Social Enterprise Innovation with Bill Tucker of Flywheel

“重要的是要走出自己的圈子，并找到与您可以连接的人，这将有助于您放大和完善您的故事。” —Bill Tucker, Executive Director at Flywheel

为什么故事对创新过程有关？分享故事的创新者可以灌输哪些值？创新领导者如何激发创作者告诉和分享他们的成功和失败故事？

我们与执行董事的比尔Tucker讲话Flywheel Social Enterprise Hub。Flywheel is a home for social entrepreneurs, where individuals and organizations join together to support businesses with social impact and create social change in their communities. From growing startups to large businesses, Bill offers insights into the role of social innovation in a changing marketplace.

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TRANSCRIPT

这一集由Untold内容的创新讲故事供电雷竞技电竞竞猜雷竞技raybet提现。在这种沉浸式和互动的故事驱动的经验中增加购买。您的团队在哪个讲故事技术的最新项目，原型和投票 - 并通过25个史诗般的创新故事的史诗例子来启发。了解更多//www.hchb688.com/innovationstorytellingtraining-2/。

Katie:Welcome to Untold Stories of Innovation, where we amplify untold stories of insight, impact and innovation. Powered by Untold Content, I’m your host, Katie Trauth Taylor. Our guest today is Bill Tucker. He’s executive director at Flywheel Social Enterprise Hub, which supports businesses with a double bottom line of purpose and profit. Bill, I am so grateful to have you on the podcast to talk about social innovation and impact and the role that storytelling plays in driving it forward.

账单：Thank you very much, Katie, and I’m really happy to be here as well. It’s fun to be in the studio and fun to be part of this series.

Katie:You know, I like to start with asking about your personal story of innovation. What brought you to Flywheel? What was your journey?

账单：所以我在商业印刷业务中度过了三十年，并实现了尽可能多的城市，我的关系往往在这个社区之外。在一个我真正来爱的社区中，我只是不觉得我做得够了。我觉得我可以做更多的事情。这让我早日退休。而不是打高尔夫球或坐在非营利组织上专注于一个特定的问题，我有机会进入非营利组织世界，最初支持企业，因为您所描述的那样，通常称为社会企业或社会企业或社会风险或社会影响企业。但是具有宗旨和利润的双重底线的企业。我发现，我在商业印刷业务中获得的那些技能确实具有适用性。一个nd so, as I was just saying to someone earlier today, I work harder than I’ve ever worked in my entire life, but there’s not a day that I go home or a morning that I get up that I am not absolutely looking forward to the opportunity to engage with people who are making a huge difference in this community. I am a lucky man.

Katie:绝对地。一个nd I’ve had the honor of sort of watching Flywheel grow, watching different cohorts graduate from the accelerator. And it’s incredible how — I don’t think that social innovation or social enterprise is sort of a niche anymore. It is critical and central to the sort of identity of innovation in our country. Do you feel that way as well?

账单：Oh, absolutely. I think that particularly as the newer generations come into the marketplace, I think what they do is they have put a tremendous value on the impact of those businesses. I heard somebody talking yesterday about the notion of “everything we do, whether we’re purchasing, we’re donating, we’re, you know, driving, whatever we’re doing has some type of social impact. And the question is, do we make that impact positive or do we make it negative? And how do we find balance in that?” So, yeah, it’s definitely, definitely changing.

Katie:Tell us about some of the innovation stories emerging out of the startups that graduate from Flywheel.

账单：所以你问我the question, like, which is my favorite child. And I don’t know if that’s going to be fair.

Katie:I’m so sorry. That’s totally unfair.

账单：我认为我会说的是 - 而且真正兴奋的是我最兴奋的 - 我们有很棒的公司，我们触摸。伟大的创始人。这可能是一种更好的方式来描述对他们正在做的事情充满热情的人，无论是开始咖啡厅还是启动旨在加速父母和老师之间的关系的企业。所有这些创始人都会通过帮助帮助他们弄清楚如何创建商业模式以及如何部署实际在市场中的业务模式。这是令人兴奋的，这很有趣。但我会告诉你什么让它变得更加乐趣是 - 而且是什么让它变得更加有影响 - 我们已经能够在这些创始人周围聚合一个社区。所以我们在我们的加速器中有一些很棒的教练，被称为电梯。我们刚刚有了我们的演示日，这是今年的大事事事 -

Katie:It was amazing.

账单：— just earlier this week. And we had 13 mentors who in some cases were working almost full time for a period of 15 weeks up in these companies getting ready for demo day. We have another dozen or more that are also working in other programs that we have. And that’s just awesome. And then I think about the startup community itself and how we have been embraced by that startup community. The folks at Cintrifuse — in particular Wendy Lea, who started that and welcomed us into the Cintrifuse workspace, and now continue with Pete Blackshaw and the rest of the crew down there — have helped us integrate into that startup ecosystem. And so when we run our accelerator and other programs, we have people from all different organizations in this community that support startups. It includes EY and includes Dinsmore & Shohl, and it includes Cincy Tech and Queen City Angels and just a variety of companies that recognize that their impact in the community can be more than just a financial impact. And it’s just really fun to see those companies, those businesses, those organizations really lean into it. We’re really grateful for that.

Katie:Something that’s so powerful about social innovation is its ability to create a pull strategy. And I think now even organizations or startups or even enterprises that are socially driven or socially— they’re not the only ones who care about this now. There’s a lot of transformation that we’re seeing inside of companies that maybe didn’t necessarily start with purpose and profit as their core objectives, it was maybe a little more profit leading. And now, you know, you see that having a social impact needs — the consumers are increasingly desiring that kind of mission and impact on the world. So, you know, could you speak a little bit to how social innovation matters across all business?

账单：我认为这次采访只有半小时，但这可能会带我一个半小时。所以我想 - 我是一个崇高的崇拜者，经常谈论破坏者和人民在生态系统中的角色，然后将新想法带到前进的人，然后找到能够帮助他们加速这一点的合作伙伴的角色。而且我认为这是这里的关键概念。Social innovation — or innovation at all — is when somebody is given the opportunity to be that disruptor and to take maybe a way of solving a problem that’s been, you know, done for decades, if not centuries, and turn it around and find a new way to address that. We can see that every day in our lives, but in the social sector, it’s even more important. You know, we have some real big challenges in this country, but we’ve also got some great successes and we’ve got lots of opportunity. And when I see 200 plus people in a room at Union Hall earlier this week and just totally energized on the idea of how they can make more impact in this community and use the power of the marketplace to multiply that, there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s changing. Absolutely.

Katie:What role do you feel Flywheel plays — and social enterprise hubs play — in helping nonprofits or community advocates or those who are philanthropists start to open their eyes to opportunities that might be more business driven?

账单：So I’m going to take your question and just twist it just a little bit.

Katie:Sure.

账单：Because I think the issue, whether — regardless of what your tax status is — the issue is how do you create a business? And when you create a business, there’s one thing that every business needs, and that’s access to capital. For a nonprofit that means philanthropists, means donors, donations, and means foundations that provide funding. For a startup it means — that’s in the for-profit space — it means that you’ve got to have somebody that’s going to give you money to help you do that, or you’re going to have to generate it on your own, or you’re going to have your own wealth to be able to do it. And what I find is that access to capital is the number one issue when it comes to entrepreneurship. And that is particularly a problem for women and people of color.

Katie:是的。

账单：Think about starting a business and you need some seed money to do that. You go out and reach out to your friends, your family, and you say, will you help me do that, will you invest in the startup in this business? Well, if your network does not include that, it’s hard. If you’re a woman and you go sit across the table from a bunch of venture capitalists who 98 percent of them are male and they are white. How likely do you think they are going to invest in your business?

Katie:Yeah, I think it’s about three percent.

账单：It’s actually less than that. But the most important thing to note there, is it’s normal. I mean it’s normal for people to want to align themselves with people who look like them and invest in people who look like them. But what the data really shows is that those women-led businesses and those businesses led by people of color are more profitable. You know, in the venture space, they have better exits than those led by white men. And so I think it’s really important that we recognize that there’s got to be an alternative, that friends and family and even debt — which can be very expensive, because if you’re a founder of a company and you get that loan, even if you’re given real good access to that loan, you still will find yourself putting your personal assets as collateral to that loan. And what really becomes troublesome is when that business fails — not because it wasn’t a good business, not because it wasn’t a good founder, not because it wasn’t a good business plan, but because the market changed or a Starbucks came in next door, whatever it may be — when the business fails, the family fails and the opportunity to start another business is lost for that generation. And so we think that there’s an in-between space. And that’s what we’ve been really working on hard. And we think that’s an opportunity in this community.

Katie:What’s the in-between space?

账单：哦,我的天啊。Thank you for asking. So we think that there are alternative forms of risk capital. Let me explain. So in the venture capital space, venture capitalists give a company money. In exchange for that, they take stock in that company or take equity in that company. And their expectation is that they’ll do that with maybe 10 companies. And out of those 10 companies that they invest in, one of those companies will have what’s called an exit. In fact, we call those companies “unicorns.”

Katie:是的。

账单：Companies that will return 20, 30 times what that original investment was and pay for all the money that was lost on the other eight or nine bets. And so unless your company has an exit, unless they’re clearly designed for an exit, you’re unlikely to get capital. So what if we could turn that around? And instead of investing with the idea of finding one unicorn, what if we could find maybe a zebra or a gazelle, a company that can grow and grow really well, but may not have a big exit as part of them.

Katie:Hockey stick.

账单：是的。Not have that hockey stick growth. And so there’s an opportunity there. In fact, that’s something we started playing with around three years ago in our accelerator. We ask for the companies that go through the accelerator to return to us, our investment in them, by taking a percentage of their revenue. And we started getting checks back, and then said okay, this is working. In fact, at our Demo Day, we had Alicia Robb — who is the founder of Next Wave Impact — who came to talk about her work in this field and about trying to do exactly that same thing: use alternative structures, alternative capital structures to be able to get equity or to be able get capital into a space that so dearly need it. I don’t propose that there’s not room for venture capital and I don’t propose that there’s not room for debt. That being said, it’s important to match up what that capital need is with the company and what their needs are, and particularly the intentions of the founder. Had the opportunity earlier today and — I’m going down this path anyway, sorry — had the opportunity earlier day to talk with Ellen Vera with Cincinnati Union Co-op. If you don’t know that organization, doing great work for worker-owned businesses in this community. And just to think about their capital needs are very different from the needs that we may see in our space. But all of these supporters of businesses — whether it’s Cincinnati Union Co-op or whether it’s MORTAR or Aviatra Accelerator — all are supporting these founders that have unique needs for capital. And so coming back to your question, what we really hope to do is we really hope that we are jumpstarting this notion of individuals in this community who are willing to put risk capital to businesses that not only generate a return to them, but at the same time make a difference in this community. And we are laser focused on getting that done. Just to kind of take it a little bit different direction for a second — you had asked about favorite stories and I said it’s like trying to pick your favorite child. And there are so many. You know, it’s just amazing to watch the evolution of these founders. And for many of the founders, the businesses may not ever get off the ground or they may get off the ground and then fail later. But there’s still victory in that.

Katie:是的。

账单：还有学习。一个nd I just love seeing these individuals try something and if it doesn’t work, try something else. And in entrepreneurship, that’s what you’re rewarded for. You’re rewarded equally for failing as you are for winning.

Katie:是的。

账单：所以我们只是 - 作为我的第一份工作是一个销售人士，我的第一份工作我会回到我的销售经理并说，好吧，Geez，我做了三个演示，我没有出售匕首的事情。他说，回到那里，因为下一个将是一个胜利。因为这个想法是你必须得到很多不是要达到的。

Katie:Yeah, the resilience is always astounding to me.

账单：它真的是。

Katie:So, you know, in terms of changing the game around venture capital, I love this concept that the way that we’ve always done things does not have to be the way that we continue to do things. When I spoke with Alicia Robb, we talked a little bit about how women are — in particular — are more risk averse often and are less likely to want to accept risk capital.

账单：Correct.

Katie:一个nd so thinking about other strategies, revenue equity is kind of interesting.

账单：Right.

Katie:还有其他 - 我猜我的一个问题是，当你打算与潜在的创业公司或公司建造那种关系时，你如何在那里创造对齐？需要出现什么，以信任这种关系是可持续的一个或聪明的人？

账单：哇。让我看看我是否可以解开只有一点点。所以，如果你坐下来思考它，你知道，你知道，找到你的宠物，无论那些生活经历，你都会出去，你测试和你的审判。没有在斯蒂芬说什么，但这就是你必须做的事情，你必须进行测试和审判。最终你发现那就适合了。我认为在企业家精神中非常出现同样的问题。你必须与可以提供帮助的人建立关系。因此，例如，对于通过我们的加速器的初创公司，我们有三天的音高练习，不为他们改进他们的口语，而是与他们有机会的个人在某些时候对他们进行投资以进行投资，但更重要的是可以帮助他们教练并为其网络构建相同的目的。因此，在迈阿密大学，迈阿密创造了一个社会影响基金，以支持来自我们加速器的公司。他们会见了他们。 We had, gosh, a bunch of venture capitalists, four members of Queen City Angels — love that organization, do great work to work with our companies — and then we had a bunch of individuals in this community whose day job is philanthropy, like Eric Avner from Haile and Annemarie Henkel from Ignite Philanthropy and others, that came in and spent time with them to help them once again build out that business model. Or in the case of the philanthropists, it was to build out their impact model. That’s how you find that fit, is you just have to be in front of those people. And that’s what we see our role as, is as a connector.

Katie:是的。

账单：So give them the opportunity to build those relationships, to find their pet dog or their husband or their wife —

Katie:The right partner.

账单：— Or their partner or whatever it may be.

Katie:So in those relationships, I’d be curious to know, do you see certain challenges that sort of arise frequently when it comes to the social innovator being able to get their story right? And is there certain feedback that you hear venture capitalists providing and philanthropists as well?

账单：When you’re sitting across the table from somebody, you know, oftentimes in the social impact space — and I’d say more and more in everyday life — it’s somebody that probably doesn’t look like you. It’s probably somebody whose family circumstances or economic background or social experiences are different than yours. And so one of the challenges is making sure that we find alignment. And at the very least, if we can’t find that alignment, then we need to have empathy. So one of the things we’ve done is working with our coaches who coach these startups. We help them understand some of those differences and where implicit bias may come into this and about how race and gender are a factor. It’s just a part of life. And give them a new perspective to look at it and allow them to be better coaches, better mentors. And that’s been the fun part of this journey as well. It’s actually — great story, I was in three meetings yesterday and the first two of those meetings, I was the only male in the room. And I commented to that. That that is a circumstance that I found myself in, but how frequently the women in the room find that is the circumstances that they’re in every day, all day long.

Katie:是的。

账单：关于我们了解动态的重要性。如果你是一个颜色的人，情况也是如此。

Katie:是的。Yeah, it’s true. And I think — do you find that the world of social innovation is moving faster when it comes to diversity and inclusion than sort of the broader innovation community?

账单：I think what I would — how I would answer that question is this. I think that our self awareness of those differences is accelerating at a higher rate than the change we’re able to accomplish.

Katie:有趣的。是的。

账单：也就是说，我认为随着我们对这些事情的更自我意识，那么你意识到攀登有多大。几个月前，更大的辛辛那提基金会 - 实际上可能是一年前 - 在种族股权的整个概念上开始了一项主动性，并为让人们提供了一些非常神奇的工作，让人们帮助他们理解种族鸿沟以及它真正意味着什么。我无法进入一些早期的时间表，但我真的很期待一项从6月2日开始关于种族权益的计划以及它的重要。和GCF放在一起工作的帽子，因为我知道我在那里出来的时候，我的自我意识将会大大加速。

Katie:是的。

账单：我要做的工作将多次。但我认为这是我作为公民和这个社区成员的义务的一部分。

Katie:我完全同意。我认为在g辛辛那提eneral has — is opening itself up to those conversations, to harder conversations, to be more vulnerable, and to question the structures that have sort of allowed privilege to exist where it has. And, again, I think part of the beauty of an organization like Flywheel to just be calling attention to social challenges of all sorts and shapes and not only racial challenges or gender gap divides, but pretty much anything that could be constituted as a problem impacting large amounts of people. How do you sort of — actually, this is an interesting question I have for you, and maybe I sound naive, but what sort of falls under the umbrella and what doesn’t when it comes to social impact, social innovation? Oh, and do you define these terms differently? I’m sorry, I asked five questions at once. So, yeah, what actually falls under the umbrella of social impact and social innovation?

账单：So I’m going to start by saying that one of the great things about the work that I do — and others at Flywheel like Josie and Joe and others — is that we’re not just waving a banner about a problem, but what we’re doing is seeing the opportunities to solve those problems.

Katie:是的。

账单：Never completely. Never fast enough. Never enough. But it’s just great to be on that side of it. And so although we acknowledge where the gaps are in this community, we also have the opportunity to work on those. And that’s what I really like to work on. When it comes to this definition of social enterprise or social innovation or social ventures, my comment is, does it really matter what the definition is? What matters is, is that that founder, that the core being of that organization is built around some type of impact in this community. Not as just a sideline, not that they are going to for the next three days give away, you know, one percent of their gross receipts to a charity of some kind. But really, that it’s what they do and how they make their decisions every day, how they relate to their employees, how do they relate to the waste products that they put into the ecosystem. What opportunities do they give their customers to not only participate in the purchasing of their products, but also to have a social benefit, by the way, in which they inform them about what to purchase, to know that, you know, that one product has more negative impact than another one does. So I think it’s really measured more on that.

Katie:Do you think that — as we look more into the future — that there will even be room for businesses or startups to lack or to have a void when it comes to their awareness of the social impacts they’re making better or worse? I mean, I think in so many ways, this is — it’s just a critical part of the heart of what needs to be ideally in every organization.

账单：是的。In 2011, when I joined Flywheel and we talked about social enterprise, I usually spent the first well, I’d say 9 out of 10 conversations were explaining there was something different than social media. And today, the notion of social enterprise or social ventures or social impact businesses, it’s well understood.

Katie:是的。

账单：所以我认为在许多情况下，针头已经移动了 - 就像我越早说过，你知道，种族和性别问题以及那里的不公平就越是所知道的，我们所知道的越多，我们所知道的更多我们需要做。

Katie:是的。

账单：一个nd it’s not just to do it for — you can do it because you want to do good, but you can do really, really well when you do good. The marketplace rewards that. And you can see it every day. You can see it every day.

Katie:Isn’t that incredible?

账单：It is.

Katie:It’s something that it’s unthinkable to me that it took sort of so long for there to be a loud conversation around that, that it was, you know, assumed that business could just be business or only profit driven, that that would somehow create a place where people wanted to work or that consumers wanted to buy from. And I think the demand is changing both sides, in terms of recruitment and retention of talent and also the impact and the ways in which consumers or customers can now see into the companies they purchase from. And there’s a higher standard than ever for responsibility and sustainability, diversity, inclusion, mission.

账单：它很有意义。我们的计划之一是玛丽米勒，谁是谁，首席执行官现在正在jancoa踩到图片。所以我会说玛丽米勒的朱纳。在她的业务中，每年的营业额超过400％。但朱诺以少于我认为度量为80％的时间。现在，似乎似乎很多。但只想象一下，如果工作转身 - 如果人们在工作中翻身，那么对他们的家人意味着什么。你知道，他们开始然后他们被击倒了，他们开始了，然后他们被击倒了。所以为她提供了鼓励她的员工向前梦想的方式，思考他们的未来。由Matthew Kelly的名字写了一本关于这个呼吁的人梦经理。What that did was that gave — there was a very clear business case for that. Because it costs her every time she has to turn over a new position.

Katie:绝对地。

账单：So it makes good business sense. So, you know, let’s just do it.

Katie:我喜欢那个。你有什么建议 - 这是我的最后一个问题 - 你对企业内部的创新者，企业家甚至人们有什么建议？我不想将它限制在具有颠覆性的人。但是，您对拥有心灵有心脏的企业想法的人有什么建议？你是怎么回事，你认为他们如何利用故事的力量来获得买入？

账单：哦,我的天啊。我想说我认为这是真的important to step out of your own circle and to find those individuals with whom you can connect that will help you amplify your story and help you refine that story. In the startup world here in Cincinnati, there’s no better place to do that then at Union Hall, all the free events there, or up at 1819 Innovation Hub in Mount Auburn. I guess I would say in the innovation corridor, those places have a ton of energy and a ton of smart people who can help people flush out those ideas and, frankly, keep them from making decisions that are a waste of their time and their savings and their mental energy and focus them on something will have a better return for them. So I think it’s really important to get connected.

Katie:是的。

账单：一个nd you can do that at startupcincy.com. That’s one of the websites that Cintrifuse maintains. Just a great way to connect to that community.

Katie:我喜欢那个。是的。Being willing to share and don’t just sort of sit alone in your silo with your idea.

账单：Particularly get outside your own circle.

Katie:是的。

账单：Great place to do it.

Katie:是的。比尔，非常感谢这次谈话。

账单：Thank you, it’s been fun.

Katie:Thanks for listening to this week’s episode. Be sure to follow us on social media and add your voice to the conversation. You can find us at Untold Content.

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