Mr  K K Tse, Chair of the Hong Kong Social Entrepreneurship Forum,  was in Singapore to  attend the inaugural Social iCon 2009; a one-day conference organized by the Lien Centre for Social Innovation at the Singapore Management University.

SEforum: Are there any personal observations you would like to share while you were here in Singapore?

I enjoyed the Social icon event very much and learnt a lot from the speakers as well as the organizers. Both Singapore and Hong Kong are relative newcomers to the field. It has only been 4 to 5 years since the terms social enterprise and social entrepreneurship have come into public awareness and attention.

But I couldn’t help feeling that in Singapore, you allow the government to do too much. I said ‘you allow’, because you could change this state of affairs. Nowhere in the world does the government create success in social entrepreneurship. Only social entrepreneurs will. Frankly, in Singapore the entrepreneurial spirit is very, very low. This is true for business entrepreneurship and even more so for social entrepreneurship. This is an area where Singapore needs a major breakthrough otherwise it is hard for social enterprise to flourish.

By far the most important difference is the environment for entrepreneurship. Hong Kong is often known as a city of entrepreneurs, albeit business entrepreneurs. In Singapore, by contrast, the best and brightest would not aspire to become an entrepreneur; they prefer to work for the government or the multi-national corporations. As a leading businessman has recently put it, “We need to emphasize the need for entrepreneurs in Singapore, simply because everybody is so ingrained against it. If we say to every Singaporean that you must be entrepreneurs, maybe two percent of graduates will be entrepreneurs. But, if you do not say it, there will be none.” (Ho Kwon Ping, Executive Chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Singapore Management University, quoted in Social Space, 2009, Issue 2, p.15)

Generally speaking, setting up a social enterprise is more difficult than setting up a business enterprise. In Singapore, therefore, becoming a social entrepreneur is far more challenging than doing so in Hong Kong. Currently, most social enterprises in Singapore receive government funding support (just like the situation in Hong Kong), but Hong Kong boasts a greater number of social enterprises that can flourish without any government funding support. Examples such as Senior Citizens Home Safety Association, Fullness Social Enterprise, Ventures in Development, Dialogue in the Dark HK Ltd., to name a few.

SEforum: What do you see are the pressing challenges for SE in the region in the next 3 years?

1.  Creating a Social Capital Market

Although our two cities pride themselves as being a world-class financial centre, it is curious, almost grotesque, to observe that there is virtually no capital market for social enterprises. There are so many funding sources available to be tapped that we have only ourselves to blame if we could not devise and develop suitable mechanisms to channel the funds to productive investment in social businesses. We need a major breakthrough in this area in the near future.

2.  Making More Creative Use of Government Funding and Policy Support

Although we firmly believe that social entrepreneurship is primarily a citizen sector initiative, it does not mean that we cannot leverage public sector funding and policy support to advance our cause. Indeed, it is our duty to make good and creative use of whatever the government could do in terms of providing funding and various forms of policy support. Up to this moment, the government has provided ‘seed money’ for NGO-sponsored social enterprises but with very mixed results.  There is no doubt that citizen sector needs to take the lead in the social entrepreneurship space. For example, after the first Social Enterprise Summit organized by the HKSAR government in 2007, a number of civil society organizations felt that the Summit could achieve far better results when it is organized by the citizen’s sector. Which is why this upcoming SE summit in HK is championed by NGOs!

3.  Engaging Young People as Leaders of Positive Social Change

Young people have become a ‘lost generation’. But tomorrow’s world will be shaped and owned by today’s youth. No society can afford not to invest substantially on preparing young people to take control of their destiny. Having worked with thousands of social entrepreneurs worldwide, Ashoka came to realize the importance of encouraging, supporting and empowering young people to be changemakers early in their lives. Ten years ago, Ashoka started to launch a new program known as Youth Venture. The basic idea is very simple and powerful: the society-wide redefinition of youth years as a time of leadership and positive social initiative, thus equipping them with the skills and empathy to be changemakers throughout their lives. Hong Kong needs our own version of Youth Venture and we need it fast.

SEforum: Please share with us your vision for Social Entrepreneurship

‘Every Business a Social Business’

The inspiration of this idea comes from Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank.

My personal career is a perfect example. I worked for a long time as a salaried employee for a typical profit-maximizing enterprise. Everyone in the organization from the boss downwards was schooled to think single-mindedly of profit maximization. No one was supposed to do otherwise. In the end, everyone’s energy, creativity, talents were focused exclusively on maximizing profits. If a person had any other interests or concerns, one could only pursue them outside office hours in one’s spare time. This became the case for one’s entire career and and is thought to be natural in a capitalistic economy.

Looking back, I regret having ‘wasted’ so much of my youth and prime time in doing nothing but profit maximization. If this happens to me alone, it is a personal tragedy. But when everyone working in a corporation shares the same fate, it is a human tragedy on a grand scale.

Yunus envisions a day when there will no longer be any distinctions between a business enterprise and a social enterprise, and all businesses will become social businesses. In his ‘solution’, the driving force for this new future will be a new type of entrepreneurs, what he calls social business entrepreneurs. It is a bold future and an inspiring one for all of us to join hands to bring about.

It will of course take decades to realize this vision. But things are changing and can change very fast indeed. The accelerated growth of social entrepreneurship is and will be a major force to demonstrate the viability and desirability of this ultimate goal.