Trailblazers at work

Homo volans in moat

As the Autum/Fall begins, the latest round of our work with what we now dub our portfolio of Trailblazers has started. These are the 30 or so social enterprises and other innovative organisations we support around the world. In the past week or so, for example, I have been up to Cranfield University’s Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility to take part (a couple of panel sessions) in their big event with EABIS and, on Sunday-through-Monday, I was in a small castle outside Leiden, taking part in my first Board meeting with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). A brief account of that trip can be found here. The photograph is one I took of a sculpture that stands in the castle’s moat – and which seemed a perfect representation of Homo volans on the lookout for opportunity.

Meanwhile, Pamela has been in the US, doing a three-week stint at Columbia Business School, one of the schools we support as part of Volans Campus.

To be honest, when we came to map out all the organisations we are involved in both as part of our Trailblazers, Campus and Keynote programs, while we were putting together the latest iteration of this website, their sheer number came as something of a shock. On the other hand, we concluded that the sheer diversity and ambition of these organisations provides us with a means to considerably amplify our own impact over time.

Although Volans is unlikely to evolve into a financial venture fund any time soon, we aim to get much better at the art of investing our time, effort and networks in pursuit of social innovation and change. In the process, we would love to hear from people who have developed their own social change portfolios with a similar end in mind.