Hi everyone! Here is a post from our latest (physical) meeting with the participants in Sustainable Entrepreneurship, one of our seminar leaders in the program, one of our board members, and two former participants in the previous round of Sustainable Entrepreneurship.
Mats Thorburn is the seminar leader in the program that focuses on Social Sustainability and collaboration. He started the day by talking about Elinor Ostrom, the first female Nobel Prize winner in Economics (2009). A very interesting person, especially for those of us who are working on locally led development. Why then? Well, she has been researching successful local collaborations around the world for decades, among other things. Please watch this short clip to learn a little more about her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD-eTsOVfsw&t=188s
And polycentric society, what does that mean? Well, you might think that it's the opposite of a centralized society. In Sustainable Entrepreneurship we have worked a lot with sociograms, i.e., we have tried to map our social relationships and networks. The purpose is to see which people you have around you, which can be good to know when you run a business, because you need others. It can also be a way to analyze your context and see which pieces you feel satisfied with and whether someone or a few people are missing. So the picture below is a sociogram. Each dot is a person. And each ring an organization/network. Polycentric means many, i.e. there is not one centralized unit but instead many units:
But again, how are Ostrom's theories and conclusions relevant to us in Sustainable Entrepreneurship and in Upplandsbygd? Well, in Sustainable Entrepreneurship, for example, the participants want to collaborate and collaborate more with each other. Why then, you might wonder? Yes, there are slightly different reasons for that, but the basis is that everyone has a problem they want to solve and they live in the same area. It could be that someone wants to get better profitability in their company, another wants to get in touch with people who know a lot about something that interests them, a third is too lonely in their company and needs friends and "colleagues".
Then these people who all want to solve problems meet in a constellation like Sustainable Entrepreneurship. Most participants believe that collaboration could solve many of their ”problems”. For example, creating a formal organization could mean that the individual entrepreneur gains increased profitability through, for example, a larger customer base. How then? Yes, but think of Fjärdhundraland for example, an economic association that brings together over 100 actors, most of them very small. Then the small entrepreneur becomes part of something bigger, an important puzzle piece in a diversity. When the hundreds of thousands of rural tourists are looking for a place to visit or eat at, some of the tourists will definitely choose the small entrepreneur who would never be able to reach out on their own in that way. When other members of the association also talk to customers and recommend the small business owner as a colleague rather than a competitor, customers feel both satisfied and secure that there is cooperation in the area they are in. It is also very convenient for rural tourists, for example, that there is an umbrella organization, a digital bulletin board/map. Then you can plan better, get a holistic picture of the area and, above all, see the diversity of small players that exist. Everyone is different and unique and there is therefore also something that can suit everyone. In this way, rural tourism can match metropolitan tourism, a good and clear picture of the diversity that exists within the same area.
Then you can think about the other problems and whether collaboration/cooperation could solve them and here it is perhaps clearer: Contact with people who have skills that you lack was a problem. You can already see examples of this in Sustainable Entrepreneurship. The participants get to know each other and they are from quite different backgrounds and partly industries, but at the meeting now there was a participant who was good at making stickers for cars, for example, and another participant who needed stickers for her company car but did not have the skills or contact with anyone with that skills. But now they got in touch and at the meeting one entrepreneur got stickers that the other had made and she was so happy. She also trusts the other participant because they have gotten to know each other and trust is something that Elinor Ostrom talks about a lot. Then there are those who need more friends and "colleagues" and I have already heard that the participants have started to meet outside of the program so I assume they are solving that problem too 🙂
There is so much more to say about Elinor Ostrom! It was very rewarding that you took her and her research as a starting point, Mats! It was awesome to be able to apply her theories to the practice in which we operate. Some of her conclusions regarding successful collaborations are presented in bullet form below:
- Avoid one-size-fits-all solutions
- Participatory decision-making
- Meet face to face and set up the forms
- Activities enclosed within each other
- Small organizations with looser reins
The day then ended with two dear return visits and one new visit. Johanna Kylin from Aicha Vitalis and Fia Söderberg from Ullförmedlingen who were part of the previous round of Sustainable Entrepreneurship came back to Upplandsbygd to greet the new participants. They told about their journeys with their respective companies. It was fun to see and hear their whole story and above all that it is still developing and bubbling in their businesses, forerunners of local sustainable transformation, cheers!
Afterwards, Elisabeth Secher from our board told us about both her business Nästets Gröna but also the large cooperative organization that her company is a part of -Bondens mat i Uppland. Many of the participants are involved in small-scale farming so they wanted to talk to her afterwards and would be happy to do a study visit to Nästes gröna- Fun! We ended the day by dividing ourselves into three groups where Johanna, Fia and Elisabeth each took a group and did a little "lighten the heart note". All participants wrote down a major concern or thought on a piece of paper and then the notes were collected together and then the group went through one note at a time, 5 minutes per note. Everyone got the chance to vent a little and that can be worth a lot, especially when you do it in a group that is both caring and competent. And those who just wanted to listen, could do it 🙂
PS If you want to know more about Sustainable Entrepreneurship, check here: Sustainable Entrepreneurship 2023-2024
Thank you for this, see you again on April 11th! /Jenny