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Business Hero


to “highlight the value of inclusive and long-term business models” and as part of a “strategy to achieve intelligent, sustainable and inclusive growth” In that respect you could say that this initiative is no different to the other outreach initiatives that Telefónica fund such as Wayra (incubator for start- ups), Amerigo (Venture Capital arm) or BlueVia (Developer platform).


The greatest thing in business is being different. What is different about you is what makes you great.


One


really useful thing Caroline retained from her past as a Management Consultant was an ability to speak the language of business. She knew that unless she could come up with a business case then disability would always be seen in the Corporate world as something to be managed, not something to embrace. The other thing she understood was the power of business. Most activism goes the political route but Caroline understood that the business route, while harder, gets results quicker. She explains it as follows: “We believe that business is critical in creating social change for people with disabilities. If we can get business to recognise the value of the disability community then so too will society value the one billion people in the world who are affected by disability.”


What then is the message for entrepreneurs? Some of you may have noticed that so far I have refrained from referring to what Caroline and Kanchi do as Social Entrepreneurship. As the term is currently understood, it is a reasonable description for what they do but she prefers to think of herself as an entrepreneur first and a social entrepreneur second, feeling that the term will eventually disappear as social entrepreneurship becomes the dominant form of


entrepreneurship. It’s the same argument of those who


say Green Business will become just Business and Sustainable Consumption just Consumption.


Depending on where you work you may already be front and centre of these issues. I see it myself as I talk to prospective Business School students. Many see business as a refuge for the damned, where its not possible to do good things, things that make a difference and point to a career in an area such as medicine where at least they would feel their work had a meaning. These are the very people who business needs to hire: bright, ambitious, and motivated. They need to be convinced that just as when business does things badly and the world gets messed up, that if business can do things well it will bring about positive change.


For the coming generation (Gen-Y, but after that the Millennials) there is no real debate about any of this. They will bring their skills and their spending


power to where the ethics are. These values include diversity, inclusivity, no fear of failure and that everybody means everybody. In the documentary Objectified, Dieter Rams lists his 10 Principles of


Good Design. Even


though he is talking about the industrial design of products, his philosophy is a philosophy of designing for people.


Caroline Casey comes from another perspective but she too is designing a world for people, all people. Looking at Dieter’s list, it struck me how many are consistent with the way Caroline also views the world, principles such as honesty, sustainability, simplicity. Apple has shown it is possible to become the most valuable company in the world using many of these principles. In the future, to be the best, you will need to have them all.


Joe Haslam was born in Ireland but now lives in Madrid. He is Vice President at Stratemic Capital, a boutique VC firm specialising in disruptive innovation investments.


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