Joe Owen: …of housekeeping for everyone here in person. We have no fire drills planned, which means if the alarm goes off, look for someone from Nesta who'll probably be waving quite hard. Uh, and we will direct you down the stairs and out of the building. So, with that said, good evening. Uh, welcome to this very exciting event at Nesta. It's the first in our new series on scaling innovation. And if that wasn't enough, it is also the launch of our scaling toolbox. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Joe Owen. I'm director of policy at Nesta. We spend a lot of time thinking about how to have impact at scale and how an idea or initiative can go from early promise or exciting pilot results through to large scale change.

And one of the biggest determinants is the delivery network. uh we know that establishing, supporting, growing a delivery network that can achieve lasting impact is an absolutely vital part of achieving scale. So we want to get into what makes it work, what make delivery networks effective, what are the ingredients to successful scaling. And to do that, we have got a lovely plan for the next hour or so. Uh first of all, my colleague Louis Stupple-Harris is going to come up who is strategic partnerships lead at Nesta and is going to present our new scaling toolbox to you all. I am then going to chair a discussion with our properly brilliant panel about how they build their delivery networks. We have got Bayo Adelaja, CEO and founder of Do It Now Now, Shaan Jindal, mission manager at the sustainable future mission in Nesta, Sophie Tebbetts, CEO of FoodCycle and Lord John Bird, founder of The Big Issue.

I am going to leave loads of time for questions from the floor. So please do start thinking about them now both those in the room and online. We've also had a load of questions through already which we'll try and weave in as many as we can but as I said please do start thinking of your questions. We are going to finish up at about quarter past 7 and then those in the room please do stay for a drink and a chat after. With that all said, Louis over to you.

Louis Stupple-Harris: Thanks very much, Joe. Yes, I'm Louis. I'm strategic partnerships lead at Nesta and I've been working on scaling and thinking about how we scale our best ideas for the last couple of years now. Um, all of that work has come together and been put together in this toolbox. I'm really excited to share it with you. Um, it's designed to be really easy to use. So, there'll be lots of stuff here that you've probably already seen. We talk a bit about theories of change. They'll be very familiar, but it's kind of like a checklist. If you go through this list with your project and with your work in mind and with a very ambitious mindset, uh, hat on. Um, then you should come out of it with some really great ideas and steps forward.

So I'm going to take you through some of the sort of genres, the components of scale um and some of the exercises that we've designed too. So this is a sort of map. I kind of think of it a bit like Venice. It looks like you know it's a it's a beautiful map of scaling. And the reason it's not linear is that these things don't need to happen in a specific order. You can choose—I mean the introduction comes first obviously—but apart from that everything else you can choose which direction you want to go in. you can choose which exercises to do in which order.

In this toolbox, we've used a Nesta project as a worked example is something we're very proud of and Shaan's going to be talking about it later. Um, but I'll give you a really quick summary of it. The idea is that um, one of Nesta's missions is around helping people to transition from gas heating to using renewable forms of heat in their home. One of those technologies is a heat pump. We need to train lots and lots of people to install those heat pumps. Lots of them will be gas engineers currently. Um, and we felt that the training wasn't getting people all the way to being able to have the confidence they needed. So, we came up with this idea that they should be able to get a free heat pump to install at home. And that's a program that we scaled last year. Loads of the stuff that we did last year has informed these tools in the toolbox. Um, so you'll see it throughout all of the exercises as an example that you can compare your work to and see how we did it.

The first sort of component in the toolbox is ambition. Um, and uh, I like to think about this just as going in with kind of almost delusional levels of ambition and then kind of staging it down from there. So just starting with the absolute maximum. And you'll see in this exercise here, this is around setting outlandish expectations. Um, I've put some pretty bullshy questions in here, like what's the maximum number of people you could reach or affect, and why is it fewer than the entire population? So, I want you to justify why you're not reaching everybody. And there probably is a really good reason. Maybe your intervention or your idea or your product is not relevant to everybody. Uh, maybe it wouldn't help them. Um, or maybe you want to target it to specific groups. But I want you to have that conversation from a state stepping down perspective rather than a stepping up perspective. And there are other things in here like what's the maximum impact on each person and why is it less than resolving the entire issue. So you can tell I'm really trying to get you to think what's the maximum thing to start with—like what's the biggest biggest most bold and ambitious version of this thing? How much would it cost? Um why couldn't you spend more? I think that's a really good question. like what's stopping you from spending more? If you had unlimited funds to spend on this issue, what would be the absolute maximum cost of that thing? Um, and there are a bunch of other questions there as well. So, this one's really just about setting the bar very, very high to begin with.

Next up, um, this exercise is around leverage points in the system, whichever system you might be working in. Um, and it's about looking at whether your piece of work is working within a system and uh using all of the rules and regulations of that system or it's kind of stepping all the way to the other end and challenging that system, changing things, maybe changing the purpose or the paradigm that that system sits within. Um, and in this exercise, you identify what kind of level your project or work is currently at and what it might look like if you stepped that up. So for example, lots of work promotes new norms. So it's maybe a public communication campaign to try and convince people to change their views on recycling for example. Um but there are other things that provide services to people. Uh provide buffers. So unstructured time or funds to enable them to actually make a change in their behavior. Um and this goes all the way up through information flows like uh adding accountability, creating partnerships, uh things like full cost pricing where you actually charge the people who are causing costs for the full amount of that cost to society. Um there are rules and structures and new institutions. Um and finally there's uh some levels around pivoting the purpose of the system. So um this is a really challenging one to think about. So that's why it's important to have a look at the start at home examples too.

In the next section we're talking about focus. So it's really important when you're scaling something to have a very clear idea about what is entirely necessary in your work and what's kind of nice to have but not necessary. So we have an exercise which we call finding the core and that is about listing all the qualities or characteristics or parts of your work. Um, so we've done that for start at home here on the left. Um, and then uh figuring out which of those you really need. So if for example you were going to step away from running this piece of work and another organization were going to take it forward, what would they definitely need to do in order to make it effective? And that might be informed by evaluation information that you already have, data you've collected about what works and what's necessary. But it's just really good. And the way that we categorize that is by saying what's core. We use this apple analogy. It's a bit cheesy. Uh but yeah, the vital part that can't be changed. Then there's flesh. These are parts that are really nice to have but probably could change a bit, probably would change depending on local context. And then you have the leaf which is like really nice to have but you don't need it. So just keeping that level of prioritization really clear in your minds is really helpful when you're moving through these steps.

Next up is really important. So, this is about routes to scale. Um, and at Nesta, there's—I'm sorry, there's so much text on these slides. When you download this later, you'll be able to see all of the detail of this, so I'm just going to explain it. Um, but at Nesta, we think about roughly six um routes to scale when we're designing work and interventions. So, these are things like influencing central government or local government. Um, setting up an organization that can deliver an intervention. Uh, creating a delivery network of partners. uh delivering it ourselves or funding someone else to do it. So there pro there might be other routes to scale for your organizations and your work um but those are the things that we do most often. So in this exercise you're going to map out all of those potential routes to scale and you're going to do some analysis of what's uh what the pros are, what the cons are, what makes that easy, um what the impact could be and how it would look. So you're kind of imagining what it would look like. You might be really set on the idea of influencing central government as the only way of making change and that often happens to us. We go okay yeah we'll just convince a government department to make a policy change but going through this process really helped us with start at home and helps us with lots of other projects too to think broader and maybe even to combine these different routes to scale together and have more impact. Um another of my favorites is finding the exit. So deciding when you would take a step back from working on this thing, when you might decide the problem is solved, so it no longer requires any work. Or you might decide that another organization should take it over or if it scales international policy, that might be a good moment to to find the exit. So this is just having some time to do that.

Next up, okay, this is my absolute favorite. It's relationships. And in this section, um, I put lots of time and thought into what kind of analysis would be useful and isn't the kind of thing that at Nesta we usually sit down and spend lots of time doing. So, um, I came up with this, um, name the MRI scan. Um, and that is a scan of your stakeholders for their motivations, their resources, and their influence, which are three key things. So what keeps them going? What's going to change their mind? What kind of resources they have available to them? Is it money? Is it power? Is it, you know, the ability to influence other people? And yeah, and then there's influence as well. So who are they influential to? Um, how can they change the system? How can they change other people's opinions? And that's what this scan is about. So you kind of box each of your groups of stakeholders on each row. You think about their motivations, their resources, and their influence. and you talk about what you actually want them to do. So having a really clear idea of those things makes it easy then to write messages or to reach out to them and say okay I think you're motivated by this you've got this resource I want you to influence this set of people and this is the action I want you to take just to make it really really clear to them.

Following on from that is the idea that um, and sometimes at Nesta we can get into a bit of a pattern of feeling like something needs to be perfect before we talk to external contacts about it. We'll work for ages on a project and go, "Yes, this is really, really good. We've done an RCT. We've got gold standard data on this. We can finally talk to people about it." By which point our external stakeholders have already come up with a similar idea or they've decided to go in a different direction and we haven't involved them quite enough. So this is really prompting everybody to think, okay, who are you going to speak to next? At this stage, you've got a good idea of some of the things you want people to do. So what are you going to say? How are you going to talk to them?

Um influence is the next uh category and I think this is really important. Um we hear a lot you know on the apprentice or on dragon's den about the power of a pitch. Um so there is an exercise in here about devising a powerful pitch. Um and we call this the accelerator pitch. Um and it's about setting three things. One is to make it really clear what the task is. So there's this issue, an action must be taken. Um the A is for approach. So like what's your solution? Why is it unique? Why is it better than all the other solutions? And then there's something called power where we talk about um what you have in your arsenal. So you might have good connections, you might have money, you might have resources, you might have influence and this is about saying we've got those things to make this happen and we want to bring you with us. And if the subtext of that is that if you don't get on board now, you're going to be left out. And that's something that I think is can be quite a squeamish feeling, you know, when you're trying to influence other people to make it clear to them what they might miss out on. It's really important to make that clear. And sometimes I've even gone a bit harder and said, "If you don't do this, we're going to go around you and we're going to make it happen and it's going to be embarrassing that you weren't a part of this and we don't want that to happen. So, let's make this work together." Um, so this again comes along with the ambition section where it's it's really about pushing yourself to be quite relentlessly annoying to other people um and being really pushy to get what you want to happen to happen.

The final topic is about resources. And this is partly a visioning exercise for if you had unlimited funding and partly about understanding what you do actually have. So what skills and uh and uh connections do you have that you can make use of and what money do you have? Um if you've got loads of money, great, good for you. um if you don't this is still a really good exercise for figuring out what you should do next and how you might uh maximize the impact of what you're doing. So in this um the first question is around like how much money do you think you need to actually scale and I would encourage everyone to set that maximum number like what do you think is actually the the thing that would get this whole issue over the line that would solve this problem. Um, the next one is a much smaller number. So, you know, £200,000. What would you do with that? How would that work? And you can pick a number that works for you as well. Um, and then how would you use 2.5 million? So, that's a really chunky amount. Um, and this is just about setting a few different sizes, a bit like Goldilocks to figure out, you know, what would it look like if you were forced to spend maybe this is more than you would ever imagine spending. Um but what what could you do in addition or what would you do differently? So that is a very whistle stop tour through a handful of these exercises. There are many more in the toolbox and I would really encourage you to have a little look through after the event. Um and do get in touch as well. There's a link on the website to share any of your thoughts or feedback or questions ideas and we'd be very happy to chat with any of you about how you're using this in your work too. That's it from me and I'll hand back to Joe. Should we go up?

Joe Owen: Thanks so much, Louis. Um, it's a very cool bit of work. Uh, and you should be very proud and the team have done a wonderful job. Um, so thank you very much. And please do all download it afterwards, share it with your teams, send it far and wide, and Louis has invited you to be really annoying and hassle, which means if you want to speak to him about it, you can just bombard him. Maybe we should hand out your phone number afterwards and people can just bombard you directly. Um, so we're on to the panel discussion bit. Um, I'm going to start this by just asking all of the panel about how they built and scaled their delivery network so we can all understand a little bit about the sort of different skills and experiences that we've got here in the different journeys. Um, I might, if it's all right, just do the boring thing of just shooting down the panel. Um, and so Shaan, I don't know if you knew this when you sat next to me, but that means you're up first.

Shaan Jindal: Excellent. I'm happy with that. Um, hi everyone. Um, so I'll just give you a little just uh um reminder about what start at home is. So it's a scheme that's giving um gas heating engineers a funded heat pump and support to install in their own home to overcome challenges around sort of feeling experienced in their skills and confidence um after doing a sort of heat short heat pump conversion course. And what we did to to sort of uh start scaling this or to come to the idea that this was a good thing to scale was to start by piloting the idea. So we worked with a trade association up in Scotland um to pilot this with 36 engineers. We gave half of them um a heat pump to install in their own home and half of them just received training. And that sort of gave us sort of um the data and the information. We conducted interviews and surveys to understand that this was something that was sort of worth doing having the outcomes that we were expecting and the outcomes that we were wanting to happen. So it sort of showed the impact but also is really helpful for showing the the demand. So working with this trade association meant that they could email out to to their sort of um network of gas heating engineers. We understood sort of what the takeup rate was between sort of receiving email clicking through actually going through with the scheme and that gives you the confidence to know okay not only is this impactful but there's the demand for something like this out there. So that was sort of step one I guess alongside that so step 1B we were at the same time building a scaling group. So we were identifying people in in the industry whether that be heat pump manufacturers um uh training providers, installers, uh engineers, support companies as well as central government, local authorities and devolved government to build a scaling group to basically sort of get the idea in their heads right from the get-go. But also to get feedback on the idea at an early stage to understand um sort of what we might be missing as people who aren't fully embedded within the the heat pump sector in the same way that others are. um and also to sort of um sort of uh build an understanding of how we can sort of build something that that can be scaled in a way that can be scaled.

That brings us to sort of February last year where we actually like Louis said started scaling this in earnest. So in order to do this we we started by having conversations with literally anybody and anyone who we thought could scale um something like start at home. Um, and it was really great that we had that scaling group because that provided the basis to start start off with there to to to sort of build those connections and and go further. And having the scaling group meant that we had that rapport already. So, it was quite a comfortable conversation and quite we were able to be quite open um because we knew these people already and they knew us to sort of um be be sort of open about how things can be scaled. Um this quickly led to us identifying a model where different people in the scaling group could essentially work together form a partnership to offer starter home as it exists right now. Um and what we did was once we identified that we went back to everyone including those who said no not for us and we we went in with a strong pitch of this is essentially the model we've identified it's working for these people let's see how it can work for you too we think it can work and this put us in a really good position by uh by essentially June last year having three to four um start home partner schemes up and running where we launched sort of formally our website and the scheme as a whole um since then we we've grown to um about eight or nine schemes at the moment um partly through having that natural interest from having sort of launched something quite proactively um but also through a sort of concerted effort to continue reaching out to new people um and finding sort of new partners who might be able to work with us. Um we've also sort of realized the importance of of um improving sort of quality checks sort of process that we've had. So this wasn't something that was high on our agenda when we first started. we were sort of looking at how can we get this scaled um but quickly we realized we need to sort of start thinking about how we can ensure the quality in the long term and especially as sort of new players start approaching us that we don't know so well um so developing that was really important as part of our sort of efforts to scale and I guess finally just to say right now we're we're working in a way where we want to ensure the longevity of the scheme for as long as it's needed um you know context sort of shifting right now it's sort of um it's quite dependent on on sort of government um grants and funding but if that were to change how can how can we make sure that data and can still be offered. So, we're looking at other models and other routes that ensure that it sort of is resilient in the in the long term as so so long as it's needed. Um, looking at different partners we can work with, different models. Um, that's kind of the the journey so far.

Joe Owen: Thank you, Shaan. There's stuff in there I'm keen to come back on, but to continue my journey down the panel. Sophie, tell us about the story of FoodCycle.

Sophie Tebbetts: Yeah, so um, hi everyone. I'm Sophie. I'm the CEO of FoodCycle and what we do is we nourish communities through community dining. Um so we started around 16 years ago. Um and it was born out of the idea that surplus food, loneliness and food poverty shouldn't all coexist in society together. Um and when we first started it was very grassrootsy. It was a couple of students actually in a university um launching it and sort of not uh waiting for perfect actually so to stop progress. Um and what we found is as we started to grow and build networks within our communities that we were really clear that this shouldn't be a centralized model. Um where the power that within our model we felt is is the people and the volunteers delivering it as a volunteer-led organization. Um so through sort of an iterative process we really got clear on what our role was as an organization in terms to build and scale that and really we see ourselves as the central sort of facilitator and convenor for um community initiatives. So we provide the frameworks, the structure, the quality control, safeguarding, food safety, all the exciting bits so that the people in local communities can focus on what's really important and core to the mission which is connection um and building relationships and community resilience. Um so since then we have scaled uh nationally. We are now have eight and a half thousand volunteers who deliver our service every single week. Um we're in over 90 communities across England and Wales. Um and I think really from our learning and journey of that I think we we definitely value trust and connection over control and it's it's finding that balance and I think that's how we have gone on our scaling journey.

Joe Owen: Thank you Sophie. Bayo.

Bayo Adelaja: uh hello everyone. Uh um at Do It Now Now. So, Do It Now Now started as a community um in 2016. I essentially was trying to figure out how to solve a problem that I had experienced which was just corporate stagnation. Essentially, I just felt so lost in the workplace and felt like the things I was deeply passionate about were not didn't have a central outlet. And the thing that I was passionate about at the time and thankfully have uh have remained passionate about is community development. How do we support people who have experienced social um um social issues at um experienced the negative side of government institutions in whatever way uh shape or form uh to create solutions themselves that live in community that uh breathe in community and the multiplying community. Um and the work that we well I did I should say—jeez I did in the three years before we officially registered as a CIC was just talking to everybody. Um at a certain point I found that I was doing I was meeting uh at least three new people a day um in my calendar. So, I was one of those uh I still am an obsessive Calendly appointment schedule user and uh I was just really interested in hearing absolutely everyone's stories because at the time, while it's better now, there was just not enough data about what the actual experience of uh particularly black people but global majority lived experience leaders was in social systems.

Those conversations led to the very first design of Do It Now Now which was how do we train people to be able to create their own solutions and uh then that changed to how do we put money in the hands of those people so that they can deliver those solutions over time and then consistently support them over time to build the tools and resources internally as a human being um with them their staff but also the infrastructure and the understanding within themselves. So they don't have to rely on us, but they can come back to us to help them get to the next stage. So mapping those stages of uh of transition from what we would call a level one to a level two, level two to to three and trying to identify who those movers and shakers are within our community that will be a shining light to others and putting a spotlight on them and celebrating stories like a daughter who does one of our programs and uh tells her mom to do the next one and supporting them as a family unit to see what they can do together separately and within their local neighborhood to not only build something that we can support them in understanding the impact of, but also to inspire others to build something. Not everyone needs to run a multi-million pound organization, but it's good for the soul and the human to do something in your local community that is uh solving a problem that you've experienced.

Joe Owen: Thank you very much, John. Last, but by no means least.

Lord John Bird: Oh, thank you. Um well um I started with the idea that uh virtually all of the people that I met on the streets in the late 80s and the early 90s, the rough sleepers um predominantly were people who had drink and drug problems. Um and what they were doing to um feed their habits was uh prostitution, shoplifting, uh breaking into cars um and aggressive begging. So I wanted to address that issue and to me it was a question of how do I deliver—I'm using your word maybe in a different way. How do you deliver to those people so that what you do is you give them something to do so that they don't have to become criminalized in order to feed their habits. I don't know if you know the city of London, but if you do know the city of London, you will find in the evening uh the the all the pubs are absolutely full of people who get pissed as [ __ ] Um, and they probably go home afterwards and maybe take a bit of cocaine and do all sorts of things like that. Not one of them has to rob your granny to do that. So, I thought, why not democratize this kind of addiction, this kind of corruption, and give the homeless the chance of doing what people are doing in the city of London and in the Houses of Parliament. So, Why not do that? So the best thing to do was to find something legitimate so that they could make some money legitimately and decriminalize them immediately.

So that's what we did. uh we immediately ran into the problem of 501 homeless organizations in London alone who with exception of one or two hated what I wanted to do and the reason for that is because I wasn't a volunteer I didn't work for shelter shack shill shed or what of all the other ones and I wasn't a person who had a degree in social upholstery So therefore I was a persona non grata and my program was persona non grata. So therefore in order to deliver I had to do two things. I had to convince the homeless that they needed this rather than the grief that goes with the police and members of the public turning against them. and I had to win over the homeless organizations in order to be able to socially deliver if you see what I mean. Uh, and that was a pretty difficult task and it was only by calling the—you I think you got to be bright and clever like me and you've got to be a bit of a showoff. So, I got all of these people together uh and they started slagging me off. Is this all right? Are you all right with this?

Joe Owen: Yeah, crack on.

Lord John Bird: I often talk about what I want to talk about and they say, "But you're not here for that." Anyway, uh so anyway, so I got them all together and then when they slagged me off, I was giving money to homeless people who were doing this with it. And I said to them, "What are they doing at the moment? They're robbing. They're doing all sorts of things." And then they castigated me. And then if you want to deliver, use a bit of nouse. And then they said, "But who are you, John Bird?" And all this sort of stuff. And then I said to them, I said, "Why don't you get behind me? Wouldn't it be nice?" And I've got a loud voice. I've got the loudest voice in the House of Lords. Why wouldn't it be nice if for once, just once, you supported somebody who had been homeless, who had been in prison, who had been in the streets drunk and drugged out of his mind, and who was going to do something completely different. And they all shut up. And not one of them came after me because I'd pull the class card. So in a minute in a way if you want to scale up if you want to deliver you've got to have a really brilliant piece of story and that's why it's so wonderful you were talking about stories—that's I only tell stories not anecdotes. stories—an anecdote is like something that you can extrapolate to prove your point. a story is getting as near as possible to the person with the problem so that you can then or the the task that you set so that then when you tell it to one person a thousand people understand that's what I did. I don't know if I have answered the question.

Joe Owen: No no that's—

Lord John Bird: I don't really care anyway.

Joe Owen: thank you and there was there was lots in that that resonated with things in the toolkit uh certain things about what people in the House of Commons and the city of London do is not in the toolkit um and you won't find it there. Right, I'm going to ask—I'm going to abuse my privilege and ask a few questions before I open to the floor and I wanted to come back to you Bayo on the biggest barriers that you've faced in scaling and how you identified them and then sort of designed around them.

Bayo Adelaja: Um so in addition to supporting individuals to build their own organizations and so on, we have our own programs that we run that we try to um—we've been doing a lot of work. Actually the first piece of it was funded by Nesta and I think 21/22—time flies. Um but the thing that we learned the most about trying to take our leadership entrepreneurship um programs into community organizations led by uh alumni of those programs is um that they are dependent on all of the powers that be that we are but with even less influence, even less um financial ability, um fundraising capacity, staff time, uh energy um and they they are getting rather unfortunately beaten up by the system again and again. It's almost retraumatizing running um uh an organization as a lived experience leader. And that's something that we're constantly trying to support um our service users with. But with that, we had to really think about putting frameworks in their hands and then recognizing that they didn't actually have the energy to deliver to the standard or the expectation that we had designed because we designed it to be the thing that we could deliver. So there was a lot of—there is still a lot of work that goes into adapting every single framework to every single delivery partner and really understanding not only who they are but who do they represent and figuring out that kind of challenge or that um that that um that difficulty between recognizing that everyone is unique but also recognizing the scale is necessary because the problem is so large. Um, so we're we're constantly kind of fighting that that um that contradiction if you would. Um, and the the main thing that we do is—it was I suppose it hasn't really changed. I—the only difference is I'm not the one doing most of it anymore. The team is. it's listening to them constantly—listening to them and trying to figure out where we can come alongside them and maybe take some of that burden so that they're not doing it by themselves. So I suppose the difference in listening um and listening to you think about what you do is that we're almost forced to be centralizing the system where we don't want to be we kind of go out say we want you guys to do this and that. It wouldn't it be great and they're like no we want you to do all of that and we'll do this bit and um—

Sophie Tebbetts: but I think you're still focusing on—I think there's there's similarity there because what you're saying is you're giving them the space to do what they're really good at, right? and you're giving them the space to do the bit that there is valuable to them and then you're—so there's empowerment within that without kind of the pressure and the mental load of all the other things that are extremely difficult.

Bayo Adelaja: Exactly. Exactly. and just trying to trying to make sure that we are never a crutch to them um in their leadership journey and really trying to support them to to to lean on us when it's necessary, but also kind of provide through our own influencing and advocacy and um trying to take that structural burden um figuring out ways that we can transfer financial support um uh connections, information to them so that they can hopefully leapfrog us. to the plan.

Joe Owen: I want to pick up on the point that you guys just made of the—like the difference in your delivery models and one of the questions that we actually got through which I think is a good one for you to answer Sophie um about FoodCycle whereas you explained delivers a lot through local volunteers and partners. Um the question we got through is how do you maintain consistency and quality when you go through a really distributed delivery and how do you guys approach that?

Sophie Tebbetts: Yeah. So, because effectively what we do is—well, we want the experience to be like a pop-up restaurant, right? So, we we want dignity and dining. We want uh sort of the table of choice, not table of need. Is that—that's what we're trying to deliver. Um but we also don't want to be like McDonald's. We want every single community uh dining project to have its own feel because it has to reflect the community that's in. It has to reflect the volunteers delivering it, the guests that are coming, the food that we have. Um so what we have is we just have our core core kind of mission that we have to stay true to. So every project will be different and it—I want it to be different and when we go to the different service uh projects I like the variance and I know that like in Peterborough they've got—they give all their food surplus that they don't use to some buddies in the allotment and I know that in um our kind of Liverpool uh project the guests have an menu option of like six different dishes every time they come even though it's wildly complicated and they could do it much simpler but that's what they do and that's their their flavor of of their project. But um we have these core sort of tenants. So it every project has to be welcoming. Every project has to deliver good food and good conversation. So we kind of have that sort of framework that core FoodCycle that runs through it. And if you hit that then go up and down within that within that matrix um is is how we try and do it.

Joe Owen: Um Shaan, I was going to come to you next on um one of the very many impressive things that you and the team did was um aligning industry and government and consumers within a sort of single delivery network. What what did you learn from that experience?

Shaan Jindal: Yeah. Um, so I think probably one of the main things I've learned is—is when you're starting out trying to reach out to to these different actors, I guess, is to identify what their role is in in in what you're trying to do and what their strengths are. So I guess to put that as an example, we started by reaching out to um UK government to say, you know, can you run this start at home thing? We also reached out to heat pump manufacturers, can you say, can you run this start at home thing? And now UK government said to us, I'm not not sure. it seems like, you know, we don't have the right skills for it. We can't provide the support to engineers. We can't provide the kit, etc. Oh, that's a shame. We were hoping you're going to do it. Um, industry manufacturers said to us, well, you know, this is more of a government thing. They need to provide the support. We don't have the support to do this. We wouldn't make any profit, etc., etc. But what they're both actually saying is like the other person's got a skill that works with our skill.

So with the with the industry manufacturers they can—they can basically—you know sorry not manufacturers—the industry in general has the skills to provide the support to engineers to help them install the heat pump in their own home to sort of train them up and do that. They can also provide the kit. The government has government funding for heat pumps. So that matches quite well with that sort of that profit question. And it's about identifying, I guess, and focusing in on when you have those conversations, um, which part of, you know, of the of the idea you kind of want them to take on most and focusing in on that rather than scaring them with the whole will you run this whole big start at home thing and, you know, just just go with it. So I think that's kind of one of the main things perhaps. Um, and I think it's difficult to—we so we only learned that through doing—we made the mistake of asking the big question first. if you're able to maybe pre-empt it, you know, through some of the things in the toolkit that Louis mentioned, perhaps the sort of MRI scan thing can kind of help start to do that. Um, I think it kind of just shows them, you know, what how they're sort of filling in a missing piece where someone else has sort of done the bulk of the work. Um, I think a sort of a related point is probably around um the uh I guess the things that they showing them what the value is to them. So um it seems quite obvious but it kind of changes the conversation that you have quite a lot.

So when we speak to UK government the conversation we have is quite similar to what we might have internally around uh you know we need this number of heat pump installers so this thing will help with that and uh you know we have these net zero targets and this will help in that sort of way. But when you're speaking to the the sort of manufacturers the conversation is very different. It's you know they're not as concerned about that as we are or government are. the conversation is more about perhaps business models and and profit and uh making sure that the engineers coming out are um skilled and and not going to sort of do their company a bad name. Uh things like this and so the conversation actually becomes very different and feels like you're almost not even talking about the same project. Um and so I guess it's getting in that mindset of of figuring out what their values are and trying to match your conversation to that. Um perhaps just a final point on this as well um is I think what I've what I've learned is that I've sort of—we've become the go-to contact for everyone in this space interested in start at home which um even in times where you know it might be that two different actors or people can talk to each other without us. And so that can sometimes be a bit annoying. It's like why—why are you messaging me? if if you want to know about the government rules, contact Ofgem. Don't talk to us. But actually, it's really really—it's a really good opportunity um for your scaling to sort of uh be part of that still. Um so you can kind of capitalize on it and by being part of that conversation, you can ensure that conversations is being had in a way which uh can can push ambition or you know if something is sort of being misunderstood, you're there to sort of get it back on track. um and to make sure that you know that that link is being made in in the correct way or in a way which is sort of most fruitful to to everyone. So I think even if it might feel sort of a bit strange to be in a in a—you know once you sort of reach that scale point uh and people are sort of checking sort of what legal things might might be—you're like this isn't a question for me—it's actually very useful to be in that space.

Joe Owen: Um John I'm going to come back to you. Um The Big Issue scaled globally but you maintained a really clear mission. Um what did you keep as the sort of like absolute non-negotiables as you scaled across different countries?

Lord John Bird: Well, we um we certainly ran into a load of problems. I think the big problem and I'm speaking with an accent which I hope might give it away. Uh is you'd meet these very very big egos who'd want to do it their own way. uh and they would complain at you that actually they were better at it than you uh and all that kind of stuff. I would say the uh if you're trying to do what The Big Issue tried to do which is almost to create a franchise. So what you do is you get people who you don't—you know you might give them a bit of money but you don't give them everything. You might supply them with editorial and you'll give them the model and then they'll go on and do it. But I found—I found that scaling up and becoming the international network of street papers was like pulling teeth because you had all of these people who wanted to put their mark on it who—and I would say one of the principal reasons why social entrepreneurism is so small is because we haven't learned the art of humility.

And that's difficult coming from somebody like me. uh uh because I always say I want you to be humble but please don't ask me to join you there then so uh and I think that's what happens with a lot of founders they they actually want you to be humble because if you're humble then you can work with other people and you can you you you won't have an impact of ego hitting ego so I would say that we managed to do it but one of the things I always insist—insisted on was that the the person who was on the streets paid for the paper. You didn't give it away. And the reason for that, and it's from my own experience of being a slum boy brought up in a Catholic orphanage and suffering people doing things for me, that it was really really important that we gave the the homeless the chance of making their own decisions and husbanding their own money and learning how to look after themselves. because you imagined every one of those could join you having got out of the class system, the underclass system.

I think one of the biggest problems in the world is that we have a look at—we look at people in need and people in poverty as them over there. They're another species. And I think this is—we've got to break that. We—every person we help we in sense have to say they have to become our neighbors. They have to become the people who may marry our children or—or maybe not uh or whatever. They're the kind of people that you know we would bring home with us and potentially. And so I've always insisted that we don't have that them and us which is the kind of Judeo-Christian thing. Unfortunately, I speak as a devout ex-Catholic uh and uh uh and and you know, it is a real issue that—that if you're looking at people as oh you know then—oh then you're really keeping them where they are and you are actually ascending away from them and that is why I think it's so important what you're saying uh about the storytelling about the lived experience all those sorts of things. We have to chip away at our supremacy uh because it's an artificial supremacy and hopefully in the end we create an egalitarianism which brings people forward and I would say the biggest problem I've ever had is that I've always had to deal with a bunch of egomaniacs who want to say we do it better than you.

Joe Owen: impressive accent. Um I'm about—I didn't mention the—

Lord John Bird: No, no, you didn't. You didn't.

Joe Owen: It was very subtle. Um uh I am gonna come to—I've got loads of questions, but I feel like lots of people in the room and online also have questions and I did promise I'd leave loads of time. So I am going to come to the audience in one second. Uh well, you can have longer than one second, but I thought I'd ask Louis if he had any reflections from hearing the conversation. um and what it meant for the sort of scaling toolbox.

Louis Stupple-Harris: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's it's magic to hear all of those stories and I think you're already exhibiting a lot of the things that I'm trying to encourage. There's there's loads of stuff about good pitching, Lord John, you—you talked about convincing people and getting them over the line and and pushing them to try something new and get working with that reluctance and how do you get them to to do it? Um, and Bayo, you talked about understanding what delivery partners are able to do, what—you know, what they're able to do and what they're best doing and where their skills are and all of that kind of stuff. So vital. Sophie, you talked about empowering people to work within their local context and really encouraging them to, you know, embrace the local uh kind of like culture, I think actually is the word. Um, which is really really great. And there's a lot in the kind of section around finding the core of your um work there. Um and Shaan, I loved your—your stuff around, you know, being really specific about what you want each stakeholder to do and then not—not taking that middle person role reluctantly, but saying, you know, actually we're a bit of a power breaker here. This is really positive for us. So, yeah, magical all round. Thanks.

Joe Owen: Thanks, Steve. Thank you.

Lord John Bird: Can I—can I say that was good? Yeah. He should be sat here.

Joe Owen: um questions. There's the lady at the back. Um I'm going to do a bunch of three and I'm going to go to a gentleman here and then here.

Mary Abdo: Should I go first? Yeah, you go first. Yeah. Um my name is Mary Abdo. I work at the Center for Evidence and Implementation. We actually work in the building on the first floor. So come and say hello. Uh I have a question which is uh when did you start thinking about like deliberately about scaling because I suppose some of the work that we do with organizations we find that they might be I don't know six seven 10 years into doing their work and they've never actually explicitly thought about what it would look like to scale and then they might make very different choices if they had it all over to—to do again. And I suppose so—when did you start thinking about it and what do you wish you'd been doing from the start that you started doing once you started thinking explicitly about scaling—like how did it change your strategy to do that?

Joe Owen: Thank you so much. And then uh there's the gentleman here.

Lucas: Yes. Uh my name is Lucas. I work for Elevate. Great. Thanks for sharing your journey with us. uh I know the discussion is around scaling but perhaps I want to go one—one step before and understand how critical is early involvement of this network to the success of of scaling. I know uh Shaan you mentioned that the first step was piloting but I—I—I believe that there is even a step zero that is defining the problem and using the network to frame this problem. So yes this nice question thanks so much.

Joe Owen: and then just in front here. Yeah.

Mohammad Michelle: Hi Mohammad Michelle I run a consult canvas and we work with government departments around scaling some of their initiatives. I think the question here today is the—the idea the concept and kind of maintaining the integrity of the concept drives quite heavily the delivery network that you can have. The looser you are with how you define the boundaries around what your product or service is, the more open you are to other alternatives. I think John raised it perfectly when he talked about egos in the room, but actually a lot of that comes from how um authentic you want that initial piece to be and um just a conversation around how has that influenced your choice in delivery networks. So maybe to Louis, how does that drive some of the conversations in the toolkit around what networks possible depending on how true you want to remain to the original challenge?

Joe Owen: Great. So we've got when did you think about scale and what did you wish you'd known? How do you work with the network to define the problem? And then how does the sort of initial concept determine what you do? Who would like to jump in on any of those? Shaan, do you want to go in first?

Shaan Jindal: I've got um—Oh, I forgot mic. Not used to having a Britney mic. Um I guess just maybe to answer the—the question around um how early to go to scaling and also I guess partly as well when—when to start and and things like that. Um totally agree with you. you—you need to know the landscape before you—before you start piloting. Um and um—but I—I think there's—there's a perhaps a slight difference between um talking to certain stakeholders and certain types of people to understand the landscape and what the problems and solutions uh or opportunity areas might be and there's also probably a similar and overlap but also different chunk of people who might also be um scalers as well and they're also perhaps slightly different conversations at different stages—sort of identifying what the pilot might look like stage and the scaling stage.

That said, I think the—the time to start thinking about scaling is right at the start and that is what we—we sort of did at start at home um basically at conception—is to sort of get these those industry and sort of governmental people I talked about together to um to just ensure that we are tackling the right problem I guess and also to ensure that what we're the the pilot solution that we're thinking about sort of running could actually be run by the people who might take it on eventually. So I think that's why it's really important to to have that conversation sort of right at the start to ensure what you're developing can actually work at scale because if you develop something sort of independently uh and then come to scale then it may not actually work in the molds in which all these different people are working in. I think as well the co-creation sort of point comes through if you start early as well people might feel more able to sort of take something on if they've sort of actually influenced it more. And so it kind of works—works both ways. because it benefits the product you're sort of or thing you're creating, but also the ability for it to scale um and also gives it that sort of sense of being able to run on its own more perhaps um because it's being created in such a way that that other people can—can be involved. Um so yeah.

Joe Owen: Anyone else want to cut—Sophie?

Sophie Tebbetts: Um I say in terms of when we at FoodCycle started thinking about uh when to scale was probably a year or two in I think we—you know it was very grassroots to begin with. Um—so was going to say it was when I came in um so I—I'm not the founder of FoodCycle. Um but they sort of when they'd been running in a couple of years and they were like actually what we have is really good. How can we do more of this? Um, so that was sort of my role to come in and to look at that. Um, and I think one thing that I wish that we had probably learned and did earlier is we're a very tangible practical frontline delivery service. So we were very good head down getting in doing getting the volunteers being busy with building all the structures and probably where we were lacking was actually that network and and being more part of those wider services and wider conversations and understanding where our role is within that uh ecosystem. Um and I think if we had thought about that whilst also thinking about just very practical structural things to—I—um I think we could have probably grown larger than we are at the moment.

Joe Owen: Well, do you want to come in?

Lord John Bird: Um, well, um—

Joe Owen: have to if you don't want to.

Lord John Bird: Yeah, I'll take a note.

Joe Owen: Okay, fine. John, when did you think about scale?

Lord John Bird: Um, I didn't. Um, it was forced on me. And the reason it was forced on me—and—and I think this is very interesting when we talk about the heat pumps. Um I think—I think that evangelizing about heat pump—heat pumps or evangelizing about what you're doing um proselytizing—getting—get—you know spreading the message beyond the people that you're working with so to speak or what you're doing so that people get an appetite for it.

uh what happened with us, we were so uh incredibly uh instantaneously uh off the—off the Richter scale. Um we had lots of TV and then we had people from Germany and Poland and Russia and all—all over the world coming in. Uh the first place we started was um in—in Hamburg. I mean after the UK and there was a magazine called Hinz&Kunzt which I'm sorry to say does sound pretty rude. Uh uh but you know they immediately took the model and they ran with it and they developed it and they did a—a much better job than us in terms of editorial in terms of uh in terms of the design. But what they weren't so good at was dealing with the most wretched of people on earth. uh they—they kind of they only really wanted to work with the respectable homeless and I think that was—you know you imagine what you're doing uh oh it's it's the idea of the deserving poor and the undeserving poor and that was so interesting because that happened throughout the world when we found that there were people saying oh I'll work with them but I won't work with them or whatever so we we had scale and—and um what's the other word sorry—delivery forced upon us if I was doing it again the one thing I would have done uh to make us more work more consistently is to have developed what we did later which was called Big Issue Invest and Big Issue Invest is an absolutely brilliant—I mean it deals with five to 600 social businesses that we've uh supported uh in—in the last uh 20 years uh 22 years um I would have done more of that.

I would have wanted to link up so that when we went to any one country, we were offering more than just dealing with the most abject of people. We'd be dealing with present—preventing people becoming abject. And I—we tried this in Africa. We tried this in Kenya and in South Africa and in Namibia. And it didn't quite work because we weren't very good at it. So if I was having my time again um and doing it again, I—I would certainly have brought in social investment at a very early stage because what we were doing was social investment from the first moment, but it was with people who—who uh you know the most wretched amongst people and it would have been good to work with other areas as—as we're now doing.

Joe Owen: Next round of questions. I've got—Why don't we do the three in a row? It's—It's too tempting.

Sophie Livingston: Hi. Um I'm Sophie Livingston. I'm the chief exec of uh Little Village. We're a pan London network of baby banks and I'm also the chair of the Baby Bank Alliance which brings together um the incredible baby banks who operate across the country. And that was a deliberate decision because we didn't want to scale up Little Village beyond London. We wanted to work with the incredible mostly women social entrepreneurs running baby banks across the country. The thing we're wrestling with in both organizations really is that balance between helping people who really need help now and there are an awful lot of families who don't uh who can't afford items for their families now, but also um the—the situation that they're in being one that is solvable if we solve child poverty. Um, and I know that feels an insurmountable challenge and probably will get worse in the next few months, but it's not something we should sight of. And I just wanted to ask the panel about that balance between the really long-term putting yourself out of business goal with the scaling up goal.

Celia: Brilliant. Hi. Um I'm Celia from Girl Guiding and um just in the process of moving towards scaling up some really co-created participatory innovations. Really interested in any tips that you've got for how to build lived experience voice into your bigger structures once things start to grow. Um because it's really quite easy to work out how to do it with the—with the pilot phase. Um, and this is uh boxing me a little.

Charles Freeman: Great. I'm Charles Freeman from Creative Network South, which is an advocacy organization for creative organ—creative businesses um mainly in Hampshire, many of whom are social businesses. Um, my question actually bit inspired by Lord Bird is um about ego. Um, many of the most inspiring businesses, social businesses I've worked with have been led by inspirational people and I wonder how you nurture that inspiration and original vision as you scale.

Joe Owen: Three excellent questions. Thank you very much. I wonder—but I might come to you first because actually there was a question I really wanted to ask you but uh I forgo the time which is very similar to the second question which is how do you maintain—how do you ensure that scaling doesn't dilute the mission which I think is exactly what your question was around how do you maintain lived experience in the conversation while you do it it's very similar sort of thing so might pick on you for that one if that's okay—

Bayo Adelaja: absolutely I think um well it also speaks to Charles's question about ego really, which is recognizing that one story is not every story. I mean um we—we can all think uh probably that um the danger of the single story which is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's um phrasing which is extremely true and it does speak to actually the very beginnings of Do It Now Now recognizing that there were just too few stories of leadership of social good of in—in context of our work—black people in being placed in—in a light that was positive and solution focused as a—as opposed to kind of needing the world to um needing the—the solutions to be created for us or um on our behalf. The way that we've done it and the way that I tend to look at it is the moment I became a full-time employee of Do It Now Now I stopped being my service user.

It was very easy at the beginning to recognize that because of all the challenges that I was experiencing um to the unfortunate embarrassment of my mother. I have told people that I was on benefits. I was a couple of couches away from homelessness trying to start Do It Now Now. I was—ra—it was based on stubbornness because um no one believed that I should be doing this and I was just so determined despite the obvious privilege that I had that I wouldn't rely on that which is ridiculous in hindsight but that I would try my best to do this thing that thankfully we have done and it was unbelievably difficult—harder than anything should be when you are all you're trying to do is help people—and taking that and recognizing that while I could viscerally feel the emotion of those moments in my life, recognizing how hard it was to show up to things like this and um win awards knowing that I didn't have a place to live was really difficult at the time.

But it's also the same thing that people are dealing with right now that people that we support that are celebrated and have all of these achievements are struggling day by day to keep the lights on in their organization and like I said retraumatized by the difficulty of running these things of ch—of talking to people. the safety um of—of um their physical safety but also mental safety in uh being delivering services in in spaces that are not necessarily always welcoming to them. So for—for me the—I think the thing—it's deep empathy um and constantly trying to figure out how to ensure that the language, the vision and the—the kind of practicalities are speaking to exactly how they feel right now. and recognizing that that will change because a 25-year-old um today is a 25-year-old 10 years from now—that language that they need will change that the challenges that they're facing will change the way that they want to be spoken to will change. So it's constantly—constantly listening, constantly trying to ensure that we are never taking any piece of feedback for granted and that we do try to really ensure that we are respectful of everything that they give to us whether it's a—a shrug as to like um to—to not engage in something or full attention or if it's a passive um uh passive negativity because all of those things speak to tiredness as to wanting to—to engage fully, but also give you a lot of data as to um as to what you should be um trying to—to shift and change. So, um I hope that helped.

Joe Owen: Um Sophie, I was going to maybe pick on you for the um the juggling between the sort of um those who need help now and what you want to do in the short term versus um as you put it, do you try and put yourself out of business by focusing on the big long-term ones? you've obviously focused on the—like on the former but have you ever sort of foraying into the latter?

Sophie Tebbetts: I think um when you do something like frontline service like your organization um it's something you always grapple with because you—you realize that you are part—you know sometimes you feel like a sticking plaster don't you—because you could—like I could wear myself out endlessly doing this but actually we're not addressing the real root cause of the problem and how can we—how can we change that but I think there's real power uh in that frontline delivery because what you have is you have as we're talking about the stories and the voice of those people using our services. And so something that we really spoke about at Food Cycle and recognize is actually we have a role to play. There are brilliant organizations who are really good at campaigning and policy and—and it's about being part of those conversations and being a really good partner in passing on those stories and saying, "Look, we'll do—we can do this and we can do this really well and we can give you this information and we can give you these stories and we can raise the voices of the people that we're helping. know you do the bit that you're really good at and that is the policy and campaigning because they're very different skill sets and I think that's okay to admit as well you know and we're all part of that journey and I think it's about within the sector working collaboratively to make that greater change.

Lord John Bird: do you want to come in—yeah I—I was very interested in the comment of how do you get lived experience into an organization and how do you keep there when you're going on—it is incredible—incredibly difficult and one of the reasons is most of the people with lived experience when they start contributing to the well-being of of what happens they tend to move on. So we've had many many people who have helped us sell what we're trying to do but then they move on if hopefully into something better. Sometimes they don't. They drift back down. But lived experience is—is the—is the cornerstone of The Big Issue because it starts with my lived experience and then it I managed to tack on a number of people. Unfortunately, at one stage we had so much lived experience that we spent most of the time knocking 10 colors of [ __ ] out of uh who's got the most lived experience, you know? So, you do need to have a bit of a balance. But that's um something which I think we always struggle with. And I am one of those kind of—I'm a bit Maoist sometimes. Forgive me, I don't mean killing 80 million people, but I mean in the sense of kind of saying why is it that there's everybody up there? What about the people down there? And you kind of bring people up. Um I'm always asking those questions. Uh where is the lived experience? I don't give a toss really for the organization if it is not supplying the needs of the people with the lived experience. And that's why I've fallen out with numbers of people who have forgot that and thought that we're there for the—for the—for The Big Issue rather than the vendors.

That's one thing. Can I also—I went into parliament—I was asked um at the 10th anniversary of The Big Issue John Bird you started The Big Issue 10 years ago what are you going to do for the next 10 or 20 years and I said well for the last 10 years I've been mending broken clocks and the next 10 or 20 years I want to prevent the clocks breaking and—break—preventing the clocks breaking—the reasons—reason why I went into parliament. I went into parliament and I said to the House of Commons and the House of Lords combined almost 2,000 people and I said to them, "Not one of you I have met are here to get rid of poverty. What you're really all here is variations on making the poor a little bit more comfortable. You're not investing your 90—your 400 billion pounds a year that you invest in poverty on prevention or on cure. You're investing it all on handholding.

And until we change that—so I've been fighting a—a losing battle. Uh but I do think I'm getting somewhere. uh because you know with governments you know the new government came in and I said to them before they came in if you're going to use the stuff—you know the mechanisms the thinking that is existing already and or that you've used in different administrations you're not going to get anywhere because nobody is addressing poverty prevention and poverty cure. There is nobody. And that's why I've got a bill going through the house to create a commissioner for prevention. That means somebody—and cure. That means somebody or a group of people who are there specifically to say let's get rid of poverty.

And when you raise that people say but that's impossible. We said you know the NHS was created when Aneurin Bevan said let's not concentrate on the possible. Let's try and do the impossible. That's why the NHS is still uh an incredible invention that is in still the the stages of its development. We don't know where it's going to go. So we we have to aim for the impossible. The impossible is to get rid of poverty. But there are too many people who say, "How are you going to do it?" And you say, "Well, the first thing you got to recognize that—that whatever you're doing isn't working. We're not doing it. I mean, we have incredible intelligence and genius in trying to find things like food banks and all sorts of things like—we use an enormous amount of intelligence in making up for the fact that capitalism largely is screwing it up and and all that energy. Wouldn't it be nice if we could free up that energy into saying right now let's get rid of poverty? Sorry. No.

Joe Owen: Thank you, John. The party political broadcast on behalf of the Bird party. Um I'm a bit torn what to do. We've got two minutes left, but I sort of feel like it might be worth just trying to squeeze in three more questions. And I'm just going to ask people to keep their questions really brief and then if the panelists can just like rattle through and have any final remarks because that feels better than stopping now. Um I'm going to go to Rory in the corner who's just going to ask some questions from online and then I'm going to do the gentleman in the front row and then just behind. Sorry to people who I've not picked.

Rory: Jenny asks, "Have you had to overcome challenges present by local authorities, processes, government?"

Joe Owen: I think we know what Jenny thinks. Um, gentleman in the front row—

Mitch Blair: my name is Mitch Blair. I'm a uh retired professor of pediatrics and child public health with a strong interest in early years and how do we improve the next generation. My question to you is about or to the—the panel would be how do we move from scaling social innovation to sustaining social innovation.

Joe Owen: Excellent question and then the gentleman just behind.

Freddy Law: Hi my name is Freddy Law. I work in a London city mission to share Jesus in London but that's not very relevant. I taught in university for social innovation and my students always want to challenge and apply what we have taught on um the speaker. So this is the question in two sentence. What does success look like in your most ambitious vision?

Joe Owen: Okay. Um I am going to leave it up to each of you to decide which of those questions you answer. Um, and I'm very rudely going to say we're at 19:15 now, so we're going to have to keep it quick because the drinks are waiting. Um, and I'm going to go down the panel and um, start with you, Shaan.

Shaan Jindal: Yeah. Um, I guess I can quickly say something about overcoming procedures from government and stuff like that. Um, we—we have faced uh, challenges with that. There's been processes uh, in in terms of how things are administered in Scotland which has made it hard—harder to scale something that works really well in—in Scotland. Um, I think just having quite honest open conversations looking at what the other routes to—to making things uh happen can be. We've had some small wins. So I think it's about sort of finding what those small wins can be and having that incremental process in areas where it's a little bit harder to get progress. I'll keep it short there.

Sophie Tebbetts: You can't go over it. Go around it. Um right now I have to try and remember all the questions. So with in terms of government and local authority, I think it's infrastructure. It's a really basic thing. It's amazing how many community centers have seating for 200 people and have a kettle. Um, and it just doesn't work in terms of if you're wanting to actually engage communities in public dining. Um, and then I think our most ambitious uh vision for community dining is that there's a uh community dining a public restaurant as we're in every community in the UK.

Bayo Adelaja: Right. Uh, I'm going to tackle the uh ambitious vision question as well. Um I think uh there's often a—a solution—entrepreneurship and leadership training are often uh provided as a solution to poverty which it can't be because not everyone wants to start a business and not every business will succeed. So it's not sustainable enough to be a solution. However, I think um my—my version of success would be people engaging in entrepreneurship for enjoyment purposes, as an opportunity for creativity, as a way to build a different skill set and um to challenge themselves in new—new perspectives and seeing mission-driven entrepreneurship as a really fantastic way to engage. I—I tried coining this thing years ago called entrepreneurial volunteerism. didn't—I—I don't think I wrote the paper to it to be fair. So, it didn't really go anywhere. But just this idea that the same buzz that you get from volunteering in a local ecosystem should be able to be applied to um starting something, sustaining something and doing it out of free will and volition. necessarily needing it to solve every single problem or being uh called upon by either the service users or the council to solve every single problem because you are now one of few people uh delivering services in a uh in a world that is unfortunately getting more and more expensive. So, um I think so—to—to kind of try and put that in a—in a sound bite if I can um—where uh the most ambitious version of—of—of Do It Now Now or the type of work that we do is for people to have the opportunity to be happily entrepreneurial, not stressfully.

Joe Owen: So, final word.

Lord John Bird: I'd like to respond. I didn't quite understand your question, but I'm going to have a go because you're a pediatrician and you're uh—No, I'm not having a go at pediatrician. I want to know where you were when I was born. Yeah. Anyway, um—no, but it is so interesting for me. Um one of the big things I—I think we need to face uh 90% of the people I've ever worked with have inherited poverty. When I was in the prison system, everybody looked like me. So 90% of us were from—we inherited poverty. When I look at the—when I go to Addenbrooke's hospital where I've done talking on occasions, you talk to the doctors, they say, "you know, probably about 50% of the people we work with are suffering from food poverty or things like that." So when you look at poverty, it destroys every one of our best intentions. It destroys virtually every one of the social budgets of government.

Uh and I would say that the early years is the most important thing that we can do to get rid of poverty. And I think the most important thing is to start with the fact that we don't have all the answers. But until we break the inheritance of poverty, our prisons will remain full, our streets will remain full, and our A&E are going to remain full. What I don't understand uh largely because I'm an autodidact is why is Oxbridge and the other bridges or whatever they are—why are these—assho—sorry—why these educated people haven't come up with a methodology for addressing the—the ending of poverty—why is it they always say oh it's impossible uh let's just do a thing—last thing—I'm s—standing in the House of Lords arguing with the minister who—the minister of state for whatever it is—I—I forget the name—DWP or something. So she's there and she's praising the government—her own government—saying, "you know by 2030 we will have got 500,000 people out of poverty." Well, 300 of those thousand people—300,000 of those will be because they've got rid of the two child benefits thing.

So, they've got 200,000. So, I said to her, "Wow, is that impressive? What about the 4 and a half million?" So, it is decoration. It is—it is the low-hanging fruit. And I just don't understand why anybody who calls themselves educated—the last 29 prime ministers we've had since—since um uh Gladstone—the last 29 of them, 20 of them went to Oxbridge. Well, went to Oxford, three went to O—the other place. So, we've got these great brains, but none of them are saying whatever we're doing is not working. And I am obsessed with that. And that's why I remain in the House of Lords. And that's why I will be an itchy ass to every government because I'll be saying the same thing as a scratch record. I'm sorry.

Joe Owen: Thank you. We could—So the last thing just before we do the big round of applause for all of the excellent panelists and our speakers and Louis, I've got three quick things. Uh the first is you should download the toolbox. The second is that this is the first event in our uh new scaling innovation series as I said at the beginning. So please sign up to our newsletter and you'll find out about the next one. And the third one is we really want your feedback and we want it so much we're prepared to give out a £50 voucher to someone uh a lucky winner of those of you who do fill in the feedback. So if you're in the room follow the sort of QR code on the screen and it'll get dropped into the chat and it'll also get emailed around to you. And with those things said please can we have a massive round of applause for the excellent speakers.