November 2019 – Social Enterprise Development in the Baltic Sea Region

Internationalization of the social entrepreneurship

The concept of social entrepreneurship gets more and more popular and people all around Europe and also the rest of the world start to recognize it as an important tool for attaining the social goals of different societies. Entrepreneurs can use several national and European sources of support in order to start or expand their business, and as many social enterprises keep growing, they also start to think about expanding their business across the borders.

Internationalizing the social business has not yet became a common practice in the Baltic Sea Region. However, given the growing support of the concept, international expansion may be the next logical step to many social businesses also in this region. The obstacle for such expansion, of course, is the limited resources and also the lack of support mechanisms for such actions. Therefore knowing what are the available tools, resources and support mechanisms is of very high importance. What is more, a very substantial source of inspiration and also knowledge is the experience of other social entrepreneurs who already have started their international trading. Information about that and also other important factors that should be taken into consideration when growing your social enterprises internationally, can be found here: http://www.intsense.eu/. In this online platform developed within the framework of a project Internationalising Trading for Social Enterprise Sustainability and Education social entrepreneurs and other interested parties can obtain knowledge of several aspects of international trading of the social enterprises. What is very valuable, is the fact that a huge part of the data that has been produced within this project comes from interviews with social entrepreneurs from Latvia, Lithuania, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Greece and are based on real experiences of success and failure of these social entrepreneurs, therefore rendering the data credible and very useful. The conducted study researched such aspects as motives behind foreign establishment, typical forms of trading international, relevant resources and the barriers and challenges faced when starting the international trading.

The platform offers four different educational and informative materials useful for anyone interested in social business, especially social entrepreneurs who want to start trading internationally:

A framework of factors that act as enablers and barriers to the internationalization of social enterprise trading of goods and services that reflect differing business models currently in use. This is an entry level framework and acts as a summary to the whole of the project;
A desk-based research report that maps out and appraises the use of current support mechanisms available in Latvia, Lithuania, Italy, Greece, the UK and Germany for social enterprises wanting to internationalize their trading practices;
Case study materials that act as pilot lights to show exemplars of social enterprise international practices, collected from social entrepreneurs that are already trading their goods and services internationally; and
Formal and informal educational and training materials relating to the international trading of social enterprise goods and services, their sustainability and support mechanisms available. The materials will comprise an online interactive business canvas, video summaries and written modules, based on the findings of the project that can be adapted to a variety of educational settings.

Visit http://www.intsense.eu/ to learn more and download the informative and educational materials.

Project Internationalising Trading for Social Enterprise Sustainability and Education is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.

Collaboration tools | e-Collaboration tools

A new player in the digital collaboration tool field – Ryver

Let us introduce you to another highly effective digital collaboration tool that will make the every-day life of your team or organization much easier. Ryver is similar to Slack, however, there are some notable differences. As sated on the Ryver’s website – it is one step ahead of Slack because it offers to turn your conversations into trackable tasks, other than by expensive integration with other apps that have limited functionality. It also allows you to automate mass notifications and task assignments for predictable business processes. What makes Ryver special is the fact that you can create as many teams as you want within the app, and, as is the case with also other digital collaboration apps, you can also use the platform to set up chats with groups and individuals. What is more, Ryver is equipped with some interesting filters – for example, you can choose who can see the things that you post and say on the app and you can join the teams that are most relevant for you. All the public conversations are displayed in a similar style as the Facebook feed and there is also an option to mark some conversations, engagements and news in this feed to come back to them later.

Another reason why Ryver is unique is because it integrates team communication tools, team task management and workflow automation. No other digital collaboration app has yet been able to combine all these three substantial functions into one platform. This integration allows the users to : 1)Collaborate via Chat, Topic-threaded Chat (Topics), and Voice & Video Calls (including screen sharing); 2) Turn conversations into trackable Tasks in a powerful task manager; 3) Automate business processes like notifying teammates, assigning tasks, and delivering information to other apps lightning-fast using Workflow.

Ryver is available for 49$ per month for up to 12 team users and for 99$ per month for unlimited amount of users. Visit https://ryver.com/ to find out more.

Collaboration tools

Zoho Connect: More than a collaboration app an enterprise social network that fosters company-wide collaboration!

Zoho Connect as a team collaboration app, helps you to unify your team, resources, and the online tools you need.
Your team can share ideas, hold real-time discussions, contact anyone in the network, create their own apps, build their knowledge base, manage their work plans, and also access apps designed to make team work easy and quick.

With Zoho Connect, faster communication and better collaboration is guaranteed.

Zoho Connect an enterprise social network
Now you can build your organization’s very own social network, designed to make team communication, knowledge sharing, and work management simpler.

The place in which Social Media channels meet productivity and your team can have real-time discussions, anytime!

Connect’s social-network-themed Feeds let your team members post company announcements, share updates and keep everyone in the workplace up to date. Helping you to organize teams by creating groups as well as run polls when you need to reach a quick consensus using the channels to create your team chats speeding up decision making processes.

Yours, truly

Make your enterprise social network truly yours, by letting your members access it from your domain. Add your logo and create your own custom CSS to ensure your brand makes an impression.

Wondering if Zoho Connect’s enterprise social network is a good fit for your business? It is time to try it out and take a closer look at Zoho site: here

Blog

Estonian residents see entrepreneurship as an attractive career choice!

There is an important increase in the number of Estonians who think that the conditions in Estonia favour setting up a business, while fear of failure has decreased. (by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor study)

Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) is a study that analyses entrepreneurship in different countries and regions; the latest study shows increased entrepreneurial activity around the world. “The crucial motivation in starting a business is personal example, such as personally knowing an entrepreneur. Other important factors include faith in one’s knowledge and skills to make it as an entrepreneur, and an identified business opportunity or idea. Less important factors include the improved social status as an entrepreneur, and the attention given to entrepreneurship in the society,” said Head of the Foresight Centre Tea Danilov, commenting the conclusions of the study

Over the last five years, the early-stage entrepreneurship activity (TEA) rate (the prevalence rate of individuals who have taken steps to start a new company, or have been entrepreneurs for up to 42 months) has increased from 14 % to 19 % in Estonia. Among the innovation-based countries – as the study classifies Estonia – this is a very high rate. Last year, the European TEA index was 8.1 %, and has remained around this mark for the past five years. The TEA index is 14.2 % in Latvia, 7.3 % in Sweden, and 5.3 % in Germany. Early-stage entrepreneurship has grown fairly equally among men and women, which is why the percentage of women has not changed over the past three years.

A typical early-stage entrepreneur in Estonia is a male under 45 years of age who identifies a business opportunity and considers his knowledge and skills good enough to become an entrepreneur. “We could ask whether men are actually more business savvy, or just more confident. It is a positive sign that most companies are founded in Estonia on the basis of business opportunities (76 %); only around one in four (24 %) entrepreneurs are forced to start a business to earn a living. This pattern favours innovation and ambition to grow,” Danilov summarised.

The study shows that entrepreneurship activity in Estonia would benefit further if the 45+ age group would be encouraged to become entrepreneurs, people would be prompted to share their personal entrepreneurship experiences, young people would be taught entrepreneurial skills, and entrepreneurship would be emphasised as a positive career choice.

All budding entrepreneurs fear failure, but the last five years have shown a change in the attitude of the Estonians in this respect. “The change in the entrepreneurship culture is characterised by indicators such as seeing entrepreneurship as a successful career choice, the high status of entrepreneurs in the society, and the high media attention to entrepreneurship,” Danilov explained.

The main drawback highlighted by the analysts is that the starting entrepreneurs are not planning to create as many jobs as earlier. Although the global report underlines this as a problem, Estonia has not seen the negative effects so far; however, in light of the trends in the labour market, the number of jobs may still fall because the number of self-employed individuals is growing.

The study shows that an increasing number of Estonians personally know an entrepreneur – this percentage has grown from 31% to 39% over the last five years. The number of people who feel that they do not have the knowledge and skills necessary for entrepreneurship is falling; however, self-doubters still make up 50 % of the population.

Over the last five years, people are increasingly viewing entrepreneurship as a positive career choice – in 2017, half of the 18–64 year olds felt that. The percentage of those who consider entrepreneurs as high status members of the society has remained around 60–65 %.

Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) is an annual study that analyses and compares entrepreneurship activity and attitudes. The study involves over 50 countries around the world; Estonia has been included since 2012.

Facts about early-stage entrepreneurial activity in Estonia in 2012–2017 according to GEM study (PDF, 81 kB)

We’d Love To Hear From You!