The Government, through the Council for Competitiveness and Innovation, has launched a new programme that aims to address some of the country’s social problems by replicating some of the ideas that have made the existing i2i programme a success, says Dr Rikhi Permanand, executive director, Economic Development Board/Council For Competitiveness.
The new programme, called Lumination Challenge, will help serve as the social innovation version to the business driven i2i programme, which caters for people interested in commercialising business ideas, said Permanand.
The Lumination Challenge will provide funding for NGOs working on social issues, he said.
“If you speak about innovation linked to business that is much easier to understand. The real difference is social innovation can be about products, it can be about processes, it can be about services, but it also has a wider remit. It can be about justice or the environment. The scope is wider. In a commercial venture one is talking about productivity, economic growth, and profit redounding to a private individual. For a social innovator, people think about NGOs which are sponsored by sponsorships and the Government,” he told the Guardian two Thursdays ago.
He spoke about “social entrepreneurship.”
“Today that does not have to be the case. You can solve social problems and be an entrepreneur. At the end of the day, social entrepreneurship redounds to the benefit of society and less to the bottomline profit of an individual. That is the major distinction. The world economic crisis and the collapse of 2009 was driven by greed,” he said.
He said an economy and society only driven by the desire and personal greed could lead to another economic collapse and so there is the need to have a balance in society.
“That crisis caused a lot of people to lose their jobs. They were on the breadline. If you look at philanthropy, the very big earners in society—like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and many more people like them—are saying they make money out of business and what can they do to take some of that profit and put it to work. It is not a gift; they actually want to see their money work for society. It is good that we are seeing balance coming back,” he said.
He spoke about the Lumination programme that the Council for Competitiveness launched in January which is based on this line of thinking.
“It is a brand new programme and there is no other programme like it in the country. It is building off our experience with the i2i programme. This programme looks at innovative solutions to social issues. It is important because if we look to economic development it is more than just about the economy, productivity and profit. It is about social issues and the environment. A natural move for us was moving from the i2i and testing whether we can create the same kind of awareness and stimulation of people in the country to deal with the social issues. That is really the crux of what this is about.”
There are three areas they are testing and working on as they get it off the ground.
“Those areas are youth, family and education. We are saying for the first year let us see what the kind of responses are. These areas were chosen through discussion with United Way Trinidad who are involved in social programmes. We want to partner with them in the same way Cariri has been a technical partner for the i2i programme,” he said.
He said funds for the Lumination programme would come from the Innovation Financing Facility (IFF) which was used to fund the i2i programme with $10 million in its first year in 2012.
“We have allocated $3 million for the inaugural Lumination programme. We did that on the basis of similar sorts of money for the i2i. We do not expect social innovation will have as many applicants as business i2i. We are expecting roughly half of the number of awards into it,” he said.
He said the Council For Competitiveness will not be responsible for the programmes that will be generated as this will be done by organisations already working in this area.
“We are saying that these three areas are very important social areas to solve issues. If you look at education the retention rate of children in schools, the curricula, the issues we have in schools today are drugs, bullying, guns. That leads to crime. How do you solve those issues? Family is a major issue. The target audience for this is people who are already working in the social sphere. It is NGOs, it is youth and social workers. But that does not preclude anybody who thinks they can have an idea that is going to solve some of these things to participate in the programme.”
He said the Council for Competitiveness serves to facilitate the process.
“We throw out issues that need to be solved and we are asking the target groups working in this sphere of activity if they have got ideas that, if they could get funding for it, could move their agenda to help solve their problems. We are funding and providing the mentorship similar to i2i. People working in the social areas do not necessarily have the business skills. We also know that from our discussions with United Way,” he said.
So far, he said they have had 146 submissions that are now being evaluated.
“The independent submission panel is a different panel to the evaluation panel used for i2i because the mix of people must be different. The panel for the Lumination programme must be well versed in social issues,” he said.
He said some of the criteria he would use to determine the success of the Lumination programme would be similar to the i2i programme.
“Retention into the programme, proof of concept. That means people are happy with how the programme is structured and they want to be part of it, and that we get a good proportion of ideas being converted into proof of concept and some of them moving into finalisation. The statistics for this I cannot say because this is the first time I am doing it.”
Permanand spoke to the Business Guardian at the Ministry of Planning, Level 17, Tower D, International Waterfront, Port-of-Spain.
According to the Ministry of Planning’s Web site, the Lumination Challenge seeks to foster social innovation and experimentation by reducing the associated financial risks through grant funding provided by the CCI. Grant funding from $75,000 to $200,000 will be disbursed to worthy projects as well as mentoring and project development assistance. Support for the implementation of selected projects will be provided through pilot programmes and experiments.
idea to innovation
Permanand also spoke about the Idea to Innovation (i2i) programme and the successes it has experienced since 2012.
He said the i2i programme—started in 2012—is now in its fourth year.
“We have just closed the fourth stage, which is the challenge stage. Proposals will come in from people who have an interest in participating in the programme and it closed off two Fridays ago.
What does CCI do?
It focuses on improving the competitiveness of our country through the ranking of the global competitiveness index. Through this we are charged to improve the awareness of innovation in the country. The i2i addresses that second part, he said.
He said they want to stimulate the citizens to be aware of innovation and it does not necessarily mean “people in white coats in labs.”
“Many people have problems facing them and many people solve these problems in creative ways. If you are 18 years and over, you may have ideas that you can see have potential to be developed to a commercial place. It is about a business innovation that will lead to entrepreneurship. When you create entrepreneurs, you create jobs and wealth in the country,” he said.
He said most people have an idea but many times they cannot access financing to get that idea off the ground.
“The traditional lending mechanisms in the country are banks, and like banks across the world they are not interested in such risks. We want entrepreneurs to get their ideas off the ground to a proof of concept. The Government realises funding is important to get the masses into innovation and creative thinking and has put together an Innovation Financing Facility (IFF) which started off with the i2i programme in 2012 with $10 million. Every year it is topped up and it is that which is issued to support the financial requirement of the i2i programme,” he said.
He said of the three i2i programmes, they have had 1,300 applications in three years and a fair amount of success in achieving the programme’s goals.
“Out of these applications, 145 projects and ideas were awarded. The amount awarded over those three programmes is around $15.5 million. What is important is the robustness of the programme.
“About 90 per cent or more of the participants stay within the programme. Roughly 33 per cent are already in business. These figures are related to the two programmes completed and another 20 per cent are likely to get to the point of commercial activity.”
