Blogs

Last Friday I was at Google HQ in London presenting the Enterprise Campaign Coalition about social enterprise, our business at COSMIC and some of our recent projects aiming to improve the use of ICT. Now that sentence looks very factual and calm - but OMG! GOOGLE! me!  To say that I was excited (and intimidated, shocked, in awe of my surroundings) would be an understatement.  In the ICT world it doesn't get much better than to make a presentation at Google after all. 

The main focus for the meeting was to provide information and examples for the Enterprise Campaign Coalition meeting. This group is made up from the major business support agencies (CBI, IOD, Business Link, FSB, and others) as well as representatives from Department for Business, Innovation & Skills.  First, the group heard from James Elias, Google's Head of Marketing about the plans for a new campaign called Get British Business Online (GBBO) which will be launched in February 2010 and seeks to support 100,000 businesses which are not currently using the web to gain a website and use it to improve their business.

My presentation explained how COSMIC has successfully developed our social enterprise over the past 12 years, and how recently we have been developing projects which provide support for local businesses, social enterprises and third sector organisations. It was great to be able to link this work to Google's planned campaign for 2010 and I am really keen to find ways to embrace their plans into our work plans for next year. I also was able to talk about social enterprise more generally and how my vision for the new Social Enterprise Mark being launched nationally will provide corporate partners, commissioners and investors with a much clearer means of engaging with our businesses knowing that we are different and special, and provided some examples of how the organisations represented might be able to support this work, and encouraged everyone to look out for further news of that campaign early in 2010.

The third presentation came from Alastair Mitchell, co-founder of Huddle and as well as explaining his journey in developing Huddle as a global business, he encouraged people in the group to consider ways in which ICT business could be better supported through start-up, development and investment cycles. An excellent presentation with some really useful insights into the real challenges and competitive nature of business developments which we will all need to adapt to in future - large or small.

As I expected the tour of the offices and facilities which Google provides in support of its workforce and business are inspiring. Complete with plenty of Google branding and examples of their work over the years, there are meeting rooms which provide a different approach to supporting ideas (the beach space complete with deckchairs, the park space with benches), and even their own ice-cream trolley, as well as plenty of spaces for leisure time - yoga, boxing, music, massage.

It was an excellent opportunity for me to provide an insight into social enterprise and to encourage the corporate world to engage more strongly with our work in future. I certainly feel that my presentation was warmly received, and that there is a great deal of interest from large corporates in how they can effectively partner with small and different organisations. My main reflection is that we need to find more and more opportunities to present, explain and work with the bigger fish in the enterprise pond! And we don't need to be intimidated by such opportunities, we need to express ourselves and our passions and how we make a difference, at the local and real levels, to people's lives. It works!

So, an excellent day out in London, at Google HQ, with great people, inspiring surroundings and a new ambition for our own business - to be able to afford our very own ice-cream trolley!?