The difficulty with 4 is that over the last 5 years we’ve had relatively bulky state-funded support structures supporting a relatively small sector (in terms of actually doing stuff).

The investment in social enterprise promotion has worked very well in terms of getting the term ‘social enterprise’ into policy documents but it hasn’t worked so well in terms of getting social enterprises actually delivering stuff on a significant scale – mainly because there’s no causal link between more politicians (and members of the general public) thinking social enterprise is a nice idea and more social enterprises providing products and services that deliver positive social outcomes.

I think the sort of more practically focused support you’re suggesting is the right way to go. My concern is that too much funding for the wrong things is about to be followed by little or no funding at all for SE support.

I’ve been saying for years that one of the outcomes of increasing and pervasive connectivity will be 21st century guilds, and maybe a new variant on Guild Socialism, which ran up against Fabianism and the State.

The way I see it the distinction between the absolutes of Public = State and Private = Individual or Company is obsolete.

Within a ‘co-ownership’ relationship within a consensual framework agreement we enter the same indefinite ‘Not Proven’ space which exists in Scotland between the conventional absolutes of Guilty and Not Guilty.

Within a partnership, there is no profit and no loss – just the agreed creation and sharing of value (money’s worth in all its forms) to a common purpose.

In my view partnership frameworks are emrging in use because ‘they work’ and those enterprises which do not participate in such relationships will be at a disadvantage to those that do.

To turn conventional rhetoric on its head, in a directly connected world, there is no reason why ‘productive’ entrepreneurs; suppliers, customers and citizens actually need ‘unproductive’/extractive finance capital and unless financial middlemen evolve to value-adding service provision they will wither on the vine.

I recommend a blog from the Forward Foundation which describes the transition from 20th century production economies to 21st century sharing and people-centered economies.

http://forwardfound.org/blog/?q=comparing-business-development-paradigms

This also has relevance to what I’ve been relating on the RSA site.