Social enterprise in China: an interview with Michael Norton

The main theme is that we can all change the world and we can all do something to make the world a better place. An important message is that business can become more social and contribute more to society. I think China has a strong enterprise culture and an emerging social enterprise sector, which needs encouraging and supporting. The important thing is to get started. You don't necessarily need everyone to agree with you. If only 1% of people or businesses agree with your idea, then that is still a huge number. Just start to put your plan into action, and start making a difference. Learn as you go along, from your mistakes as well as your successes.

China is a multi-layered country, with government at city level, provincial level and state level. Its large population creates large opportunities. At all levels there is a growing recognition of the importance of social innovation and partnering with non-profits to deliver social services. There are also particular opportunities for social enterprises in addressing issues relating to the environment and pollution; here, technological solutions may be developed, and China could become a world leader in this.

Social franchising starts from the idea that you are helping 10,000 people, but there might be 5,990,000 who are not being helped. You are helping in one city, but there are 200 other cities where you could be providing help.  In order to spread your work to meet this wider need, you need to find a suitable approach or technique for replicating your work somewhere else; there is a whole range of techniques from franchising to open source replication which you can use to spread your work.

We need to encourage social impact to be at the heart of all organisations, whether they are commercial businesses or a not-for-profit. They need to be clear about what impact they could create, then focus on measuring, managing and increasing their impact. In this way, we can create big changes in society. There is a vibrant start-up sector in China, and they can build in a social enterprise approach into how they run their businesses. The business sector can use the ideas of social enterprise to do things differently and to address new needs in new markets in new ways, to provide employment for disadvantaged people, to support the local economy… and to make more profits whilst doing this. The social sector needs to become more enterprising if it is to be more sustainable and able to scale up its work.  It often needs to develop a better business model and bring in more skills in marketing and selling. I’d like to see these three sectors develop the ideas of social enterprise in parallel.

One of the social investors introduced to me by the British Council told me that they want their city (Shenzen) to become the “Silicon Valley for Social Enterprise”. I think this could happen, as China has the scale, the needs and access to emerging technologies. International cooperation may help this to be realised more easily. Instead of China becoming the dominant force in social enterprise, I’d prefer it if we created a global network sharing our ideas, our expertise and our experiences internationally, transnationally and bilaterally. I think the UK will remain a thought leader in social enterprise, whilst China has huge opportunities for promoting, supporting and benefitting from social innovation and social enterprise solutions. It is an exciting time to be working in China as wealth has been generated and now the challenge is to use this to address China’s social and environmental needs.