IMD: 20th annual social enterprise conference
At the end of April, I was incredibly fortunate to travel to attend the 20th Annual Social Enterprise Conference in Lausanne. Whilst I didn’t have the opportunity to present on this occasion, I was more than happy to be there, soaking it all in, learning so much from other presenters and attendees, and having thought-provoking conversations. This is the first time the conference has been in Europe, hosted in the beautiful surroundings of IMD, Lausanne. The list of attendees was full of incredible academics that I continuously cite and are releasing incredible research in the area of social enterprise. If you’re curious about what’s going on in the world of social enterprise research, the following is a (very) brief round-up of my thoughts.
Over the course of the two and a half days, there were really interesting sessions – kicking off with a Thursday evening session around ‘Religion & Social Entrepreneurship’. A couple of interesting insights I picked out were around the impact of the reduction of society being involved in a formal religion when it comes to philanthropy. This surely has great relevance to Irelands philanthropy. In a period where there is an incredible transition of wealth from one generation to the next, how does this impact philanthropy in a world where formal religion does not necessarily play a guiding role anymore? The term ‘nones’ was used to describe a rise in those who are religious or spiritual but don’t prescribe to any particular form of religion, creating their own personal de-centralised cherry-picking belief system. I’m still getting my head around it, but I feel it is very relevant for Ireland. Thanks to Brett Smith, Miruna Radu-Lefebvre, Allan Discua Cruz and Saulo Dubard Barbosa for a really interesting conversation.
After an insightful keynote by Rachida Justo, unpacking ownership, wherein, amongst lots of really interesting insights, Rachida unpacked an alternative ownership enterprise model – looking at how different types of ownership, such as centring around workers, centring around purpose or indeed centring around other stakeholders such as consumers can impact social entrepreneurship. Resulting in the need to have a multi-stakeholder ownership approach. Rachida also highlighted how Patagonia have essentially created their own legal type to manage their unique approach. Of course, looking at the context of Ireland and our (what I personally consider!) a narrow approach to ownership of social enterprises, it was interesting to delve into this conversation.
Following Rachidas' keynote address, Francois Bonnici gave a quick overview of the recent ‘State of Social Enterprise 2024 report,’ which is well worth checking out if you haven’t already.
Then came the tough decisions in deciding what papers to attend – I moved between a session focusing around ‘social venture legitimacy seeking’ and ‘sustainability, performance and impact’ – attending four sessions.
- P1: Stay on board we’ll make it work – how social enterprises maintain pragmatic legitimacy amidst profitability struggles [Bendaanane & Belz]
- P2: In search for grand solutions: Entrepreneurial narratives to engage and maintain stakeholders supports [Clarysse & Li]
- P3: Silent or Silenced? The role of intermediaries in silencing the conformity of social enterprise to the SDGS [Meert & Dufays]
- P4: Changing the paradigm for performance in impact investing [Walske, Scarlata & Wry]
So many interesting questions coming out of each of these sessions – such as how do ventures maintain legitimacy on the face of investor disappointment [P1], How do you revise the narrative and manage stakeholder disappointment when the prototype doesn’t work [P2], how do we manage the challenges of using the SDGs and is there a legitimacy perception issue around using the SDGs [P3] and finally outlining some of the challenges around reporting on impact investment, where financial KPI’s are often reported quantitatively but social impact reported qualitatively and aggregated across funds. I was also astonished to hear that 13 U.S. States have now adopted anti-ESG laws! [P4].
I won’t go through each of the sessions I attended – this would be an amazingly long blog post! But I was really struck by that central theme of legitimacy in that first paper session. It made me think of a concern raised about my own research by one of the participants that they found that the legitimacy of actors in Ireland is granted based on personality, not credibility or expertise. I’m still reflecting on the impact that has on the social enterprise ecosystem. There’s a really interesting paper on why social enterprises might seek legitimacy by new conference friend Alina Spanuth (& Urbano, 2023) that is well worth checking out. In this paper, Alina (I can call her that now that we’ve met 😊) notes 6 reasons why social enterprises seek legitimacy: to acquire tangible or intangible resources, to compete with commercial businesses, to comply with stakeholder demands, to overcome institutional challenges, to create social impact and to bring about institutional change. So in that context, it was very easy to see the repercussions of inadvertently undermining a social enterprises legitimacy if they don’t deliver.
After a really lovely meal in Lausanne with my new social enterprise friends that evening – day 2 kicked off with a session where, quite honestly, I was in awe of being in the same room as Johanna Mair as she delivered her keynote on ‘Time to Turn upstream in Social Enterprise Research’. Johannas research has been really influential in my journey as a PhD candidate. Her wisdom and insights challenge and inspire me continually. Johanna challenged us with statements such as ‘Don’t assume just because it’s a social enterprise, it is inherently good’ and also discussed some emerging research around the role, relevance and impact of advocacy.
After another round of papers, I attended a panel session on the current state of research on ‘social entrepreneurship ecosystems and future directions’. I was really super excited about this panel as it’s a key area of my PhD research, and I find it completely fascinating and (I think) very influential in the scaling of social enterprises. The panel [Nicholay Dentchev, Abel Diaz Gonzalez, Rachida Justo & Tonia Wernecke] discussed the roles, challenges and potential of the ecosystem. Highlighting that the ecosystem must co-create with social enterprises how they can support them, but this is complex. The panel referred to research by Ashoka that said social enterprises at the start of their support process said the support they want is finance, but at the end of the process realized what the actually wanted was a blueprint to alternative business models. There were several papers in the subsequent afternoon session that centered around the role, influence and potential of the social enterprise ecosystem. It’s clear that the ecosystem is playing an increasingly important role that is gaining momentum.
The conference rounded out with the fairly mind-blowing experience of hearing from the 20th Anniversary panel of Helen Haugh, Lisa Hehenberger, Anne-Claire Pache, Filipe Santos and Tyler Wry, along with the wonderful conference organisers Sophie Bacq and Jill Kickul. All leaders in the area of social enterprise research. It was so enjoyable to hear them reflect on the development and acceleration of social enterprise research. The sector is building in momentum!
It's a real privilege to attend these events; I don’t take it lightly. Thank you to all those I met, had coffee with, and shared research ideas and insights from different countries with. Thanks so much to the wonderful IMD team, Jill Kickul and Sopie Bacq for all their organisation. I look forward to a social enterprise research conference in Ireland someday soon! Although I have spent a solid 24 hours crying over my PhD in the past week and wanting to jack it all in, it really is quite a special journey.