John Whatmore's blog

A radical shift in enterprise

John Whatmore - 09.10.2012

A university illustrates the radical shift in the objectives to which enterprise is being put: it dedicates itself entirely to social enterprise.

I meet Wray Irwin, the Young Foundation's Entrepreneur-in-residence who is supporting Northampton University in transforming its focus into social enterprise.

Northampton University has set itself a unique goal - of becoming the number one university in the UK in Social Enterprise by 2015. Among its main aims are:

• to shift the university's mission into being about innovation in social enterprise;
• to get social enterprise to be central to an international strategy for the university;
• for the university itself to become a social enterprise
• to create prospective social ventures that are part of the university's courses, and that draw on several disciplines; to get senior staff to introduce innovation into their curricula;
• for 'social impact' to inspire every student's work and for every student to set up a social enterprise as part of his/her course;
• to explore the re-shaping of programmes - developing new offers for students and exploring new course delivery models

The University has taken this step in partnership with the Young Foundation, Social Enterprise London, the Royal Society of Arts and E3N; with the Young Foundation among the funders as well as the Higher Education Innovation Fund.

The University has six schools: The Arts, Education, Health, Business School, Science and technology and Social Science; and among the topics being addressed are: ageing (with Age UK), health and well-being, criminal justice, social care and the provision of information and advice.

It is the present Vice Chancellor's third year in office, and he is supported by a Director of Social Enterprise, a Professor of Social Enterprise, and an Executive Dean whose role includes bringing about the necessary changes. In 2010, the Young Foundation agreed to fund an Entrepreneur-in-residence for three years (its third such appointment in universities.)

Each term a number of students have developed more social enterprise ventures. While the level of innovation and potential scalability of these ventures has not yet been tested, overall as students and staff become more involved, a greater understanding of 'innovation' is being seen. 

Working with local organisations has been another aspect of the university's development into social entrepreneurship. Several such collaborations are evolving, where an entrepreneur with a potentially good idea has developed a working relationship with a particular school in the university.

Among the present objectives of the Young Foundation's Entrepreneur-in-residence are:

• to contribute to changing the culture of the university, for example by working with schools in ways that will encourage social innovation;
• to get senior team members to buy into innovation as part of their agenda, for example running a business-modelling day - with the help of executives from the Young Foundation;
• to support social enterprise ventures and to get at least one such venture to develop really well, as a beacon to which others will aspire.

Among his achievements are the establishment of a business incubator and two 'Hatcheries'.