Over the last 7 months we have been working on a project to find ways to help keep older people connected as they enter into retirement. It culminated in the launch of The After Work Club a network to provide inspiration, connections, impetus and resources to redefine what life beyond your main career can hold. We talked to over 300 people to better understand the issues surrounding retirement and have gone through countless sessions where we analysed these insights and turned them into ideas for a sustainable social enterprise. Here are my 3 big learnings about retirement:
For someone who retirement seems long, long way off this has been quite a journey of discovery. I hadn’t even considered it, let alone thought about what it might be like, whether I’d want to retire, what I’d lose, what I’d gain, what I might struggle with. Check out The After Work Clubto see what we created to try and tackle some of these issues.
On Wednesday night I was luckily enough to get invited to the RCA Innovation Night 2012, with Will.i.am – Musician, Entrepreneur and Director of Creative Innovation, Intel Corporation, as the guest speaker. Previous speakers include Burberry Creative Director Christopher Bailey, Apple’s Jonathan Ive, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley and Sir James Dyson.
It was really interesting to hear how Will.i.am is using his fame and fortune to do so much great work in local communities across the US. Including launching I AM Auto, a car company that brings computer-programming and car-engineering skills to the deprived neighbourhood where he grew up.
The three tips I took from the talk included:
Don’t forget to dream, as dreamers mould and create the future, and right now we need to dream.
Being a palm tree right now is the best thing to be, as they have deep roots and after storms they are the last things standing.
We need to bring science and design closer together, which I think is really exciting!
It’s amazing to see the lovely Jane at Sugru’s invention being listed in The Times Top 50 Inventions of 2010. There’s lots of stuff from Jet packs! to Lasers that zap malaria-carrying mosquitoes! Have a look at this year’s biggest breakthroughs in science, technology and the arts.
As part of our support for social enterprises we’ve been asked by Wates construction to help find social enterprise suppliers for them. As it has a turnover of more than a £1 Billion this could be a huge boost for the sector. If you know of, or are from a social enterprises that could offer skills, goods or services please e-mail me here and I’ll pass it on to them.
If you’d like to spend a couple of hours putting one of best social enterprise brains to work on your venture or idea, then this might be the competition for you. You can get John Bird, who started the Big Issue, to give you tips on supporting people to work their way off the streets, or Tim Smit, who started the Eden Project, on getting money for your grand scheme. You could even win some time with me for top eBay tips or helping young people back into work (A few years ago I started social enterprise Auction My Stuff). To apply and get more details click here.
This is a lovely little video about entrepreneurs. Take a look!
Finally it’s trendy to be social and I would say the thinkpublic team is right at the forefront, enjoying the benefits of working on projects that really make a difference to society and to personal wellbeing.
An article in the Sunday Times last week interviewed Alnoor Ladha a trend forecaster at ad agency Mother, who predicted that if in the 1980s, you were distinguished by your wealth, and in the 1990s by how much you’d traveled, then in the late Noughties you are defined by your social value, the impact you have on the world beyond yourself.
I love the idea of this and it’s so timely.
At thinkpublic we have been spent the morning going through all the entries from The Real Work Experience workshops that took place across the country last Friday.
The ideas that all of the students and graduates have generated are inspiring, innovative and useful. Interestingly, most of the ideas overlap in some way so we suspect there will not be one winner, but a culmination of ideas brought together that will be supported to be taken forward. (more…)
“The ego-driven, command and control business model is officially dead” says WorldBlu’s Traci Fenton, who recently compiled a list of “The Most Democractic Workplaces”. Interesting, although it does have a slight U.S bias, so I’ve hardly heard of any of them. Does this mean that democratic organisations are not that successful, or are this lot about to take over?
