Forum for Learning and Wisdom in Social Enterprise Pilot session at OxfordJam Summary and fast feedback

1. FLAWSe @OxfordJam: summary
Overview
The purpose of FLAWSe is to provide a forum for critical discussion and reflection for social enterprise practitioners, stimulated by the discussion paper by
Nathaniel Smith and Steve Miller. Other core FLAWSe contributors are Roxanne Persaud (event design and engagement) and Jess Nugent (visual design and
animation).
The fundamental assumption we are making is that we are all making mistakes which are holding us back, and we are not paying sufficient attention to them.
FLAWSe is an attempt to address this assumption directly.
The key challenges set out in the discussion paper were briefly introduced and we heard responses from guest provocateurs Ben Metz, Alex Nicholls and David
Floyd. After that, participants formed groups to consider each challenge in a bit more depth, guided by 5 big questions.
1. What kind of challenge is this when I encounter it in my work?
(descriptive/categories)
2. How is it affecting my own work or my whole organisation?
3. What should I care?
4. What can I do?
5. What’s holding us back (i.e. blocking our critical reflective practice)?
The session concluded with everyone sharing their key learning point – “what will you take away?”
Fast feedback
Participants described the session in 5 words.

2. Details from the table discussions
The key challenges Participant responses @OJ
1. Understanding the problem we want to address
a. inadequate research
b. narrow approaches to the problem, losing sight of the big
picture
 Quality control
 Join something that already exists – don’t build something that isn’t necessary
 Purity of intention
o Do you have a cause?
o Do you really have the experience?
2. Tackling the problem
a. top-down, insufficiently participative approaches
b. narrow choice of available methods
 Counter involvement (??) bring the SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP down to earth
 Do legal structures encourage social entrepreneurs to scale and seek finance before
they’re ready?
 Are we too impatient about seeing large scale change?
3. Critical reflection
a. taking responsibility (acknowledging our part in what’s holding
us back)
b. addressing our flaws
 Should I do social good or just make money?
 Who’s going to pay for what you do?
 Not enough critical reflection, opportunities to think about what things mean
 Having time to learn

3. The key challenges Participant responses @OJ
 Talking about failure is seen as a bad thing
o funding model doesn’t allow people to talk about failure
o grant funders least tolerant of failure (compared to Venture Capitalists)
o Solutions:
 someone should do a PhD on it (failure)
 Conferences where people can learn from failure – a safe place
 Accepting the social entrepreneurs work in market failure
 Awards for best failure
 Failure leadership – from senior managers
4. What’s holding us back?  Since when are social entrepreneurs only here for social investors?
o Who/what are they? (corporate hijack?)
o Who tells who the terms of the deal?
o Fashion?
o Commoncapital.org
 Vanity projects, “hubris”
 Open creativity over targeted innovation
 Are social entrepreneurs looking for problems or looking for need to respond to?
Check out the #FLAWSe tweets on storify
https://storify.com/commutiny/flawse-oxfordjam
Tell us more!
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/YCZQTZ8