Archives mensuelles : juin 2008

B’corps, SAGP, Capital Altruiste and committed for-profits

Many social entrepreneurship-related concepts now florish on the Web. Some time ago, the social-oriented entrepreneur could get inspiration from NGOs and from for-profit social ventures such as the Grameen Bank (well, I suppose it does not have an NGO status of some sort… I am not even sure of this ; anyway…).

Now that I am thinking of how to govern the growth of my own social venture, I am also stumbling upon a variety of other very stimulating and mind-opening concepts that may be useful to my project.

The SAGP is a French way of governing a company that seems to be inspired by De Gaulle‘s wish that employees would more and more take part in managing their company (not to say that many French companies are SAGPs, far from that !). ‘GP in SAGP stands for Gestion Partagée: shared management. SAGP is not a legal status for juristic personification (Inc., Ltd., GMBH, SARL and others). It is a kind of « label » that says something like « in our company, work and capital are of equal value and power is equally divided between both workers and shareholders« . Note that it is not necessarily a « one person one vote » system. Sounds interesting even though the 50% work /50% capital proportion sounds a bit arbitrary to me (why not 75% work and 25% finance at early stage and later evolution toward 50/50  for instance ?). And SAGP lacks a grass-root community of entrepreneurs behind it. Anyway, the idea of empowering workers is there.

B Corporations is a concept that comes from the USA. B (for Beneficial) corps are companies that include social and environmental commitments into the legal document that founds the company (the Articles of Incorporation, or « statuts » in French). It also is a kind of label but the legal dimension of the concepts can make it something superior to a plain marketing label. It somehow institutionalize the social commitments of the company.

Companies with a « Capital Altruiste » are companies which commit themselves to sharing a (fixed) part of their profit with a given (set of) NGO(s). The NGOs may become a full shareholder in the company. These companies may not « be social » (or green or whatever) by their business purpose. They even could behave unethically (preferrably not, of course). Their new social role comes from the fact that they share a given portion of their annual profits to a non-profit, either by donating profits (patronage) or by donating shares (which I think is more aligned with Thierry Klein’s idea). It is a concept that tries to keep altruism and ethics apart from usual business operations. By accepting the worst of human nature (cupidity and social blindness of traditional corporations?), this concept suggests a way for putting altruism within the reach of any corporation and entrepreneur. « You don’t have to think of yourself as a social hero to serve altruistic purposes » does it seem to say. Sounds good too… as long as it does not says « social entrepreneurs are fools » or « social ventures are doomed to failure or eternal non-growth because they unrealistically rely on the good will of some social dreamer« . Sounds like a good concepts for pessimistic and/or cynical social entrepreneurs, doesn’t it ? A stimulating dimension of the concept of Capital Altruiste is that not only social capital (or profits from capital?) can be shared but also profits from intellectual property. The legal implementation of intellectual property being currently flawed, I think one should get beyond just saying « every music album you buy will trigger a donation of 5% of its price to an NGO ». But the idea of marrying open source licensing with some form of well-designed profit-sharing may lead to something interesting.

Last but not least, Michael Pirron’s model is more for optimistic-would-be-social-heroes. His for-profit venture (also a B-Corp) contracts with a non-profit. The non-profit becomes a customer of the for-profit (for instance, it can receive consulting services from the for profit if this for-profit is a consultancy), maybe with  preferential prices. And the for-profit also shares its profits to the non-profit. It sounds to me similar to one of the founding principles of the Economy of Communion and I appreciate this similarity. I will have to dig this concept and get more familiar with it.

As a conclusion, this is all about giving with some reciprocity. You can share profits, social capital or votes. You can share them with workers or non-profit organizations which have both been designated as the less-favoured stakeholders in our  sustainable development era. You can institutionalize this sharing in your articles of incorporation or just keep it as a management principle at least until it stabilizes a bit.

I personnally feel these concepts are still very experimental and shouldn’t be institutionalized unless you have very strong legal skills and agility. I don’t have employees so I’ll keep the « share-with-the-workers » concepts aside until I get into recruiting someone. I feel some appeal to the « share-with-an-NGO » thing but I still wonder which NGO to share with especially given the fact that NGOs are my customers !

Anyway, like my friends in the Economy of Communion sometimes say : « First, focus on generating something to share ! » So let’s get back to business.

I hope I did not make too many mistakes in describing the concepts above : I am just stumbling upon them and still have to recover from surprise before understanding their principles and subtleties.

Tell me what you thing and don’t hesitate to refer to any similar concept I might have been missing.

Plone + Freemind = eternal love ?

Congratulations to Plone and Freemind, two great open source software packages, which have celebrated weddings recently and have promptly released a new born « Plone Freemind v.1.0 » extension product for Plone. I have been really fond of Plone and Freemind for several years now. It’s good news to learn that Freemind mindmaps can now be published and managed via a Plone site… even though I yet have to imagine some valuable use for this ! :)

Nos vieux, facteurs de croissance économique

La FING consacre l’un de ses programmes d’action aux seniors. InternetActu raconte donc comment le Japon essaie de transformer le vieillissement de sa population en facteur de croissance économique. Pas bête comme attitude !

Mes vieux (euh… mes parents) aimeraient bien vivre dans un quartier comme Sugamo à Tokyo. Et s’imagineraient bien à vivre avec… mes grands-parents (95 ans…) ?

Etudiants futurs entrepreneurs: Eclosion 2.0

Teamfactory est une association à but non lucratif dédiée à la création d’entreprise par les jeunes et soutenue par la région Ile-de-France et des entreprises comme Solvay. Teamfactory a un style très « social entrepreneurs ». Un petit message de leur part, à destination des étudiants ayant une fibre entrepreneurs:

Vous êtes étudiants, en recherche de projet, en réflexion, en réorientation ? Venez expérimenter ECLOSION 2.0 ! Sur le thème « L’Initiative dans Ma Vie »

Nous organisons la 2ème édition d’un événement original, Eclosion 2.0, devenu le rendez-vous annuel de ceux qui s’interrogent sur l’entrepreneuriat et la création d’entreprise.

Encore une association qui a peut-être des projets informatiques que je pourrais accompagner en leur faisant bénéficier du wecena ?

Microsoft should hire some future-ex-Motorola researchers

Motorola researchers are experiencing bad times these days : Motorola Labs is to shrink by half, including teams in Europe (possibly including the knowledge technologies team I was leading in Paris ?). At the same time, Microsoft announces its plan to open an R&D center in Europe, possibly in France or UK. And this center would be involved in enterprise search technologies (called knowledge technologies under different skies).

My former colleagues may appreciate this future job opportunity and might consider applying there. And Microsoft HR people may cut their recruiting costs by quickly getting in touch with experts in applied research on knowledge and search technologies ! Unless Google Labs or Yahoo consider opening a similar center in Europe some time soon ?

Les intercontrats internes en DSI

Une SSII (Logica) recommande aux directions informatiques de reconnaître qu’entre 2 projets, leurs informaticiens se tournent un peu les pouces et que ce temps « d’intercontrat interne » doit être pris en compte dans le calcul (et la prévision) des coûts de l’informatique.

L’offre de mécénat de compétences en informatique de ma petite entreprise s’appuyant sur les temps d’inter-contrat en société de services en informatique, cela me fait forcément penser que, peut-être, un jour, les informaticiens des DSI pourraient transformer ces moments de tournage de pouces en coups de pouce pour des projets informatiques d’intérêt général.

D’un autre côté, il est déjà difficile pour certaines SSII d’admettre qu’elles ont de l’inter-contrat car un taux d’intercontrat trop élevé est un signe de mauvaise santé pour les analystes financiers (donc a une mauvaise influence sur le cours de l’action). Alors de là à faire admettre une chose similaire au DSI d’une grande entreprise, il y a un pas qu’on ne franchira peut-être pas tout de suite. Connaissez-vous un DSI prêt à admettre qu’il y a réellement de « l’intercontrat en interne » chez lui ?

Mécénat de compétences en informatique: marché d’avenir!

Une étude commanditée par l’Admical, l’association pour le développement du mécénat, le confirme: ma petite entreprise de mécénat de compétences en informatique est bien sur un marché en croissance. Quelques chiffres extraits de l’étude [Edit: avec mes commentaires sans italiques] :

  • 64% du mécénat est le fait du secteur des services, « mes » mécènes sont des sociétés de service en informatique,
  • 47% des mécènes ont une action dans le secteur de la solidarité, c’est dans ce secteur que sont la plupart des associations que je représente,
  • 45% des entreprises de plus de 200 salariés font du mécénat de compétences (vs. 31% dans l’étude précédente), mon offre est un dispositif de mécénat de compétences en informatique, pour sociétés de services en informatique