Anders Abrahamsson | RE:LOVE THE WORLD • Here to Explore the interface/development space in between concepts Social Business & Sustainopreneurship 4 constructive creative tension » Biz4Sustainability

Hi Anders - here we are!
Ready, steady - go!
Klar, ferdig - gå!

im

Anders I am not aware that any of us here have worked on a yunus FC partnership http://yunuspartners.com - great if you could adjust your profile on this. While talking about relationships, I have received an odd mail or two -not from you I should hasten to say - that claims I work closely with Dr Yunus. I would like to correct any such assertion. I am a very strong supporter of Dr Yunus- as a mathematician, I find his ways of valuing organsitions much saner than Wall Street. My father and I since 1984 have forecast that globalisation will compound ever more risk onto communities everywhere unless we map microeconomics and collaborative approaches ending poverty that I believe bangladesh has about 34 years experience of developing, and many other big nations haven't yet started from ground up system support. So I am as strong a fan of Yunus and the 100000 grassroots sustainability investment faciliators of Bangladesh but it would be utterly wrong to say that I contribute to any of his people's innovative work. It is communally important to me that anyone who hosts yunus10000 dvd parties with youth does not make exaggerated claims of my or indeed anyone's relationship with Dr Yunus, Grameen, or others who do a lot more for ending poverty than I have ever done.

Good to connect with you here also, Anders.

Mike

Dear Anders

Just a note. In networking through people based in London at other sustainability investmnet spaces you network, you might want to double check with mostofa some very fluid situtaions. Basically I have banked several social buisness with large zero per cent loans but obviously these are now difficult times for all creditots and several of these hosting busiensses and managers are not helping promote yunus's work at all even though our openly hubbing strategy had been they would do their good buisness and promote yunus festival events at the same time

Of course I already have so many places and connections interested in yunus that its not realy me that is suffering around this except with some concern as to whether the next stage of denial of these folk will involve the loans themselves. However it has made it extraordinarily tough on mostofa even though he is the one who has done 10 times more than any of us including me to make yunus citiznen forums colaborate across all hemispeheres.

So as a transpoarency mapmaker the irony is I am beginning to feel that people who I thought were friends are very conflicted indeed vis a vis sustaining the world

This stuff actually bothers me less than these words may imply. In working over last 30 years with many of the globe's most famous company and human brands, I realise that they always liable to become extremely political empire buidling devices unless I am alowed to roleplay the shakespean fool who prevents that ahead of time. However when you volunteer to multiply a brand's goodwill instead of being paid to do so - as in the case of rumors of what's possible with future capitalism it does take a lot more work than my family's needs can truly spare.

I did not really intend people to take more dvds than they could "locally" distribute. I would wish to understand any distribution cost on a case basis - what is it that makes us feel that recipients will be interactive. There is no rush to distribute other than connecting people who could.

In my prior post, I was mentioning that I have now done many years of research of local hubs, of virtual communities that were founded in london etc. When you think about incubating social buisness out of a big city with highish overheads it become clear that SBE is something that less than 10 % of social people have an experience track record in though 90% will say they are interested. This is very similar to "brand' practice where there is a tendency for everyone to feel they can do it but they make grade 1 mistakes compared wth someone who spent a life in action learning of hi-trust branding. I note 3 specific challenges that you might want to social business IQ test someone on before promotng their competence :

1 The fact that you are aiming to attract a free loan suggests you are often aiming to develop a most exciting purpose of its kind. Its that reputational association or wish by the loanee to transfer knowledge but to a group that will make good use of it that comes into play

2 the model should demonstrate ahead of time realistically where its positive cashflow will come from ; how long it expects before all sides are compounding win-win-wins; the commitment of who's name is on the line in making this work can be cross-checked with them wanting to test in the smallest and lowest cost way; real entrepreneurs build in action learning curves by not having a money intensive investment until a franchise has been prooftested; even something as debatable for world good as mcdonalds orignally took at least 5 years of refining (as very much a faminy franchise at birth) so that an operation several times faster than had ever been locally produced at one site emerged whlst maintaining constant quality; I have probably researched over 100 founders' cases of world famous businesses- heir original passion for detail and minature prooftesting is something MBAs are seldom taught in a way that helps understands how deeply contextual any organsiatioan system ought be if sustainability is its future

3 the long-term sustainability day in day out; once we have got a social business thriving what exactly is investing back in its purpose about and how do we ensure that the employees we attract are as interested in solving the urgent need as the original motivation

If we are to go beyond wall-street globalsiation -and in the next year doing so may well make or break this generation; it is clear to me that we will need to distribute peer to peer structures with the capacity to train up more SMBAs in any city than MBAs; that capacity obviously depends with who you choose in any city; London is one of those cities where after at least 10 years of open research my longest surviving co-workers and I are well advanced in information on the 90% who should not be mentoring others until they have interned in bangladesh or proven serial SBE or have such an overwhelming depth in a specific context that they couldnt gare their context being messed up by amateur SBEs. Equally I do not make judgements independently of bangladeshi's who have a sixth sense on who's wholly micro and openly collaborative