This week the Harmonious Entrepreneurship Society would like to draw attention to the growing bank of free cases studies built up during our first year. They are available in our blog archives, case study link on our front page, and…
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MarinaTex asking the right questions
MarinaTex, image: licensed to use Plastics waste is a major global problem facing the planet, affecting life on earth both on land and in the sea. The problem is that it is non-biodegradable and can exist in the ecosystem for…
Harmonious Entrepreneurship Principles published
Thrilled to signpost that Professor David A. Kirby and Dr Iman El-Kaffass's Harmonious entrepreneurship – a new approach to the challenge of global sustainability | Emerald Insight is now available online and in print. A perfect Sunday morning read. The…
Argan oil harmonious ventures
oil pic credit: Pixabay “The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield” - John-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) Today Argan oil is considered the most effective anti-ageing oil in…
The HES welcomes Bev Pold QAEP as Project Advisor
Bev joins David and Felicity and the full HES project advisory team Professor David A. Kirby and I are thrilled to welcome Bev Pold QAEP as Project Advisor to the Harmonious Entrepreneurship Society. A passionate supporter from the outset, Bev…
The Syrian Dinner Project
The tragic scenes of refugees fleeing from war-torn Afghanistan bring home, all too vividly, the plight of the “barefoot entrepreneurs” – those people who live ”primarily in marginal, poor and excluded places and contexts” (Imas et al. 2012). While the problem is…
HES recognised for contribution to shifting to a more holistic perspective of entrepreneurship
"Integrating different entrepreneurial sectors allows us to stand together, stronger and more capable than ever before" shares Dr Ayman El-Tarabishy (Executive Director of the International Council for Small Business) in the recently published article "Humane, Sustainable, and Harmonious Entrepreneurship: Shifting…
“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant” -Robert Louis Stevenson (1859-1893)
credit: seed (Photo by Joshua Lanzarini) This last week, Felicity and I have been busy promoting Harmonious Entrepreneurship “in the flesh” so to speak. First, we spoke twice at the 15th annual Enterprise Educators UK (EEUK) conference hosted by Aston University (ieec.co.uk).…
HES MOOC – Principles of Harmonious Entrepreneurship launched
"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn"- Benjamin Fanklin 1706-1790 We are excited to share with you all, our dedicated HES supporters, that the first iteration of our foundation level online course…
Read More HES MOOC – Principles of Harmonious Entrepreneurship launched
“Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world” (Margaret Mead)
Antur Cymru (Welsh Adventure) is a social enterprise providing support for businesses in Wales. Owned by shareholders in the community who do not profit individually from their investment, they have agreed surpluses should be reinvested in the company. It was…
Read More “Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world” (Margaret Mead)
The Greatest Threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it. (Robert Swan)
Tourism has a major economic impact particularly, but not exclusively, on the developing economies of the world. Prior to the Covid 19 pandemic, it accounted for 10 percent of the global GDP and it is anticipated that it will contribute…
Small is beautiful (E.F. Schumacher, 1973)
“ To create a world full of giving” is the mission of Japanese serial entrepreneur Masami Sato. After attending college in Japan she traveled the world and was disturbed by the poverty and inequality she discovered. Eventually, she ended up in…
‘Modest’ Trends
Empowering women to work and have more freedom in how they dress is the aim of “Modest Trends”, a Cardiff-based clothing business stocking fashionable lines intended for generation M Muslim women, aged 16-35, who want to dress fashionably but in accordance…
Harmony makes small things grow, lack of it makes great things decay (Sallust, 86-35BC)
Since Global Entrepreneurship Week 2020, The Harmonious Entrepreneurship Society has posted case examples of systemic, harmonious enterprises that have focused not just on “ making as much money as possible” (Friedman, 1970) but on Elkington’s (2004) Triple Bottom Line of Profit-People-Planet. Each…
Read More Harmony makes small things grow, lack of it makes great things decay (Sallust, 86-35BC)
“May it be a light to you in dark places when all other lights go out” (J.R.R. Tolkein)
Originating in the 16th century, but not becoming commonplace until after William Murdoch’s invention of the gaslight in 1802, street lights are now regarded as an essential feature of modern living. Not only do they aid security but they contribute…
Read More “May it be a light to you in dark places when all other lights go out” (J.R.R. Tolkein)
Water powered lights
WaterLight (E-Dina) According to SDG 7, by 2030 the aim is to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all”. The problem is that in 2021, only 9 years away, some 940 million people (13% of the…
“He was a wise man who invented beer” (Plato, 427-347 BC).
Beer is one of the oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic drinks in the world. Its origin dates back some 5000 years, possibly more, and by 2018 188.79 million kilolitres were being consumed, the equivalent of approximately 298.2 billion bottles. However,…
Read More “He was a wise man who invented beer” (Plato, 427-347 BC).
The best anti-poverty program is a world class education (Barak Obama)
As Nelson Mandela recognised “Education is the most powerful weapon for changing the world” yet it is estimated that in 2020 260 million children globally were not being educated and millions more were not receiving a good quality education. This is particularly…
Read More The best anti-poverty program is a world class education (Barak Obama)
One fortnight in the life of the HES team
The HES has been extra busy these couple of weeks getting key messages out to new and established networks, so I thought I'd share a snapshot. Today, Professor David Kirby, myself, and Paul Ranson, our very skilled HES advisor teamed…
Notpla: God created seaweed…The seaweed made the world”
Seaweed is an extremely versatile and important product. Amongst others it is a food, a fertiliser, a medicine, a fuel, a cosmetic and, significantly, a vital element in the ocean ecosystem, producing oxygen, absorbing nutrients and providing a habitat for…
Read More Notpla: God created seaweed…The seaweed made the world”
“On a bicycle made for two”…or three, or more!
Despite its image of pure, unpolluted mountain air, the air quality in Nepal is one of the worst in the world, particularly in the country’s capital city, Kathmandu. Here the incidence of smog is five times greater than it was…
Harmony makes small things grow, lack of it makes great things decay (Sallust, 86-35BC)
Since Global Entrepreneurship Week 2020, The Harmonious Entrepreneurship Society has posted case examples of systemic, harmonious enterprises that have focused not just on “ making as much money as possible” (Friedman, 1970) but on Elkington’s (2004) Triple Bottom Line of Profit-People-Planet. Each…
Read More Harmony makes small things grow, lack of it makes great things decay (Sallust, 86-35BC)
Harmonious Entrepreneurship Society and the G7, June 2021 – “How beauteous mankind is! Oh Brave new World”(Shakespeare)
In between relaxing by the sea, cosying up to the new President of the USA, having a beach barbecue, and meeting the Queen, the leaders of the 7 strongest economies in the world (the G7) clearly did some serious thinking…
“There’s a way to do it better – Find it” (Thomas Edison (1847-1931)
Though a profound invention that has impacted significantly on modern society, plastics are a major sustainability challenge as they do not decompose and contribute to environmental problems both on land and in the sea, as well as to the health…
Read More “There’s a way to do it better – Find it” (Thomas Edison (1847-1931)
HES Update 1, May 2021
Aims The Society was launched in Global Entrepreneurship Week 2020 (w/c 22nd November) to promote the concept of Harmonious Entrepreneurship and provide a vehicle for the delivery of its products. Harmonious Entrepreneurship is a new approach to enterprise that addresses…
The Gyapa Cookstoves Project
It is estimated that in the developing economies some 3 billion people cook their food on open fires, using solid fuel, usually wood. Apart from polluting the atmosphere, the smoke from the fires kills an estimated 3 million people, mainly…
Tred: The Millennials Lead The Way
Water pollution: Brian Yurasits, 2019 How did a meal in Glasgow lead to the UK’s first green debit card made from recycled ocean plastic? Well, it is quite simple, over a meal with a friend, one of the co-founders of…
“Waste not want not” (1772, idiom) or “wilful waste makes woeful want” (1576, idom)
For two student entrepreneurs, Josh Shefner and Claire Friona, long-established idioms are a living reality. Both are students of Engineering at Milwaukee School of Engineering, and both are passionate about poverty elimination and the eradication of waste. They are also…
Read More “Waste not want not” (1772, idiom) or “wilful waste makes woeful want” (1576, idom)
HES to join RESET Tourism Sustainability event May 25th
David and I are honoured to support TLC Harmony's fantastic Tourism Sustainability hybrid event on the 25th May 2021. Organised by our HES friends, Nicki Page (founder of TLC Harmony) and Executive Director, Leo Downer (https://harmonious-entrepreneurship.org/he-and-the-tourism-industry/) and supported by our project…
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An Innovative UK solution to the Global Pollution Problem Caused by Urban Trucking
In the USA it is estimated that trucks/lorries (Heavy Goods Vehicles/HGVs) account for 5% of the number of vehicles on the road but 25% of the greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, while in Europe the Environment Agency estimates that HGVs…
Read More An Innovative UK solution to the Global Pollution Problem Caused by Urban Trucking
The world is green and beautiful, and we are its custodians
(Image credit: North Wales Police) In an attempt to limit the spread of Covid-19, it has become law in many countries for people to wear disposable face masks. 129 billion face masks are being used globally each month and in…
Read More The world is green and beautiful, and we are its custodians
The “Grameen” Bank of Wales
Outside of Wales few people know of Karen Davies but in South Wales, she does what Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank do in Bangladesh. Through her not-for-profit microfinance social enterprise, “Purple Shoots”, which she established in…
Latika Golyan demonstrates the need for graduate entrepreneurs in Nepal
Nepal, population 28.61 million, is a factor-driven economy meaning it relies on its people and natural resources. Over 55% of the population is under the age of 25 and there are some 450,000 students enrolled at different universities in the…
Read More Latika Golyan demonstrates the need for graduate entrepreneurs in Nepal
Entrepreneurship Education in Schools: The Celtic Fringe leads the way
Whilst interest in entrepreneurship education has increased over the decades, fuelled by committed advocates such as the European Commission, its implementation remains sporadic, even across countries that have developed relatively comprehensive entrepreneurship programmes. Although it is widely recognised that entrepreneurship…
Read More Entrepreneurship Education in Schools: The Celtic Fringe leads the way
“Oh Food! Magical food! Wonderful Food! Marvellous Food! Beautiful Food!”
Despite Lionel Bart’s “Oliver” eulogy of food, it is a problem. We need it to live, yet both an excess and a shortage can kill us. Some 850 million people, globally, are believed to be undernourished and each day an…
Read More “Oh Food! Magical food! Wonderful Food! Marvellous Food! Beautiful Food!”
Overfishing and the Norwegian “solution”
By Tristram Korten SMITHSONIANMAG.COM Overfishing is a major problem and according to some, it is a greater threat to our oceans than climate change. The oceans are a source not just of food but of life. They provide oxygen and absorb…
EntreCompEdu & International Council for Small Business Webinar Videos
A key part of our work at the Harmonious Entrepreneurship Society is getting 'our' message out throughout our international networks. So, hot off the press, to catch up with our work: Felicity's 'Creating Value through the SDGs' video for the…
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Fast Fashion and the reGain app conundrum
The trend to Fast Fashion, particularly among young people, is having a significant negative impact on the planet. While most of the garments produced are sourced internationally, particularly from low-income countries, and may appear, therefore, to be addressing SDG goals…
Innovation for Impact: How Gongali Model Company is Changing Lives in Tanzania
In the global knowledge economy, universities have become the catalyst for economic and social development and many have added to their two traditional missions of research and teaching a third mission that involves the transfer and commercialisation of the intellectual…
Read More Innovation for Impact: How Gongali Model Company is Changing Lives in Tanzania
Gjenge Makers: Build Alternatively, Build Affordably, Build Sustainably
“Build Alternatively, Build Affordably, Build Sustainably” – the motto of Gjenge Makers in Nairobi Between 1950 and 2017 the world produced some 9200 million tonnes of plastic waste, of which only 2700 million tonnes (29%) was still in use in…
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Sustainability Education through the entrepreneurial recycling of glass bottles: Oseng-Rees Reflection
Reception desk, UWTSD. Photo: T. Oseng-Rees. Being brought up in 1980s Norway, “environmental awareness, frugality, creativity, independence and empathy for everything and everyone” is fundamental to Dr Tyra Oseng-Rees, an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Wales Trinity St.…
Creating value through the SDGs
At the Harmonious Entrepreneurship Society, we recognise the powerful value creation opportunities of the UNs Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), committed to facilitating their achievement. This week I had the good fortune to lead an educator-centric multi-country webinar tying together the…
Affordable Sustainable Social Housing in Wales
As a result of urban-rural migration and the demand for second homes in the countryside, there is a shortage of affordable social housing in Wales, and, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, this is contributing significantly to the level of…
Sanergy and the Power of Systems Thinking
Currently, some 2.5 billion people globally do not have access to basic sanitation, and some 1 billion defecate outdoors, exposing themselves, their families and their neighbours to faecal bacteria. As a result, half of the hospital beds in developing countries…
Shop Appy
In the mid 19th century the Harmonious Entrepreneur Sir Titus Salt built Saltaire, a Yorkshire industrial village that is now a UNESCO world heritage site (harmonious-entrepreneurship.org). 166 years later, in 2016, Saltaire produced another harmonious enterprise. Dr Jackie Mulligan, a…
Too Good To Go
In 2016, three entrepreneurs from Copenhagen, Leeds and Paris co-founded “Too Good To Go” (http://toogoodtogo.org) a social impact company intended to address the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 12 Sustainable. Consumption and Production, also supporting 13 Climate Action. Globally 1.3 billion…
Harmonious Entrepreneurship and the Terra Carta: a charter for Nature, People and Planet
Professor David A Kirby and Mrs Felicity Healey-BensonCo-founders The Harmonious Entrepreneurship Society Launched on 11th January, 2021 by HRH The Prince of Wales at the “One Planet” Summit in Paris, the seventeen page Terra Carta is a seminal document that…
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Solving one global problem but creating others: the need for Harmonious Entrepreneurship
The world population is growing at around 83 million people a year or 1.1 per cent. Apart from needing space to accommodate such a population increase, there is another major problem facing the planet. The topsoil responsible for supplying 95%…
Read More Solving one global problem but creating others: the need for Harmonious Entrepreneurship
Terra Carta – HES commitment
Today, 11th January. 2021, at the Paris “One Planet Summit”, HRH The Prince of Wales is launching the Terra Carta (https://www.sustainable-marketsorg/TerraCarta_summarium_Jan11th2021.pdf) a 10 point Sustainability Charter intended to harness “the transformative innovation and resources of the private sector”. Like the…
The Renaissance of Cheese Making in Wales: The story of Caws Cenarth, a Harmonious Enterprise
Located in the lush valley of the river Cych in rural mid-Wales, Caws Cenarth is one of the most renowned artisan cheese producers in the UK. Like so much entrepreneurship its origins were founded in adversity. In 1984, the European…
Father Christmas/Santa Claus, the Harmonious Entrepreneur
HES Christmas Message (c) HES2020 by Vanessa Randel His factory in Lapland does not pollute the atmosphere. He has a happy workforce that always delivers on time. His enterprise is customer-focused and aims to meet and exceed expectations. He is…
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Systems thinking and the sustainability agenda
It isn't easy to pin down a succinct definition of system thinking. Coined by Barry Richmond in 1987, and rooted in Ludwig Von Bertalanffy’s General Systems Theory and cybernetics, it has evolved over the decades and through many schools of…
Harmonious Entrepreneurship and the Tourism Industry
Globally tourism accounts for 10.3 per cent of GDP and some 330 million jobs. Thus, it contributes significantly to income generation and job creation and is set to grow further. Traditionally, however, it has not been eco-friendly. Apart from the…
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Dr Laila Iskander and the Zabbaleen
Dr Laila Iskander Dr Laila is a former Egyptian Minister of the Environment and founder of CID (Community and International Development) Group, a consulting firm that “strives to create holistic growth solutions by bridging corporate and development objectives”. In 1994 she…
Saltaire, a 19th century manifestation of Harmonious Entrepreneurship?
Saltaire The concept of harmonious entrepreneurship is perhaps not entirely new. Possibly one of the earliest proponents of it is the industrial entrepreneur Sir Titus Salt (1803-1876) who, in 1851, built Saltaire, now a UNESCO World Heritage site in the…
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Might Harmonious Entrepreneurship be of interest to China?
In 1995, at a time when China was opening up to Free Enterprise, my colleague, Dr Fan Ying, and I wrote a paper entitled "Chinese Cultural Values and Entrepreneurship" (Kirby and Fan, 1995). We even won a "Best Paper" award…
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The Professor and the Pirate
Today, as Global Entrepreneurship Week 2020 unfolds, a new ship ‘The Harmonious Entrepreneurship Society’ is launched. Its destination is clear – a planet that is in harmony, and its course is via entrepreneurship and the principles of holistic systems thinking.…
Entrepreneurship and sustainability: is there a need for a new harmonised approach?
Published by Advance HE 28 October 2020 https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/news-and-views/identifying-and-creating-entrepreneurial-university Introduction In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to the problem of sustainability and to the role that entrepreneurship might play in its amelioration. New forms of entrepreneurship have emerged but if entrepreneurship…
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Identifying and creating the entrepreneurial university
Published by Advance HE 10 February 2020 https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/news-and-views/identifying-and-creating-entrepreneurial-university Increasingly it has been recognised that entrepreneurial education itself will not be effective unless there is a change in the teaching paradigm and the educational institutions themselves become entrepreneurial. Not only do…
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Interview with Professor David A. Kirby with Felicity
Originally published: 30th July 2020 on Emergent Thinkers.com https://emergentthinkers.com/2020/07/30/the-mind-behind-entrepreneurial-mindset-education/ The mind behind entrepreneurial mindset education Professor David A. Kirby, Holder of The Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion, is one of the UK’s founding fathers of Entrepreneurship Education (EE). His interest…
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