Let us get started right away with 2 videos showing 2 different ways of being an entrepreneur of change, with André Dupon, senior manager at Vitamine T, and Nicolas Cordier, social business director at Leroy Merlin. Without further ado, listen to what they
have to say. Social entrepreneurship has been seeing huge growth in France for a few years now, and is a real promise for the future because social entrepreneurship lies somewhere between full State and institutional intervention, hence public services that are hugely constrained by budgetary resources nowadays, and the commercial sector, which cannot on its own meet all of the needs, especially social needs, which have great resonance within our society. We are experiencing real dynamism among young entrepreneurs, young creators, including those from the major business schools, who have decided to combine an entrepreneurial activity, with all of the constraints and genetic models of the market while seeking first and foremost to maximise a social impact, an ecological footprint, an environmental footprint. Which does not necessarily mean that economic models do not firstly need to be high-performance if you want to be socially effective. The social enterprise is set to see huge growth in France and, as far as I and the teams around me can see, reach a position in the next 10 years that, if not dominant, will be in any case unique and will have a large impact, with the potential to generate several thousand or even million jobs within the French economic model. This is also down to the fact that the commercial sector, battered by successive crises and especially the financial crisis of 2008, is now starting to open up to these issues that a few would call social business, by which you can both carry on a business in a given market and also develop a greater social impact than in the past. Intrapreneurship versus entrepreneurship is a very good question. Ultimately, I think the underlying question is whether you want to change things where you are. So as it happened, I had been with Leroy-Merlin for ten years or so, where I had filled various roles, in the marketing division, in-store, in the central purchasing division, and so finally I reached a point where, being extremely familiar with the company from the inside, familiar with its mission, that's when you realise that you can start to make things change, shift goalposts within the company and there you go, an intrapreneurship project was born and in the end it's very very similar to setting up a company because it's not something that people have commissioned, it's not something that is expected to begin with, it's really something that I was leading and that I wanted to pull off within the company, to be able to incorporate social business projects into the heart of our business. And so, well, I did what many people would have done if they were setting up their own firm. So for 2 years, I spent my evenings and week-ends, in addition to my ordinary duties, in the purchasing division, working on developing an intrapreneurship project. Leroy Merlin's mission statement, as it is spelt out within the company, is to help every inhabitant to make their dream home come true. It should be admitted that "every inhabitant" does mean home owners with a little bit of money when it comes down to it. And at the same time it's a mission that is a potential driver for our day-to-day activities, the gamble I took with others at the start to say, when it comes to it, isn't there a way to reassert our company mission statement within a version or vision that is maybe more ambitious, but in any event more inspiring and so to be able to include inhabitants who are not currently our store customers within our business, and so find solutions to poor housing conditions. And all in a sustainable manner because they are profitable, or in any case at a minimum do not lose money. And so this whole new balance is what makes us think differently about the business in the end, but also think differently about social business. We had ideas, images of what business is and what social business is, which... it's a whole process in the end. Nowadays, I think that all organisations, companies-- and I'd even say associations, universities-- know, are aware that in 10 years' time they will not be doing what they have been doing for the last 10 or 20 years. We are in a shifting world, one that is shifting rather quickly, which is becoming more complex, and so we have to re-invent ourselves. And in a large organisation, with many employees, with structures, etc. we are not necessarily in the best position to adapt, we are not as agile as a start-up when it comes to adapting to this shifting world, and so I think that social innovation, social business can be an extraordinary lever for re-inventing the company. I think that the benefit of social business is in being potentially more inclusive, and being able to get all of a company's staff and contributors involved, for those wishing to do so, in this venture.
