A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend the World Economic Forum on the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I was selected to be one of the fourteen Global Shapers (an initiative of the World Economic Forum with over 500 Hubs around the world) to represent young voices at the event. I applied to go because I wanted to know more about South East Asian nations due to their proximity to Australia.
Australia’s social enterprise sector is thriving, according to the recently released ‘Finding Australia’s Social Enterprise Sector (FASES)’ 2016 report. Currently, there are at least 20,000 Australian social enterprises in operation, and many of these are between two and five years old. This is in stark contrast to the FASES 2010 survey that found 68% of social enterprises had been operating for over ten years.
We know you’ve been thinking about it for a while now. You’re not a bad person, it’s just on that growing list of ‘Things I need to do when I have a little more time’. We all want to make sure our money is going to the right place, but the brainpower it takes to navigate the investments of our banks and superannuation funds, or trawl through the sources of our energy providers? No. Thank. You.
As an engineer graduate I never envisaged myself going down an entrepreneurial path. I was keen to work within a large corporate and climb the career ladder. That person seems a million miles away from where I am today. I chose engineering for a few reasons, a strong one being the range of potential careers that you could have without being restricted to a certain field, but instead have transferable skills.
One10 has just started working with a social enterprise that gives you an excellent reason to follow through on your promises – Promise or Pay.
Promise or Pay’s vision is to inspire millions of people to be the best they can be and, at the same time, encourage and facilitate much needed donations for charity.
Around a month ago a potentially life-changing opportunity landed on my desk. It was the chance to combine much of my recent work and expertise on a challenging, exciting and potentially hugely influential project. It was something that sparked a truly emotional response and my first instinct was to drop everything and go for it.
From the time you first start thinking about owning your own business to the day you open the doors, entrepreneurship seems like an exciting, challenging, gratifying experience. Even the stressful moments have a bit of magic to them; you go to work, knowing that your mistakes will likely be little more than temporary setbacks that teach you lessons about how to conduct your business.
Last Friday Geoff headed along to mentor some aspiring entrepreneurs at Deakin’s first Spark event of the year.SPARK@Deakin is an experiential program designed to give students, staff and alumni of Deakin University an opportunity to see, experience, and relate to the early stages of the entrepreneurial path. The focus of SPARK@Deakin is educating and training aspirant entrepreneurs regarding how to approach a project from a commercial perspective.
One10 Founder, Geoff Gourley has recently been selected as Innovation Mentor to the CSIRO Lean LaunchPad Accelerator.
I was sitting in another meeting with a potential investor last week. It was very much the same old spiel until the woman running it said something that really resonated: “We don’t invest in just anyone. We need to make sure you’re resilient.” That was followed up by a number of examples of resilience at work, in personal life, and during conflict and rejection.
This has been somewhat of a crunch time week in terms of our company’s progress. We’ve moved past the time of idea generation and ‘what if’. Now it’s about identifying exactly what it is we need to do, why we need to do it and what value it is adding to our product and our customers.
Not-for-profits need to explore innovative and entrepreneurial ideas for creating more sustainable and stable revenue streams. For some, this is a daunting concept that will shake up how they have always operated. For others, engaging in enterprise is a well established practice, and their challenge is around how to remain a leader of innovation in the sector.
The not for profit (NFP) sector has undergone significant changes over the past 20 years, and current data indicates that is this is only the beginning of the huge shakeup in the $200 billion (annual revenue) sector.
The team at One10 was honoured to present today to a delegation of Government officials from the Philippines (many of whom were female – something we can learn from here in Australia!) organised by the Asian Development Bank.
1. The top five countries for female entrepreneurs are 1. the United States, 2. Canada, 3. Australia, 4. Sweden and 5. the United Kingdom, according to a new global report commissioned by Dell (Global Women Entrepreneur Leaders Scorecard, 2015).
Some entrepreneurs may be born, but with the right education and employment policies we can do more to encourage entrepreneurship.
Eight years after the crash, global unemployment remains above its pre-crisis levels, and according to the International Labour Organization it’s still increasing.
On this special day, International Women’s Day, we are proud that our founder Geoff Gourley has been appointed as a Global Ambassador for Rare Birds. He is among 14 other incredible individuals, all working towards gender parity and supporting entrepreneurs.
When we buy something, we are buying more than just the product. We are buying a brand, it’s culture, values and practices. Many of us know and recognise this, though not all of us use this knowledge when making our final decision at the counter. There are just so many other factors jostling their way to the front of our mind – price, position on the self, implied quality, design, friend recommendations, price, and of course the brand.
This is an exciting time to be founding or growing a social enterprise in Australia. We have summarised some fantastic opportunities as a cheat-sheet to help Aussie entrepreneurs and enterprises succeed.
