A trusted source told me this week of their recent success in securing investment from a Government sponsored social enterprise support programme.  Having not heard anything for months they got a call and were asked what they wanted the money for.  When they suggested that he read the ap...

There's probably a creative writing exercise where you give people a phrase and then ask them to construct a story around it.  As I was walking home the other day, a couple came out of a house and walked towards a car.  The woman opened the door and they both paused.  Then she ...

I have a funny relationship with Leeds.  I've lived here for longer than I lived in my "home town" of Liverpool but I still think I'm leaving every year.  I haven't done so far, and perhaps I never will.  But what does that say about me, and perhaps the experi...

Here's a piece I wrote for today's Social Business supplement in The Guardian: We spend years trying to get a seat at the table, and then just as we’re about to sit down and make ourselves comfortable, the table collapses.  What's a social entrepreneur supposed to do now? On a ph...

Interesting to see that the Tories are keen on putting more power in local hands. Surely that's a good thing, isn't it?  I think it might be, if the dash for local is accompanied by an openness to doing government business in a different way.  My experience of local democracy has...

This week's Food Programme on Radio 4 gave a fascinating insight into the growing pains of one of Britain's finest cheeses - Mrs Kirkham's Lancashire. The family firm behind the famous artisan cheese recently decided to expand from their humble farmhouse to a much-larger purpose bu...

I've had a run recently of clients who have asked me to do market research for them.  In my usual style I don't do research for people - instead I help them to work out what it would be useful to find out - and then encourage them to do a lot of the fact-finding themselves.  I gu...

Why are people from Hull so friendly?  There's just something about the people which makes it a much more pleasant place to spend time.  I was there yesterday delivering a workshop and everyone, from the taxi driver to the receptionist to the people on the workshop were just nice peo...

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the big issue for social enterprise over the next few years will be about proving that we do what we say we do.  The current obsession with profits and ownership models will become less important as a skint, fractured society, crying o...

I've spent the day at Drax - the UK's biggest coal-fired power station.  It was a visit organised by the local RSA group, and they were keen to push their green credentials. I enjoyed it.  There's something quite exciting about machines on a big scale.  Soon after I lef...