The Co-Operative Advantage – Co-Operating in Order to Compete
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The Co-operative ‘Ed Mayo has played a leading role in almost every environmental and ethical business initiative over the last two decades.’ Advantage Lucy Siegle, The Observer Britain needs to nurture a new approach for economic success. One ingredient for this will be to harness innovation trends that are encouraging a far stronger dose of economic collaboration. This is the co-operative advantage – co-operating in order to compete. According to leading businesses across Europe, co-operative innovation of this form will account for over a quarter of their total revenues by 2030. The economy is increasingly organised around the creation of knowledge and the use of information. In that context, success comes to those who can engage people and mobilise resources in an agile way, adapting to a changing environment and anticipating emerging needs. Innovation, The Co-operative Advantage is a blueprint for a future social economy co-operation in the UK and draws on research over three years with co-operative business experts, advised by Professor Michael Best, University of and why sharing Massachusetts Lowell, an internationally recognised authority on Ed Mayo Edited by sector development. business ownership Covering around two thirds of the UK economy, the book identifies is good for Britain current best practice and fifty future innovations that illustrate the benefits to Britain of sharing business ownership. Edited by Ed Mayo UK: £14.99 Published on behalf of Co-operatives UK www.uk.coop by New Internationalist (newint.org) The Co-operative Advantage The Co-operative Advantage Innovation, co-operation and why sharing business ownership is good for Britain Published in the UK in 2015 by Co-operatives UK Ltd Holyoake House Hanover Street Manchester M60 0AS www.uk.coop © Co-operatives UK, except for Chapter 15 on Criminal justice, which is © Cliff Mills and Dave Nicholson. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the Publisher. Edited by Ed Mayo. Design, copy-editing and production New Internationalist Publications Ltd The Old Music Hall 106-108 Cowley Road Oxford OX4 1JE newint.org Printed by TJ International Limited, Cornwall, UK, who hold environmental accreditation ISO 14001. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-78026-300-7 (ISBN ebook 978-1-78026-301-4) The Co-operative Advantage Innovation, co-operation and why sharing business ownership is good for Britain Edited by Ed Mayo Five provocations on social innovation 1. In the wake of the traditional economy, new forms of production are emerging that are characterised by permanent innovation. 2. A multitude of small-scale innovations are down payments on larger transformative possibilities. 3. We can now develop systems of co-operative advantage with small and medium-sized firms to spread innovation. 4. In doing so, we can radically transform the character of education, to be analytical, not informative and to embrace co-operation. 5. We aim not for a marginal increase of equality, but the achievement of a larger life by and for ordinary men and women. Roberto Unger Acknowledgements A book about co-operative innovation is not one to emerge, pristine, from a laptop and a study. It has evolved in an open way, with many points of input and expertise along the way. The co-operative and wider social-economy sector has an extraordinary mix of cunning and vision and it is the input of the sector, along with those many friends open to its work and ideas, that has informed and shaped the ideas set out in this publication. The drafts for each sector chapter were shared with practitioners and commentators at an early stage and we held a Pop-Up Think-tank in London at the Royal Society of Arts, the venue of the very first Co-operative Congress in the 19th century. This was chaired by Professor Michael Best of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, who has been a world leader in the development of sector industrial strategies. The chapters for this book draw on original text that was prepared by one or more authors, but have been developed to include additional material, such as case studies on co-operative innovation overseas. I want to thank those involved and acknowledge their patience and their co-operation as these chapters took shape. My thanks to my colleagues in Co-operatives UK for their input and support. My thanks too both to the distinguished authors of the chapters that follow and to the experts that contributed to their work – see page 288 for biographical details about the authors and a list of contributing experts. If there are errors which emerge from any lack of expertise, then of course the responsibility lies solely with me as an overall editor. There is plenty to agree on or disagree with in the book, but these should not typically be disputes over matters of fact. That is the usual bargain, but thanks to all those involved for helping me to ensure that in terms of errors, in an open process of writing and development, there were not more. Ed Mayo Editor 4 Contents 1 Introduction 7 2 Agriculture 24 3 Community food 40 4 Renewable energy 50 5 Retail 66 6 Insurance 88 7 Banking 99 8 Creative industries 118 9 Sport 131 10 Tourism 143 11 Education 158 12 Social care 179 13 Health 197 14 Housing 211 15 Criminal justice 230 16 Transport 242 17 Taking stock, looking forward 263 18 Co-operation policy 278 Experts and authors 288 5 1 Introduction “There is good evidence to suggest that providing consumers and workers with a voice inside organisations produces better, more intelligent and responsive forms of business. Consumer and credit co-operatives reduce poverty and make a positive contribution in skill development, education and gender equality. Participatory governance structures should therefore be viewed as an economic good, as well as a social good.” Blueprint for a Co-operative Decade, International Co-operative Alliance To be ambitious for Britain, we need a new model of wealth creation. We are in an open and competitive global market, in which the most immediate economic challenges facing us, agreed by most commentators, are to raise levels of innovation, productivity and entrepreneurship. To add to the sense of urgency on the scale of economic change that is required, this in turn needs to be achieved in ways that are more inclusive in terms of society, and sustainable and resilient in terms of the natural environment. Britain, in short, needs to nurture a new approach for economic success. One ingredient for this will be to harness innovation trends that are encouraging a far stronger dose of economic collaboration. We call this the co-operative advantage. Innovation is where to start There is no shortage of analysis in terms of our contemporary approach in the UK to business and economic life and no shortage of prescriptions and proposals for action and improvement. This is not the focus of this book. Instead, we start with an attempt to understand innovation trends in key sectors of the economy. Just as the ‘future’ is already here, but unevenly spread, so too, often, are innovations that over time will drive fundamental changes in economic opportunity. Innovation is a driver for dramatic coming social and economic change – it may feel as if few can shape it, but certainly, few can escape it. The field of innovation studies is not a world of prediction, but of possibility. What we explore in this book is the relevance and potential 7 The Co-operative Advantage in co-operative and allied models of enterprise – ie sharing ownership with those most closely involved in the business – to those innovation trends. Rather than take one set, narrow observation point, for example by picking technology winners (robotics, 3D printing, advanced materials or synthetic biology) or likely themes (big data, ubiquitous computing, smart healthcare, mobile robotics or automation), we work from the ground up of specific sectors. What emerges is a grounded series of over 50 potential co-operative innovations that dovetail with innovation trends more widely and offer a competitive advantage in line with these through their model of business ownership. It is not our claim that these are the only innovations that will be relevant in their field; far from it. Nor do we suggest that every innovation will work out in quite the way we suggest; quite the opposite. What we are able to say is that, when it comes to new business opportunities, the model of business itself can be a source of commercial gain. The co-operative model, with its focus on partnership, trust and relationships, won’t be right for every commercial context – such as capital-intensive operations, say. With its focus on partnership, it tends to operate with a more distributed pattern of ownership, which requires a focus on effective governance – again that won’t be right for some commercial contexts – such as, of course, sole traders or the lone entrepreneurs, or the social entrepreneurs that want to hold ownership. The participative model is not for everyone. But in today’s emerging economy, the beauty of co-operative and mutual enterprise, where ownership is open to those who are most closely involved in the business itself, can itself add value. That doesn’t take away, for a moment, the wider fundamentals of business success, including leadership, brand and culture. But it can add to it.