What is social innovation... ?

Social= for society / innovation= implementing something new

What is new... ?

When? Where? The micro-credits for instance... Not anymore a new concept... But still not implemented everywhere... Is it still a social innovation...? It is new at some place for some persons...

Social innovation for who?
I mean who create social innovation... We meet at I-genuis some social entreprenors... Are they the only persons who can create social innovation...? Or do you become social entreprenor if you create any kind of social innovation...?

Entreprenors... ? People who take some risks to realise something (social... for the society) And then if there are no risk is it still enterprenors?

Sustainable business (activity which make you busy): Good balance between inputs and output, good management of the ressources social (persons) and environemental (nature nature)... Do we need to be sustainable?

I beleive more and more in projects; defined purpose, team, action, results, feedback and evaluation... A project is limited... Easier to handle...

Here was it a couple of question-reflexions... Olivier C

A tough for Europ Stars

Coming back from North-East with Karin and Morten and Peter and a bunch of other persons... We are sitting in a van 5 hours driving... For the go it was night... For the return it was afternoon... We mostly sleep but nut only...

A really nice conversation started on the return about cultural differences and giving and taking space (new? for sure not... ;) And in few minute this noisy and small is transform in a living space a playground/plateform for discussion...

My post is not about the content of discussion but this nice feeling to be connect with Europ stars. On the road... When travel are not just going from one point ot the other but also a part of the trip and place for more...

Europ stars I miss you... Thailand is beautiful but your compagny is uniek... Wish to be back soon and be with you again...

With Tender love Olivier C

Can we beleive politicians...
The i-genuis summit started with the nice talk of a politician just came back in Thailand... He shared that his experience abroad make him beleive really strongly in social innovation and that he will do everything to support us.

He also ask for some support because he is candidate for the next elections... The speach is nice... But what else... When I share this to Chaiwat, he confirm that the politician is really for social innovation and that indeed he is new in the political landscape... Also share that as many politicians... He is really good at talking and promising but not really responsable for a lot of actions...

Can we beleive politicians... For sure their intentions... But let see for the actions... According to me they are too often worry about popularity and fear to misact so they did not act enough...

I am doing some politic in Belgium... But in fact I don't beleive that the changement will come from this level... It is street wise that chagement are... And social innovation must start from need and passion... Not from the wish to please around and to be elected for more power...

Olivier C

I love writting, even more when people come to me and ask me if I want joint them for a drink... I do feel that you love reading me... And I wish you that somebody propose you to do something more... See you next. Olivier C

Robin feel that everything fall right... Maybe they had another point of view in the Twins tower the 9.11 ... I thing that thinks fall that's it. After that it is only mindset and in KaosPilots we try to "cultiver" a positive mindset... That good for the mood... I have to say that technicly we will never now how it would felt in another way so... Maybe it is better to be convince that we are one best track... Anyway it is the only one and I am happy to be on... That's better than being sad... It could be of course worst.
I hope you enjoy this writed... It could be better it could be worst... It is:
Olivier C

I don't like... I could start with a affirmative but the negative is mine...

I don't like English because I don't maitrise it and so it is hard for me to express myself as well than in French
I don't like writting because it need to sit and male our ideas clear...

So I don't like writting in English even more if it is to talk about me or stuff like that...

It is why you, until now never read stuff from me...

Ok let be positif... There are only 4 word in red in what I just type and the keyboard is soft... I gonna writte more on this blog. Olivier C

Ps: It was small and it gonna stay small some inputs some questions... some reflexions as open as possible... Good read... I wish...

What a day…

I actually wanted to write about the last two days, but since I’m still tripping on today’s experiences, I will write about that first.

In the morning we (Soe, Maja, Carianne / The girls in Phuket) started with a meeting with mister Suwit in a coffee bar in Phuket city. He is the leader of the Tsunami Network and we got into contact with him via mister Chaiwhat in Bangkok. Allready after five minutes we saw that we where connecting with a very special person. We had our lovely translator Bow with us, since we still don’t understand a word of Thai, but only his eyes and bodylanguage showed us enough: that it was a man that worked from out the heart. We had a very nice interview with him and he told about the projects the Network worked on after the Tsunami. And yes, hearing the story of that disaster from a personal experience has some impact. Many many people didn’t only lost their houses and maybe even family members, but many communities (with a lot of poor people involved) lost as well all their identity papers, lost their ownership on ground and other important paperworks. A complete mess was the left over.

Mister Suwit started to work from out these legal issues. Bringing people together (locals, NGO's, network members) to find out together what was needed and find the real problems. Then he started to work with, for example fishermen, to start up again their own business and let that become sustainable again. Now they are working in the same way for water supply, education and so on. To hear this was a wonderfull moment. This was the reason we wanted to work with local organisations, to hear THIS story. It sounds maybe strange, but it was really overwelming. There are people in this world able to navigate very well in a complete chaos. And all of that with ‘happiness’ as dream and goal.

After the interview we drove to one of the communities mister Suwit is working for. Small crapy houses, with a lot of garbage everywhere, children running around, animals, dirty water, dirty everything and a lot of happy people... We where warmly invited and had a nice conversation at the sea side with the representatives of the community. Very special to sit between them talking about dreams and opportunities. And then those people, who do such great and good work, ask if we have some suggestions for them… I realised at that moment sronger then ever before that we are here in Thailand to listen, learn and share. Not to help them in one week of time, because we actually don’t have a clue with what we are dealing with. But to have the opportunity to learn from these people (and do it) is really wonderfull.

We gave them juice and Danish cookies and they gave us a beautiful souvenir and invited us to go fishing with them next week. How nice to finish our project here with that….

Many more stories to write, they will be continued tomorrow!

This is my first blog talk ever, so it feels a bit weird… I’m not really a person to speak his mind over the internet, but since I’m having a very good reason now, I’ll give it a shot.

17-03-08
In this moment I’m sitting in the empty Shanti lodge, where we are staying for the second time.
The Danish squad (Christian and Morten) accompanied by Bert are in the most obscene street I’ve ever visited, having a well deserved beer and being hassled in to a “ping-pong show”…
It really feels like being in another world when you walk around there and see all the “entrepreneurs” trying to sell you everything from a ring to their own body.
I experienced this feeling once before, when I came from the countryside to the big city of Rotterdam, but when you are in Bangkok, Rotterdam feels like Dalfsen…

18-03-08
This morning we had a reflection talk with Peter and the whole team (except the girls in Phuket).
We talked about the content of the blog, because there were some miscommunications about it.
It was a good thing to do and it’s also part of the reason why I’m doing my first blog report ever and post it on the internet. After that, the talk was about our personal learnings, interests, likes and dislikes on the I-Genius World Summit. My general feeling about the summit is f**king A!!!
I loved the mindset, the luxury and most of all the people and their stories.
After closing down the meeting, I went with Chris, Morten and Olivier to the tailor that is making our tailor-fitted suits (for a special price for you sir, off course) to have our first fit and adjust moment. It was a bit of a weird meet, because we were filming the whole thing and that is something they apparently seriously dislike… but we managed to keep it cool and got the adjustments we were looking for.
Because I was the first one to finish, I joint Olivier (aka Ali Davitsun) to Aeroflot (Russian for Disaster), to get the return tickets fixed. There he heard that his plan to fly back on the 27nd/28th was no longer possible and that he had to join us on the 31st (god be with you my friend).
From the Aeroflot office, me and Ali went to the meeting with Chaiwat where we met with the rest. Completely in line with the Thai culture, it started with food (you can call it a small miracle that not 90% of the Thai population is obese, they eat so much). The meeting was very well prepared, with translators for the non-Thai speaking attendees. Chaiwat and his team explained the concept that he want to create and divided the rolls. Bert, Chris and me desisted to work on this project in the name of KPNL. Afterwards we had a nice deserved drink and bite near Sara and Mark’s place and I ended the night with a Skype meeting with my favorite girl in the world.

19-03-08
At 10.00 o’clock we went to the warehouse where the “ufafabrik” (Chaiwat’s creative space) is going to be. We had a team of the KTB bank (who owns the place) waiting for us. They explained how it was functioning now and gave us the facts and figures. The total area is 4500m2 and has his own parking-lot, 12 gigantic warehouses and a private dock. It looked like a sight that could be in the harbor of R’dam. Because we were a group of Europeans, getting a tour from a bank, I really felt like a rich investor (while I am a poor student haha…).

At 13.00h we met with Dev and his team from TRN (we’ve met his at the Summit).
He planned a great meeting with the group young Thai entrepreneurs that TRN support, Ben Happel who is doing his PhD in Bangkok on social entrepreneurship (also met at the summit), people from WbYc and the KaosPilots from Ollanda. Peter explained the theory of our school, Sunit from TRN did the same for their company and afterwards we helped the young Thai entrepreneurs with feedback and brainstorming on their company ideas. After the meeting, that ended around 20.00h, I went home with Bert, Chris, Karin and Peter. The last two joint up with Dev’s team later that night, to visit one of the project of TRN in Burirum (North-East Thailand) and we partied the rest of the night ;-)!

20-03-08
Today I slept for more than 5 hours!!! That might sound logic, but that was my average amount of sleep for the last week… we started off with a nice English/Thai breakfast and went to our meeting with the Bangkok-forum at 2pm. We had a good meeting to clarify the expectations towards us and seek the focus area where our contribution was most needed. After that we went to the little square across the street, where a anti-drug event was going on. We enjoyed the free food (5 plates eights, we’re still Dutch -> if it’s free, I’ll take two!, but I unpleasantly surprised that the soup contained chickenfeed) , and had a nice talk about the Thai culture, rituals, politics and a private island to have our last week of vacation. We met by pure coincident another person from the summit, professor Kriengsak, who wants to run for governor of Bangkok in October.
And now I’m back to the present. Sitting in the place where my blog report started, Shanti lodge, only this time not alone, but with my super teammates Chris and Bert which are gonna rock and roll with me to have a good presentation tomorrow.

Peace

Social Entrepreneurship:
The Friction

Doing Good V.S. Making Money

This might be an interresting topic. Especially since this was the topic of our workshop and a returning topic at the summit. A lot of people had this on their mind. For various reasons.
One could be a social entrepreneur struggling with turning the project or business profitable, making money.
Another could be an entrepreneur trying to find his or her own role in being more social responsible.
For me using labels as such feels strange at one hand because it feels necessary, especially in order to connect to the outside world. I feel that Social Entrpreneurship is already an outdated label. Eventhough when I try to explain KaosPilots, using our taglines and buzzwords (haven't been able to find a right translation in dutch though), not a whole lot of people will even have the slightest idea of what I am talking about.
At the other hand, the moment that we are presenting ourselves as being outside of the box, we are labelling ourselves in such a way that we are putting ourselves in a certain box.
Here is something that I've got issues with. Saying that you are open minded but labelling, defining and therefore confining things just in order to have things making more sense to ourselves, to able to grasp things. It just doesn't fly with me.

The Summit made me think about a lot of things. I came to be inspired and got completely blown away. It feels so good to see and realise that there are so many inspiring people and projects out there. It made me blush, laugh, feel ashamed but mostly humble.
I got a confirmation of what I'm doing this for.
When I was interviewed by Barry Crisp to give my one-word-defenition of Social Entrepreneurship the first thing that came to mind was SEXY.
It is sexy, it is something that makes me tick. But why being so hung up on these labels? Why label ourselves in such a way?

I get enthousiastic because I simply just do.
When you are a social entrepreneur , but you fail to make any money, perhaps you're just not that good of an entrepreneur. When you are doing good and making a difference, however small it might be, I get intrigued. But when you fail to sustain it, I get bored.
When you are an entrepreneur and you are turning nothing into something, I get intrigued again. When you are having one hell of a turnover, just by doing bussiness, I get bored again.
Therefore I was so happy to talk to someone like Matt Williams, who claimed to be a kapitalist while being an old lefty. He said to me: "I think that I've been invited in order to bring in a balance."
KaosPilots brings forward as one of her six values Balance, mostly in a spiritual way. In order to work from the head, the heart and the hands, there must be a balance.
My balance would be in acknowledging the rest of my world, also the non-social responsible enteprises. Since I am living and work in the real world, I will have to deal with it.
How on earth can I be able to expand myself as a person, when I not even open for such things?
Why are there so many people seeing corporate life just as suits?
While a lot of "corporate people" who I've met were even more creative and open-minded than some of the artists that I've met. For me it feels that we are all just artists trying to give shape to life in our own way.



At the summit there were a lot of people looking for a balance between being an entrepreneur and being social responsible.

As a KaosPilot, I am trying to find a balance between being an entrepreneur while being social responsible, being creative and being innovative.

While at the same time I'm in a country where there will be a whole army of people stating: "I am an entrepreneur in order to survive."

While the rest of our group was traveling to Burirum, Chris, Robin and me went for a meeting at the Bangkok Forum. Here we went to get a deeper insight in the plans of the Ufa-Fabrik that is being set up in Bangkok. Here we found out that our intentions of just tagging along and giving our input, instead of dropping down ideas of how we think things should be done, was the right way to go.
I am still very passionate about the whole project, but working from the angle of being an absolute stranger in this country, city and community is still a very strange way to approach something like this.
After a very intense meeting sitting on the floor ( so not so strange than at our little school )
, we went to visit the outside anti-drug festival in front of the office. We signed up and got a better connection with our hosts. A lot of dodgy thai dishes alway does the trick. There were a lot of dance performances from local youth-groups, very inspiring being in an environment We even met Dr. Kriengsak Chareonwongsak, who whe've met at the I-Genius World Summit. So the world, or at least this country, isn't that big after all.
Taking from this I witnessed that, wether it could be labelled as innovative or not, good and social events are seriously just all over the place. Does the label actually matter when you're just doing good?

SOCIAL INNOVATION IS LIKE WINE...

Wine as a whole is a very personal thing, if not only because it is focussed on taste.
Within wine you are dealing with given facts. For example: a Champagne will be made from a Chardonnay grape and can only be labelled as Champagne when it is produced in the Champagne region. When the defining of origine has taken place the details come into play, such as the added hint of chocolate or flowers. Perhaps the amount of sunshine or the sea salty ground where the grapes grew made the difference. You can only imagine the endless variety that existst within the world of wine. And then there is the perspective of the specialists who probably have a whole different take on wine compared to you and me, but we will all have our own opinion ready.
Building on that; lets talk about red wine. "Red wine isn't supposed to be drunk chilled, let alone to be served with ice in it." I thought wine was supposed to be a personal thing. You will be the one who has to drink the wine, so when you like to drink your wine that way, who am I to judge?
I geus the same goes for Social Innovation and for Social Entrepreneurship. There is not one truth, there is again an endless variety. So my question to you is more of an open invitation; to inspire each other and share our favorite wines.

Cheers

Written at the 14th. I would like to share you a bit of my experiences so far during this trip. Right now it is about 2.30 at night, We had a party last night and I participated the swimmingpoolestafette... Pool 1,2,3 and as last but not least the SEA!! Now I am sitting in the library of an extremely luxorious resort. And I am touching upon something really interesting now; it IS nice, beautiful and so on. Yes And.... there is a BUT! It feels also sometimes too tight for this conference where I am in now. Atmosphere and space does matter!! This is where our workshop was also about today. We had a very tough ride. We did it, we learned from it and I am proud of our risktaking.
Last days we went within our team trough a great process. When we had a great conversation with the whole team two days ago. Peter came with a model that really related to our team and our way of working as KaosPilots! This model resonated in such a way that we decided to kill all the ideas we already had designed for the workshop. We went along with this model and had our presentation today. It went ok. I didn't feel excited afterwards though, I felt angry! Angry about a lot of things. After this workshop we had a meeting where we explored our feelings and thoughts about the workshop but also about the team and KaosPilots itselves. Peter raised at a certain point the question: " why are you still at the KaosPilots school?" This brought up a lot of stories. At that moment I experienced that being angry not only an emotion of anger is but also an emotion of passion and heartpower!
Maybe I am just drifting away by the sleep that is totally taking me over now. So I'll finish this up. Wish you very good night/morning. ("hello" from Musquito who is joining me while writing this blog)Cheers, take care and wish you all the best!Karin

Today Soe, Maja and Carianne are exploring their project possibilities in Phuket. We kissed the rest of the group goodbye (they are in Bangkok now) and start calling the contacts we got from our friend Chaiwat. We made as well an appointment for this afternoon with Arnaud Girodon, the general manager of the very sustainable hotel we stayed in during the summit the last days. He might help us with some new ideas/contacts/facilities. 

And we found a translator! That's very nice, since the local people here don't speak that much english. So things are going well here! And if it will not work out anyway, we will join the rest of the group on wednesday, when they're traveling to the north for another cool project!!

Our internet facilities are not that great at the moment, but as soon as that is better we'll post some new pictures as well!

Lot's of wai's!

Time is running fast! Last week we were finishing at school our module 'business design' and today we are ending the summit from I-Genius in Thailand. Unbelievable how much you can learn in only one week of time. 

We learned for example a lot by giving a workshop on this summit and going through a up-and-down-process. This was a good example of not working for the concrete outcome, but more for the learnings and the experience of just doing things. So it actually doesn't feel like a fancy tropical summit trip, but just as moving the school to another location. 

And yes of course, it is like paradise here and that comes together with a lot of fun and pleasure. Yesterday we had our last night with a beach diner/party. We ended up doing crazy games, swimming under the stars in the sea and having inspiring conversations. I realised this morning that the nice thing of this trip (and by being a KaosPilot student in general) is that we don't only learn by assignments and projects, but even more by making contact with the most inspiring people and stories. How you will do business together doesn't really matter in the first place. It's all about really meeting the persons and their passion. And I really see that we made a lot of very good and long-lasting contacts out of that...

So now we can move on with lots of new energy and work on new projects and experiences. Soe, Maja and I (Carianne) will stay some longer in Phuket to explore the possibilities to work with local social entrepreneurs here. We already have some open doors in the Tsunami-network, so we're looking forward to new learningfull week!

Well, the summit is sadly near it's end. It would be a lie if I said that the sad part isn't partly influenced by the fact that we will be leaving these amazing sourroundings. But what's even more sad is that the opportunity to form even more and stronger friendships will have it's end
too (at least at this summit)..

Karin connecting
in beautiful settings

Looking at the brightside, we have made so many connections to so many exciting and inspirational people, social entrepreneurs and innovators, and as you can probably understand from the above it would have only been great if it could have continued...

The i-Genius team however can't keep hosting us in a place like this and in fact, because of the friendships we've managed to establish here, we too have other things to attend to in Bangkok.. Besides a second meeting with Chaiwat, social innovation frontrunner, we are also going to
meet with a guy called Dev whom we've meet here at the summit, and he is so fired up about working with us. He has been working on several social projects in Bangkok for a periode of six years now, and he invited us to join one of many projects under his network. We might even travel to north east of Thailand to join in there... The adventures we have experienced and will get to experience is simply unique!

I think the whole team of pilots hope that these friendships made here in Phuket, Thailand will ultimately result in a super platform with opportunities to do great things in the future. It might even be a platform for our Outpost in 4.semester! It certainly feels like the potential is there... What a great achievement!!

Thank you so much to the i-Genius team - Tommy, Julie and Jo (hope I haven't forgotten anyone) for this great event, and please repeat the succes very soon!








The conference room
that the i-Genius team
had set up for us

Finally I have the time to sit down and read through our own and the euro groups blog. I must say that I am really impressed of the the things that we all are doing on our trips. For me it has been a journey into a surreal world. Just three years ago this place was not existing, and we all know why. Today it is a hotel that is built in respect for what has happened and they have really tried to rebuild everything from material that was wasted during the tsunamis.

After have been watching the whole process more or less through a lens I still feel in some way a little strange and really not that much part of the group performing during the workshop. I could just see how people where struggling with each other and really digging in deep to find the needed energy for realizing a workshop like that. But the most powerful moment happened when I was in the group reflection afterwards. I started off by really being negative about the process and the way it had turned out. But I moved away from this and turned my inner focus on really accepting that there was and still is something laying underneath. I want to take the risks and really go for my own ambition of making this team work. I need the feeling of support and it is just so much stronger when it is people you share the same passion with. I will keep you posted about how the different things are going through the trip. The only reason why there are no short films on our blog is because I miss a transferring cable for the camera. But I will try to make it happen when I buy one at a hardware store somewhere. Take care enjoy the trip, keep the spirit high and I believe that we together will have a very solid product with a huge content that I feel will have a interest for a lot of people.

So fare I can just say that I have some really powerful moments on tape, and I will be more then happy to show this really soon . So it is not only our thing but OUR-THING....

With love and profound greetings to all of you. And lets make this team work, it is not about changing the game but about being open towards other people and really trust in the relationship that is steadily being built up underneath.

Morten Schuster Rossel, Kaospilots NL, 2008, Thailand

Sometimes you have those moments of realisation. I just had one; sitting here looking around in these tropical surroundings, with basic, cheap but very nice food, and then seeing our group working. I almost feel guilty for being here. Eventhough is hard work that we're doing. As a proof off that; I am completely knackered and seeing double for the past four hours.
Lets just recap till now.
We've arrived in Bangkok two days ago. After a very tiring stopover in Moscow, and a very dodgy flight with Aeroflot, we've made our way to a very nice hostel in quite a secluded area in Bangkok. Uptill now we've been exploring, walking around, sneaking into the zoo, eating a lot and sleeping our jetlag off.
Yesterday we had a meeting with a Thai frontrunner on Social Innovation, Mr. Chaiwat Thirapantu. By just going for it, establishing contact by sending an e-mail we got a meeting (sometimes things are just that easy ). We were supposed to meet up at the lobby of the Landmark hotel in the center of the city of Bangkok. The only thing was that we had a map with only thai directions on it, by which the tuk-tuk-shickrak driver took us to a closed office building in the outskirts of Bangkok. So two hours later we arrived at the actual meeting (while the girls were already long there ). Spoiled with food and drinks, Mr Thirapantu and his friends/colleagues opened their whole network up for us.
So as a result from that we already had another meeting today, and have a lot of contacts to hook up with in Phuket. It feels as if these couple of weeks won't be long enough. Therefore we've been changing our goals and expectations a bit concerning this trip, to not have too much big ideas and goals, and just take everything in that comes our way.
It actually feels as if we're laying the groundwork for a possible fantastic outpost next year.
So today we started our day with a boattrip on the main river to see a bit more of this city. After a small siesta we went on working on our projects, the weblog and designing the workshop for the upcoming summit in Phuket. After splitting up to work some more in small groups we got together again to have a meeting in our bunkbeds. Moments and settings like that can make you giggle inside.
Right now we're sitting outside in our shorts and t-shirts having a cocktail, finishing today (sorry, just needed to show off a bit here).

Tomorrow we will be leaving to Phuket for the I-genius world summit, in the Indigo Pearl five star resort (sorry again). Where we will be hosting workshops and a game.
I seriously have to stop writing for now as I am being punctured by moquitos that have been draining at least half a liter of blood from me.

Later more
Bye for now

KP students exploring the social living environment in Bangkok..

The girls having fun in a Bangkok Tuk-Tuk!

Karin shows what KP is all about...
Navigating in Chaos..

The whole row of KP students flying from Moscow to Bangkok, with the purpose of exploring and creating a platform for social innovation..

KPNL students having a meeting with Chaiwat and associates, great friends of the KP organization and a huge force in the social innovation field of Bangkok..