Interview With an Entrepreneur: Andrew BroughLots of people come up with great ideas that they think will change the world but most people don’t have the expertise to get them off the ground. Andrew Brough makes ideas into reality. As head of fund development for Launchpad, he works with people to provide the commercial and entrepreneurial advice they need to create social impact. Zenobia Talati talks to him.
Age: 35
Job title: Launchpad Head of Fund Development and a Social Entrepreneur Organisation: The Young Foundation
Andrew has a unique assortment of talents and interests, from a Masters degree in Space Science, and a background in technology consulting to sitting on the board of several charities and new social ventures. He also spends much of his time with his family - he is married and has two young children and is expecting a third child shortly. Andrew did not intend to work as a social entrepreneur. Five years ago he started a company that worked mainly with technology experts from universities. He found many people had good ideas to set up their own companies but needed help to take the next steps. “They may have been leaders in their field,” he says, “but they had no understanding about how to set up a new venture or how to see their idea reach the marketplace.” After working with a number of technology organisations, Andrew realised that his skills would also be valuable for tackling social needs. He felt that social ventures could benefit from people with commercial, delivery focussed and venture capitalist skills. People have been scratching their heads to find solutions to society’s problems forever, so social entrepreneurship is not exactly anything new. But the cross-pollination that can take place when different groups of people and different sectors meet is an exciting prospect for Andrew, who believes this is the space where innovative thinking can happen. An example of this is the Social Innovation Camp event, which Andrew helped to develop. It was an experimental weekend that brought together web developers and social innovators to pool their talents and find viable online solutions for pressing social issues. The winning idea, Enabled by Design, is an interactive website that challenges the traditionally ‘ugly’ and non user friendly design of living aids and adaptations for people with a disability, injury or impairment. Another project that Andrew is working with is the School of Everything, which is an online marketplace for face-to-face learning. The principle behind it is that everyone has something to learn and everyone has something to teach. The website makes it easy for people to advertise a skill, find a teacher in absolutely any subject, be it web design, mathematics or DJing, and then arrange a learning session. And in the future, Andrew says he can imagine the entire education system working on this model, with students choosing what they want to learn and who teaches them. The founders of School of Everything came to Launchpad with the idea of setting up a charity. But Andrew worked with them to develop a model that would be sustainable from a commercial point of view. “It’s a good example of a project that is achieving a social mission but can do so with a commercial model,” he says. Andrew doesn’t believe that one model, be it charity, social enterprise or business, can solve all social problems. He says different social issues will need to find their own hybrid approaches that work best for them. But he is aware that unfortunately many organisations struggle to find sources of funding to keep them running, “the real concern for tackling social issues, and those involving vulnerable people especially, is that you can’t develop new services that might go away because of lack of money.” Andrew recognises that social entrepreneurship is going through an exciting phase at the moment. He says the UK government is realising that to deliver better public services they need to innovate and they are doing this by opening up areas like the health system, criminal justice and even education to allow third sector organisations and social organisations to potentially bid for and obtain work that would have traditionally been done by the public sector. But whatever sector you come from, what is still most crucial for social entrepreneurs, according to Andrew, is the passion for an idea and willingness to follow through with it, wherever that may take you. He says you need to try new things and if they fail learn from that and try again but in a new way. But he also recognises that many people need a bit of guidance to build the courage to take risks. “Where my experience comes is in helping support, encourage and mentor people with new ideas to address social issues, to actually set-up a new organisation and then help them weigh-up and make the decisions necessary to actually build a company or a new venture.” “Most people are entrepreneurs not because they see themselves building a company,” he says. “They’re entrepreneurs because they see a problem and they have some kind of solution to solve it.” And in the likely event you get a bit stuck in thought along the way – Andrew is the action man to see. Read Interview with Susan Langford Read interview with Nick Temple Read Interview with Mary Rose Cook Read Interview with Elizabeth Bayliss Read interview with Jessica Shortall Read interview with Jos Belgrave
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