Toronto's Ecosystem for social innovation: preface

Eship Summit 2017, Kauffman Foundation

In love with research, not academia

The idea of researching best practices for supporting social entrepreneurs through structured programming (think incubators, accelerators, etc.) had been steeping in the back of my mind for over a year when I suddenly found myself in a position of no permanent address, house key, job or place I needed to be.
Similarly, I had been mulling over the idea of applying for a PhD program. After speaking to several professors in PhD programs I decided that - if getting a PhD meant you had to be an academic afterward (which is the short of it) - I didn’t want to go for a postgraduate degree. But damn, had I always enjoyed researching, exploring and analyzing the very bones of a system or situation I so desperately wanted to understand!

Instead, I designed what I called “My Personal PhD” (it always remained a working title). From January through June 2015, I launched phase I of what would later become Social Venturers. I spent the first weeks frantically reading every research paper I could find on social enterprise acceleration. I researched support organizations for social entrepreneurs country by country. I designed my research framework to allow me to collect consistent data across countries. I reached out to dozens of support organizations across Europe to schedule interviews with program managers at each organization. And I spent six months interviewing the first thirty social venture support organizations of many more to come. Read a recap of phase I here.

Assessing Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: Actors and Playbooks

Fast forward three years and we find ourselves on my front porch in St Clair West, Toronto, Canada. My six-months old is snoozing by my side while the rain is drumming on the porch roof. We moved to Canada in May 2018 and I have spent the last two weeks sketching out how to best explore the social enterprise landscape in Toronto. Since the launch of Social Venturers, I have a three years of ecosystem building experience with Startup Champions Network and the Kauffman Foundation under my belt. Based on these experiences and the insights of ecosystem experts like Brad Feld and Village Capital, I am going to explore Toronto’s social enterprise scene to find answers to these three questions:

• Who are the key players in the social enterprise ecosystem?
• What are the key attributes, challenges and success stories of purpose-driven entrepreneurs in Toronto?
• What is the glue that keeps it all together? In other words, what do the culture, the relationships and the stories people tell themselves about their ecosystem look like?​

Startup Communities, Brad Feld
To categorize key players I am borrowing a framework from Brad Feld’s book Startup Communities who lists leaders and feeders as

• Entrepreneurs
• Government
• Universities
• Investors
• Mentors, and
• Service Providers.

Based on my experience, I am adding to that list

• support organizations (such as accelerators, incubators, startup weekends, etc.) and
• facilitators (organizations that promote entrepreneurship, raise awareness, and tell the stories of the ecosystem and its entrepreneurs). ​

Playbook for Ecosystem Builders, Kauffman Foundation
The Kauffman Foundation is developing a playbook for ecosystem builders and takes a slightly more nuanced approach by identifying not only key players but structures and “the glue”  within an ecosystem:

• Entrepreneurs
• Talent
• People and Institutions with knowledge and resources
• Champions of the entrepreneurs and their ecosystem
• On-ramps (access points) to facilitate participation
• Intersections through which people, ideas and resources interact
• Stories that people tell about themselves and their ecosystem
• Social Capital (a culture of collaboration, cooperation, trust, reciprocity and focus on the common good).

Why the heck, Anika?

Allow me to elaborate: Entrepreneurs need different types of support along their journey. No single organization or person can provide all of it, nor should they. As the Kauffman Foundation puts it, ecosystems help entrepreneurs thrive at each step allowing talent, information and resources to flow quickly as they are needed by founders (source).

If you have read this piece, you know that I feel called to help purpose-driven entrepreneurs thrive. As part of this new-to-me ecosystem, I feel the urge to understand exactly who is doing what, how effective it is and what is missing to see the Toronto ecosystem thrive.

Let me throw this out there: Toronto is bustling with activity in the social enterprise space. After three years in a mid-sized city that was grappling with the notion of social enterprise, I am T.H.R.I.L.L.E.D. to be in a space that is this progressive. Yay!
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The short of it is: With a clear understanding of actors, challenges and the culture of the social enterprise space, I will have a clearer sense of where to spread my wings and how to best serve purpose-driven founders.

Research Objectives

Until the end of the 2018, my research objectives are to

• Speak to as many purpose-driven entrepreneurs as possible to get their perspective on what’s working and what not.
• Interview support organizations to learn about their work and its effectiveness.
• Learn from impact investors how they assess the maturity of the space, and understand their investment approach.
• Explore the different programs, courses and extracurricular activities that universities deploy to build entrepreneurs and the talent needed for a thriving startup community.
• Find out what on-ramps and intersections are currently available to join the ecosystem and facilitate exchange.
• Hear the stories that leaders and feeders tell themselves about the social enterprise community.
• Peel back the layers of relationships within the ecosystem to assess the level and quality if social capital.                      

I plan on interviewing as many local actors as possible to collect enough data to be able to assess how healthy and mature the ecosystem is. As the cherry on the icing I hope to gain insights into some of these questions:

• What services are missing?
• Where is innovation taking place, what (who?) is hindering it, and what seedlings are growing in the niches of the ecosystem?

In short, what else does the ecosystem need to help social entrepreneurs thrive?

Expect monthly updates on the conversations I have with social entrepreneurs, B Corps, ecosystem builders and champions, facilitators, investors, educators. 

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