0:00
Welcome to week four of this course on growing the impact of your social
enterprise.
What we're going to do this week is, first of all,
look at the different replication options that Specialisterne was facing, and
speculate a little bit about which of those could be the best way to go ahead.
And then look at what Specialisterne did in reality.
Moreover, we have again a couple of guest lectures, talking about replication
examples, and also about the role the Board of Directors plays in this process.
0:34
And finally I'm going to introduce you to a social enterprise which is called
Mobility Car Sharing.
And we will start to talk about something that is called an exit strategy.
Now this is something that is quite in the future for you guys.
But it is useful to think through what exit strategy you're aiming at.
Now if you were to start a for-
profit business this would normally be a usual thing for you to do.
Most startups consider the possibilities of perhaps doing an initial
public offering,
a so-called IPO, one day in which they issue shares on the stock market.
Or they might be doing a trade sale.
So for example, if you're an IT startup,
you might want to sell your company to Microsoft or Google one day.
1:33
Planning for your exit strategy, that will be the last step in your business plan
in which you outline what you consider the long-term plan for your social enterprise.
And perhaps by then there might even be a return for
your investors resulting from those exit strategies that you're planning on.
1:53
But with this, let's have a look at the replication strategies of Specialisterne and
what our students at the Copenhagen Business School think
about the different options that we have outlined last week.
Let's talk a little bit about how Specialisterne should go about
replicating its business model?
In the case, there were three different options.
2:15
What, do you think, should Specialisterne do?
>> I think Specialisterne should choose the open source
approach because they are most concentrated in Denmark,
and they know how the Danish market is.
So they should open up the knowledge that they have collected about this approach.
And they should open up to other so they can use it and
push innovation in their countries and their environments.
>> Well, I do not totally agree, because this group of people is very different
from what you usually work with in a business setting.
Having a lot of experiences like Specialisterne have from
their, during the years they have worked with these people with disorders.
I think it would be a better idea to go for
an organic growth perspective because you can gain,
you can achieve greater outcome with, based on the experience you have beforehand.
>> I think, especially because of, it's a very special knowledge they've been
gathering, that's why they have to open it up so other people can use it,
3:31
working with these people.
>> Yes, so you're also thinking that people who are not used to working
with these kind of people, can learn a lot from the experience.
Okay, but do you think that the people having this kind of disorder, do you think
they can handle having, they have be the ones training the normal people?
Not knowing about their exact disorder or how to handle them.
I think the whole education would go, the other way around.
And I don't think the company would benefit from that.
>> Actually, I see where both of you are coming from.
But if you look at the model with the social franchising,
which is franchising as we know it from everyday world.
Then we actually have the possibility of keeping our model,
our values and priorities.
And especially with the education and the people, how you mix them up,
like you have your specialists, and then you have your generalists.
And how you make sure that you have someone to take all the, for the specialists
tedious assignments, and support them in their work.
So I think this model, which apparently works really well,
it's very good to get that out there and I'm not sure that you get that completely
with the open source because then you just put your idea out there.
But now if you actually build the whole model and
then you just sell that [LAUGH] and say, of course you need starting capital, but
then we provide you with the rest.
And we have the brand.
We have the all the special knowledge.
We know how to do this the best way.
Then that would actually be a very good way to introduce
initiatives like The Specialists.
>> When you want to replicate your social enterprise,
you have to choose between two different approaches.
You can scale up yourself, or you can leave replication to others.
7:29
So based on our conference in 2011, we had the interest,
we had generated interest, people were there and they were willing to do it.
So we went from franchise mindset to a collaborative mindset.
Saying that, okay,
instead of you just paying a fee and we send the manual and that's it,
how can we fit into your country?
What is, do you have some philanthropists?
Do you have money yourself?
How can we set it up?
So instead of directing how it should be, we would learn from each country.
And the difference between United States and India is huge.
So it has to be something that could fit in to that model.
So we call it a license model, and then the license fee
will be different from where you come from, and what's possible.
8:25
And then, today we are set up in 13 countries.
Spread out in 21 locations,
meaning that there are more than one locations in some of the countries.
United States is huge whereas Iceland is a small country.
And it is still spreading.
And basically it's based on a license, and then you get access to all the material.
All the material that we have in the family, and
also when we say collaborative, you must contribute.
So whatever you develop, you put into the database.
9:18
And today with 13 countries, most of them in Europe, but also India, and
now Australia is starting, and Latin America, and United States.
We have reached out, more or less, all over the world.
And we have
developed a communication strategy for how to spread the news.
So each of the locations has its own web pages, they maintain their own site.
We are in the news all the time because we try to bring in the good news.
And tell the press that, now this is going on, we have been in
New York Times and we have been in BBC Online, Danish Radio Online.
And it's because it's a good story.
10:09
And one of the world's biggest software companies,
SAP, have a program called Autism at Work.
And when they launched that last year,
they hit all newspapers all over the world.
It got a huge interest, that this is a leading software company,
going out, saying, by 2020,
they will have 650 autistic people employed.
Why 650?
Because they said it was 1% of the workforce.
10:42
There's a reason to that, because a lot of people on the autism spectrum,
they might not even know they have the diagnosis but they are in the industry.
One good colleague of yours, one of our good friends Dr. Austin
always called them the inspired peculiarities.
And those people, you need them to think out of the box
instead of repeating what everybody else was doing.
11:17
You're not always aware in the process what they're doing, but
in the end result, you're really pretty amazed.
Not depending on if you're Indian or Portugese or Spain-, Spanish or German.
It is because you are born with a special gift.
And that gift has been controlled.
So if you don't want to control it but give them space to excel,
then they excel all over the world.
And the leading technology offices in SAP,
SAP have realized that and
are encouraging people to apply for jobs.
What we do here is a general assessment where you know the full person.
But in SAP we know what kind of jobs they have to fit in,
so we can already in the screening process find people that fit into that.
So the assessment period is not a five-month program.
It's a six-week program, four or six week, depending on where we are at.
And then the internship is outside the assessment program,
where the internship is inside the assessment in Denmark.
And then, the SAP model is quite good because,
I think it's fantastic that such a big company
goes in with a managing director in front and then say, we'll do it.
12:45
And then you start up in the headquarter in Walldorf, after that
they have some project leaders saying: the next location will be New Town Square,
outside Pennsylvania, Palo Alto, Vancouver, Montreal, wherever.
Now it's in India, in Bangalore, starting the 26th of September.
And it has turned the model to be on the demand side.
So instead of begging companies to take on our people,
or at least hire a consultant, it's now creating a demand.
We know that in Europe by 2020 there will be 700,000
STEM jobs without any employees.
And STEM, that's science, technology, engineering, and medical.
We know today that in the Bay area of San Francisco there
are 63,000 vacant positions, New York area is 23,000 so
they have to look for the talent in different directions.
So instead of writing off people with a diagnosis,
13:53
And don't bother about the diagnoses, a little handicap.
And, I think the word handicap, it is strange
because if you look at people, older people,
young people, every day they go to the golf court and
they make it all equal by giving people a handicap.
So if I go there, I cannot not play golf, so I'd probably get handicapped 250?
If I play against Ernie Els.
15:08
When the number of requests for replication got bigger and
bigger, Thorkil started the foundation in order to spread knowledge
about the business model, and approaches of Specialisterne.
In this way, it acts as a case of reference and
inspiration for people who want to replicate the Specialisterne model.
16:12
Rather than being fully owned, these operations
are usually carried out together with local partners
who know about legislation, who have access to municipalities and
government support, and who are also plugged into the local autism networks.
16:35
They adapt the Specialisterne model, to the unique local needs.
Interestingly, in recent years,
competitors to Specialisterne have entered the market.
For example, Auticon in Germany.
These organizations are also working with high-functioning people with autism.
17:07
As a result,
you can see that Specialisterne has used a mixture of the three approaches.
A certain part of organic growth, a certain amount of franchising, and
a certain amount of sharing information widely.
As you can imagine there is some tension here between the social innovation mode and
social enterprise mode.
From the social enterprise point of view,
you would want to control how your information grows.
And you actually would like to have as much of the market share as possible for
your business.
17:42
From a social innovation point of view,
Thorkil Sonne wants as many people around the world to hire people with autism.
You remember that his goal was one million jobs created for people with autism.
Obviously they can't all work for Specialisterne.
Therefore, he is sharing information freely with organizations who want to
replicate and innovate on his business model.