking water!
Another interesting example comes from Blue Ventures,
this year’s winner of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge (Blue Ventures & Buckminster Fuller
Challenge http://challenge.bfi.org/2011Finalist_BlueVentures). By
connecting conservation with wealth creation (a good summary of the Chain Reaction?) Blue Ventures has found a
way to help fishing communities in the developing world experience a
counter-intuitive reality: that saving fish doesn’t mean starvation, it means
surviving & prospering!
One further example for the time being comes from
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) as reported in the Independent on Monday 6th
June 2011 (http://ind.pn/mm6DJa).
Commenting on the move by GSK to offer its Rotarix
vaccine (a vaccine which prevents diarrhoel disease – a deadly bug responsible
for the deaths of more than half a million children annually) to poor nations
for £1.50 a dose rather than £30, Andrew Witty, chief executive of GSK was
reported as stating:
·
The drug
industry too often acts “as though it is detached from society.”
·
“To be successful in the long term, we have
to operate in a way that is in step with society & its expectations.”
·
This move is
“not a gimmick or one off philanthropic gesture part of a concerted
strategy to change our business model.”
·
“Specifically, we are aligning our commercial
success with doing what we can to tackle the healthcare needs of people in all
countries, including the poorest.”
In the final part 6 I will attempt to pull all this
together.
