One of the unfortunate outcomes about so many Irish social enterprises being dependent on government funding is that it tends to lead to little or no experimentation. We discussed this during the social enterprise development class in the Ryan Academy on Friday morning – the participants are all involved in social enterprises from board level to senior managers to those embarking on creating new social enterprises. If we are to really invoke the spirit of innovation, which the country needs so badly now, we need to allow our social enterprises to try and fail. There is a clutiral issue about failure in Ireland and a form of civil servive mentality that it is better to keep the head down and not try new things. Perhaps this mentality is one of the reasons the country seems to be in the deep mental funk that it is at present.

We need our social enterprises to experiment, to try new things and yes, to be allowed to fail. I have been on non-profit boards that have tried new things and those that haven’t. I can tell you the ones that tried new things, or had the space to try new things, were the more innovative organisations and it showed in their delivery on the ground.

Again this leads back to Your Country Your Call, which is really a grand social experiment. It was discussed at early meetings during its development – what happens if no one applies? What happens if there is no clear winner? What happens if there are too many applications? And so on…..but all of these fears were overcome and the experiment has begun.  So far there are over 700 ideas listed and still 67 days to go. Go on Ireland, experiment.

For more information on The Ryan Academy, please visit www.dcu.ie/ryanacademy