Edu-preneurship 1: from profit to purpose
Edu-preneurs bring a start-up mindset to education. In this series of blog posts, I will share lessons that educators can take from business, research, and entrepreneurship to disrupt the system for benefit of young people.
I used to be sceptical about the value of business management books to school leaders; it was Good to Great by Jim Collins (2001) that changed my mind.
Taking a deep dive into those companies that have endured and achieved ‘greatness’, Collins pinpoints common leadership traits and system design principles. Much like the work of Doug Lemov in Teach Like a Champion (2010), these commonalities are codified into memorable phrases and hooks: ‘who then what', ‘level 5 leadership’, ‘the flywheel’, and, key to this article, ‘the hedgehog concept’.
Collins uses the old story of the fox and the hedgehog to illustrate the key components of great start-up ideas. While the fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows one big thing - rolling into a spiky ball! It is Collins’ contention that the best businesses have homed in on their hedgehog concept, and used it from start-up phase through to enduring greatness. We are introduced to a strategy of brainstorming ideas into three overlapping circles in a venn diagram, and learn that if any one of these elements is missing, the hedgehog concept is likely to fail.
Circle 1: the things you are you good at,
Circle 2: the things you are passionate about,
Circle 3: the things that make money.
Your hedgehog concept is the idea that fits in the middle of these circles. The thesis is that great companies know their big idea and can execute it to make money.
This begs the question for edu-preneurs: what should replace profit in our hedgehog diagram? If there is no direct mapping from entrepreneurship to social change, then this series of blog posts will be built on shoddy foundations. Happily, Collins was asked this very question so often, he produced a follow-up monograph to supplement his business blockbuster: Good to Great and the Social Sciences (2006). Here we see the hedgehog concept re-imagined for those in organisations where profit is neither a driving force, nor a measure of success. In a series of blog posts, I want to dig into the mindset of the ‘edu-preneur’, and it must start with this foundational difference between for-profit entrepreneurship and for-purpose social entrepreneurship.
Collins gives us an important distinction between the meaning of money in business and the meaning of money in social enterprises:
“The confusion between inputs and outputs stems from one of the primary differences between business and the social sectors. In business, money is both an input (a resource for achieving greatness) and an output (a measure of greatness). In the social sectors, money is only an input, and not a measure of greatness.”
This gets to the heart of the matter: those working in charities, schools and any kind of work aimed at creating social value need to consider the “resource engine” or inputs that will drive their activities. It may well be money, or it could be volunteers’ time, space and any of a long list of in-kind contributions. Inevitably, money may be needed to ensure sustainability and scaleability, but it definitely isn't an outcome.
As someone working with lots of schools across a range of initiatives, it has been useful to go back to the hedgehog venn diagram to clarify over-arching strategy. Wherever any edu-preneur is starting on their journey, I can vouch for the power of starting with three, simple, overlapping circles:
What is the educational change in the world that you are passionate about?
What can you uniquely bring to the problem?
Can you generate the resources to achieve sustainability?
As Jim Collins would put it: once you have worked out the mission that answers all three questions, you have found your Big Hairy Audacious Goal and it is time to take agency and to make it happen.
Further Reading
Collins, J. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap...and others don't. Random House Business Books.
Collins, J. C. (2006). Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great. United Kingdom: Random House Business Books.
Lemov, D. (2010). Teach like a champion: 49 techniques that put students on the path to college. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.