If you’ve got a cracking product, which you need to get the right type of capital to scale across the world, then that fundamentally means you have to have a business model which facilitates that. It doesn’t necessarily mean the intent is degraded as a result.

Really, different models are fit for different purposes. If you are talking about something which is a social or community enterprise for a specific community to do a specific job in a specific place, then that kind of trust model, there’s no need to distribute, give them profits, because the ...

This whole idea that, although it sounds loose, as long as there’s an explicit intent, then an integrity between that intent, the governance, the strategy, and the accountability, then that’s the important thing.

I can understand that. I understand why they do it, but I don’t think it’s helpful in terms of I think it’s re-litigating politics of the past, rather than trying to redefine the ones of the future.

I think it’s actually been bound up with the DNA of the Social Enterprise World Forum as its evolved, in terms of being quite definite around the more non-profit, if you like, aspect of the social enterprise models.

For example, if you take an organization that’s working in a submarket condition, they might be selling a good or a service at a submarket rate. Therefore, [laughs] they pre-distributed, rather than having to re-distribute. I think those things are unhelpful.

No, we’ve deliberately avoided putting figures on those things. I, personally, don’t believe it’s helpful. It’s not even accurate.

...turn on itself too often.

This idea about the politics of the social enterprise movement actually being something, if not managed well, is actually really disabling because human nature likes to...

There’s almost a tribal sense of within a very broad banner of people using business models to effect social change or community benefits there are a huge diversity of ideologies, values, interests. Trying to hold that space without homogenizing it is a real strategic challenge for sector building.

One of the things I’m absorbed in, which has already happened in more established markets, and I think is always a risk in any developing market, is as you get momentum there’s a risk of fragmentation, as well.

That’s right.

While you can do legal acrobatics to generate governance models, which are analogous, it’s not necessarily straightforward. That’s a detail, but sometimes the details determine why something happens or not.

There’s even some weird stuff with our legal forms around cooperatives, which actually don’t necessarily lend themselves. The cooperative legislation is quite specific, in terms of you have to have 50 percent of members as active producers or active purchasers.

I think so.

While we have had some of that decline, we haven’t had that same level of response, as yet, at least.

One of the things I’ve been watching from a distance has been the community finance, the community shares, the cooperative movements happening in the UK as there’s been a retreat of a lot of services, basic shops, leisure centers, pubs from remote areas. There’s been a real renaissance in community ...

Again, you mentioned the indigenous. Within Maori development it works differently, but there’s a sense of how community ownership plays out in those contexts, which his analogous, but different.

No, not really at the moment. New Zealand’s got quite a deep history in cooperatives, but a lot of them have been really pragmatic structures, which reflects an agricultural economy, and have been less advanced by a solidarity or cooperative agenda. With the exception of things like Loomio, or what ...

It’s interesting that that solidarity element, by its nature, because it is actually more equal, it doesn’t have the same kind of powerful cheerleaders. Sometimes, although it’s huge, it doesn’t necessarily get the same level of profile.

If you speak about social enterprise in Italy or Spain, the cooperative movement is absolutely thought of at central. In the case of the UK, largely you could say a lot of it has been around the professionalization of the social sector. In the United States, it’s been very much ...

I do think it’s interesting that within the social enterprise agenda, depending where you are, the solidarity and the cooperative movement, or where the social is, i.e., is it external or internal to the organization, have different levels of priority.

There is, maybe, a more nuanced point around solidarity movements, which does get picked up, I suppose -- top of my head, democracy and civil rights -- but maybe not as nuanced as it could be.

That’s a good question. My sense of it, some of it’s around framing. Most things that you would want to see progressed can be allocated under the goals in some shape or form.

It’s there to set the stage. It’s there to make sure that things work as well as they can. That’s, obviously, where government has a monopoly. Then, lastly, its ultimate interest is to actually purchase the outcomes or facilitate the purchase of those outcomes from other parties.

I always remember that there was a great slide from one of the guys in the UK government that was talking around the UK government’s role was market builder, regulator, and then participant.

Increasingly, it will want to purchase the outcomes of what social enterprise deliver. Whether that is through the direct purchase of goods and services, or funding which relates to specific social outcomes, which is a more difficult and unformed market, nonetheless, that’s where we’re going.

No, at its best it will test government to think itself as a facilitator, in terms of supporting the development of enabling infrastructure, but then also as a market participant.

The social thing is very narrowing in, whereas there’s so much open now.

Our business strategy is to create the conditions for more businesses to start up and succeed. It may have interests in certain sectors. Generally, it wants to unleash innovation across the board. Whereas, in social, it identifies key priority areas, which it then contracts services to try and make an ...

That’s right. At least in the New Zealand context and I think it is comparable in other countries, it’s interesting if you compare the way that government thinks around social and the way that it thinks about economic are mirror images of them really.

Yes.

It will also really be directed by communities or individuals trying to change the problems that are important to them.

No. I’ll respond to this in a slightly different way. We very much need government here as a partner and a key stakeholder in it. It is not the owner or the director of. A healthy social enterprise sector will inevitably create innovation and solutions around priorities which are of ...

That’s right. Social leaning into commercial. Commercial leaning into social. Also, that space or that market being enabled by the way the government is conducting its business. It’s helpful to try and find an identity and say, "Let’s put edges on it, in order to think about then how we ...

Yeah. It depends what level you want to interrogate this at. Simplistically, it’s helpful to construct it that way. In reality, we’re talking about socially enterprise as being a space which represents the convergence from different sectors.

Then this last thing. The SDGs, from my sense, are actually getting traction, perhaps more traction than people ever expected. Social enterprise is being a connection to those global goals and also solidarity of the global movement. Those six things end up being quite holistic systems play. Putting social enterprise ...

Then this idea of innovation and capability. For me, there’s quite a radical innovation agenda here. A lot of innovation has been linked to pockets and still is. There’s a sense of social enterprise as a channel to broaden access to skills and capabilities around innovation and entrepreneurship.

Obviously, the piece of round unlocking new pools of capital, so we’re not giving more. The tax take isn’t really increasing. But the social, environmental need is increasing new pools of capital and the argument around impact investment and matching social models to also funding models as a successful strategy.

Even if it doesn’t articulate it well itself, an enabler or facilitator of more self-directed development. That’s important in the New Zealand context, especially with Maori development, the tribal economy and self-determination being a very core part of identity and strategy for Maori.

What comes out there is there is anxiety in government around unequal economic development and how that surfaced itself in a geographical context, but also demographic and cultural. Secondly, this sense of where government wants to go itself around wanting no longer to be their provider of everything.

Rather than saying social enterprise as a good in itself, really describing it more as a means to an end and how it is complementary to a number of the existing priorities they already have. These six messages are the things that we’ve landed on, after seeing what works and ...

This is after a bit of trial and error over many years of engaging, I suppose, with government but also other sources of power, be that the corporate sector, the philanthropic sector, local government, to try and find some of the key messages which seemed to resonate with them.

Yeah, that’s great.

Yes. Great.

There’s almost a sense of choreography around this work which we are involved in, which was probably far more hit-and-miss and experimental and for the more mature market. Obviously, it’s still assistant staff. It’s interesting to be able to take this intentional approach to architecture.

There’s a sense of second wave sector development. You would potentially put New Zealand, and to a certain degree Australia and Taiwan into that, where we’re actually able to see the shape of the infrastructure as a result of others having done it.

That sounds great. I’m not sure it’d be interesting to test this in conversation, but one of the things I’ve been thinking on recently is reflecting on how some of the more evolved or mature social enterprise sectors have almost found their way organically.

The degree that we get through it now or not, we can just have the conversation rather than a presentation, but I thought it might be a useful thing to maybe, if nothing else, read on the plane on the way over to the World Forum.

When I originally spoke to Corey, he mentioned that it would be useful for you just to get a bit located in terms of what’s happened in New Zealand. I thought one way about that was sending you a document that we’ve just sent to our own MPs and political ...