How can Oxford ideas help society?
Oxford ideas have world-changing potential, but many of our best thoughts fail to achieve the impact they deserve. How can we do it better? Mark Mann, OUI’s Innovation Lead for Humanities and Social Sciences, thinks social enterprises are the answer.
You see it in the press, you hear it on television and radio, you see it on social media every day and they are often questions. What is the social impact of this activity? What’s the environmental impact? Is it ethical? How do we fix this injustice? How do we solve this societal problem?
In my role as Oxford University Innovation’s Innovation Lead in Humanities and Social Sciences, it won’t surprise you that I hear a lot of answers to these questions from the academic community in Oxford; potential solutions which could improve the lives, of hundreds, thousands and often millions of people. And it isn’t just the Humanities and Social Sciences where these solutions come from, they come from across the University.
Health interventions for developing nations, machine learning algorithms which can keep clean water running to remote communities, innovations which help us better support the homeless and get them off the street; these are just a taste of the sort of ideas crossing my desk.
Everyone at the University wants to get as many of these great solutions deployed as widely as possible. To do that, you need a broad range of methods to maximise an idea’s impact. The commercial mainstream has delivered massive impact through our 160-plus spinouts together with countless licences and consultancy contracts. Our spinouts have employed thousands of people and changed if not saved many lives across the world. Despite our impact to date, it’s also fair to say that we’re nowhere near realising the true potential of Oxford ideas to impact lives for the better, which is why at OUI we are now able to help the academic community to deliver social enterprise spinouts to help the academic community to create companies from their research which put people before profit.
Social enterprises sit at the boundary between companies and charities. In our social enterprise model, a social or environmental mission for the company is written into the company’s DNA which the University protects. The legal and tax issues in this space are complex, but this also means there are many solutions which will enable to the company to have the best chance of success. We can find the best solution which works for a particular project and as we do with our mainstream spinouts, help put a team together, and help find both translational funding and seed funding to get the project off of the ground.
We’ve already done one. Our first social enterprise, sOPHIa Oxford Ltd was spun out from the Department of International Development in July. The team in the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative led by Sabina Alkire have developed a multi-dimensional poverty index, which both measures poverty and provides workable solutions to eliminate it. The company will be providing an accreditation service to businesses, starting in Central America, but rolling out across the world. Its first deal is with ANDI, the biggest association of businesses in Colombia.
This is the first of many, we already have over 20 in the pipeline and we’re looking forward to helping Oxford maximise its positive impact by rolling out its great ideas for solving social and environmental problems across the world.
Oxford isn’t going to be able to answer all the questions our society faces. However, we can definitely play our part in answering some by ensuring that great Oxford ideas which have the potential to create positive, sustainable, long-lasting impact all get the chance to do so.
We are actively looking for people who want to join our projects, either through working with or for the projects or through providing finance.
If you want to get involved, do get in touch.
Note: If you are based in or around Oxford and have an interest in social enterprises, we’re hosting a kick off event at the Tap Social on 11th October 2018 where we are looking to mix Oxford academics with ideas for social enterprise with social entrepreneurs. If this sounds like you, please follow this link for more info: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/social-enterprise-and-the-universities-tickets-50847942565
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Mark Mann is OUI’s Innovation Lead for Humanities and Social Sciences and is heading a group comprised of individuals from across OUI looking to make social enterprise at Oxford a success. To find out more, please visit our SocEnt website: https://innovation.ox.ac.uk/university-members/social-enterprise/
To follow Mark’s exploits into social enterprise, follow him on Twitter @OxfordMann. For more from Oxford University Innovation, follow us on Medium, Twitter and LinkedIn.
