Nick's Blog
Enjoyable things for local communities to do together
April 18, 2012, No Comments
The After the Riots report from the Riots Communities and Victims Panel was a really good example of how to emerge from something painful with something simple, positive and practical. In plain language, it’s insightful and creative with few assumptions or judgments. We particularly liked the advice for the police to look at ways to “improve […]
Digital inclusion is ideal for an incidental approach
March 27, 2012, No Comments
In the middle of three new launches of our Internet Buttons project into Ireland, Poland and Holland, we’ve been struck, again, by the need for useful tools like this all across Europe. Our UK Internet Buttons, launched last year and developed in partnership with the Nominet Trust, has been used in all sorts of environments to […]
The response to ‘Kony 2012’ has been amazing, but it’s not an example to follow
March 18, 2012, 1 Comment
When the Kony 2012 video first popped up on my Facebook wall and I started to watch it, I only got a few minutes in. “Who are you to end a war?” asks Invisible Children’s Director, Jason Russell, of a star struck teenage girl, “Who are you not to?”, was, specifically, the point I got to […]
The nudge potential of mobile payments
March 6, 2012, 2 Comments
Starbucks Corp CEO, Howard Schultz, described the arrival of mobile payments as part of a “seismic change” in consumer behaviour. For Starbucks, which is leagues ahead of any other high street retailer in taking advantage of the technology, this change has proved extremely profitable and earlier this year they reported record revenues as a result. The […]
Too important to make lots of money from
February 26, 2012, 1 Comment
I’ve had lots of e-mails, tweets and a few calls from journalists asking for a bit more explanation on something I said on The World Today on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday night. Charlotte Ashton from Radio 4, as part of her series on British social enterprises, asked whether it should be acceptable for social […]
A bit of new radicalism
February 19, 2012, No Comments
It has been great for We Are What We Do to be included in the Britain’s New Radicals list, launched today by The Observer and NESTA. We obviously understand that this kind of list has to be representative, rather than comprehensive, and there have already been plenty more people and organisations added through the surrounding debate […]
Facebook “built to accomplish a social mission”
February 5, 2012, 3 Comments
Mark Zuckerberg’s recent letter to shareholders illustrated once again that, while the world is obsessed with the wealth generated by his company, he’s obsessed with its social impact. “Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected,” he […]
Playing social change
January 30, 2012, 1 Comment
Despite being interested from a distance for some time, we have only just started to explore the potential of gaming to affect social change and, like many before us, found this potential to be almost endless. One of the influences behind this new work has been the opportunity to collaborate with Tom Chatfield, the author […]
Customer service can change the world
January 12, 2012, No Comments
We’ve just started working with Sky on some internal leadership events that they run each year and, once again, my budding obsession with the social power of customer service has been given another prod. Sky has 10 million customers and 6,000 customer service agents. Sainsbury’s, one of our other close partners, has 20 million customers […]
‘Tis the season for serious guilt
December 31, 2011, 8 Comments
It’s this time of year that our TVs are overrun with unmissable deals on three piece suites and all inclusive holidays. Most of it is pretty annoying, but pretty easy to tune out of. Less easy to tune out of is the barrage of fundraising appeals for Africa and this year they seem to be more […]
The Paralympics: positive or negative incidental effects on inclusion?
December 16, 2011, 5 Comments
Sally Richards is the mother of Jackson West, a young, Canberra-based entrepreneur with a disability, and I was lucky enough to have her as part a group of around 200 people at the We Are What We Do workshop organised by Disability ACT and BLITS last week in the Australian capital. This audience are all […]
The Incidental Effect
December 12, 2011, 10 Comments
Hello. This first one is going to be very short, because what it refers to is quite long and I don’t want you to get fed up before you get there. This month, we’ve launched the draft of our new approach paper – The Incidental Effect — which aims to start some conversations about new ways […]