Sunday night isn’t a great time for a business programme on TV is it? Now with the best will in the world, most of us are trying to hold on to the final moments of our weekend and so do we really want to be drawn into business-think-and-daft-commentary in our Sunday evening bliss??
Anyway, all mis-timed programming schedules put to one side, what about those Dragons and their misunderstanding or misinterpretation of Social Enterprise. Last night’s episode certainly didn’t let us down on that score – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b013c6z1
We had two separate mentions of social enterprise, the most clearly misinterpreted was in reference to the DJ Academy proposal – more of which you can read here
http://blog.djandmcacademy.com/
Peter Jones explained that he really liked social enterprise, but had no intention of investing in it as a Dragon. Why not? What is it about investing for a return and at the same time seeing real social impact happen that he doesn’t get. Theo Pathitis then went on to explain unlike Mr Jones he would invest in social enterprise, but not this one as its to owner focussed – what the heck does that mean?
We really do need to do more in raising understanding of what social enterprises are in the real business sense and helping people to clearly articulate and be proud of being one.
To make that happen I challenge someone to get to the Dragons Den and make them understand it clearly – and invest of course!
Julie Harris