Social Enterprise World Forum

Social Traders Managing Director David Brookes is in San Francisco for the 2010 Social Enterprise World Forum.

The 2010 Social Enterprise World Forum kicked off in San Francisco yesterday with a range of tours to some well-known and emerging social enterprises in the San Francisco Bay Area inluding Rubicon, Community Housing Partnership, Pedal Revolution, Juma Ventures, CVE, Toolworks, Mission Pie and Blue Skies Cafe. Over 700 people from 31 countries, including a small contingent from Australia are attending this third international social enterprise forum. A strong focus at this year's forum is on educating and empowering students and young people.

The opening plenary session of the conference earlier today addressed ways in which the government sector can be engaged to support social enterprise. The importance of demonstrating evidence on how social enterprises provide practical and sustainable solutions was also highlighted. The conference raised the value of taking a systems approach to addressing entrenched community issues, with engagement of all sectors being required to address provide long-term and replicable solutions.

Keynote speaker, Chip Heath from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and co-author of Switch addressed the issue of how to change things when change is hard and challenged delegates to find the bright spots of what is working well and clone them. He also advocated strongly for building emotional connection and mapping out a clear path as key elements to effect transformative change.

The Forum conference and field trips continue tomorrow