Open-Leadershi-Career-Guidance-Social-Entrepreneurship.srt

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David Selassie Opoku: My name is David 
Selassie Opoku. I'm currently a

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farmer, I saw somebody mentioned
that that was one of his goals.

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So glad to see that. And also co
founder of Growing Gold Farms, and

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also recently, fellow at the
Stanford digital civil society

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lab, where exploring issues
around African food sovereignty.

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So to start off, I want to start
with the definition of social

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intrapreneurship. I pick this up
from Shopify actually has a

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definition that I like, and it
says that it's doing business

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for social cause. It might also
be referred to as altruistic

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intrapreneurship. Interesting.
And then it combines commerce

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and social issues in a way that
improves the lives of people

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connected to a cause. And their
success usually is not measured

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in profit alone. But then he
asked the question, should an

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entrepreneurship be social, then
because everything should

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benefit people. So I tend to
generally look at it as

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intrapreneurship should be
social. Now, I mentioned this,

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because I think there's a strong
connection to open science and

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the principles that exist within
open science and openness. I

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think "The Turing Way" really
highlights some of these

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aspects. If you've not checked
out a resource, you should check

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it out. We share this already and the
team have mentioned this several

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times. When we talk about
collaboration, we talk about

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project design, we talk about
reproducibility, communication,

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outreach, ethics, all these to
some extent, I lead into social

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outcomes that benefit not just a
group of individuals, but

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anybody, we're talking about
accessibility. I think anyone

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who practices this, and sub
build enough skills, that ends

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up being very relevant to social
enterpreneurship. So now I'm

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going to talk about my journey.
And I hope through this, you'll

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be able to see how what I ended
up doing to some extent, led me

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to the path where I could feel a
little bit more comfortable or

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adventures to be in a social
entrepreneur. So I'll start from

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Ghana, I lived there for about
17 years of my life, lower

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middle class, Christian family
farming family. And then I was

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privileged to get a scholarship
to go to last two years of high

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school in Costa Rica ended up
being in class with students

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from over 65 different
countries, which started

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exposing me to the world and
around commonalities that we had

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and also differences. But I
think the heart of that became

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that we are all very similar. We
all care about generally similar

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issues. And, and that was a life
changing moment. I did six years

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in the US where I did my
undergrad and my Master's in

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biology, and then computer
science, and also did some

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research with UNICEF, and a lot
of civic engagement work. And I

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think in all of that, studying
to understand how what I was

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learning was going to be helpful
to different individuals,

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different communities, whatever
I did, should have an impact on

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communities. I then returned to
Ghana, and worked at a tech

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incubator. And one of the things
that I quickly became a champion

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of because that really didn't
exist was the local Open Data

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advocates. And the reason was
because at least in Ghana, at

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that time, a lot of
intrapreneurs were trying to

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build products, or trying to
work with data. But most of the

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data sets were not
contextualized, to Ghana and

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most of Africa. So I became the
person who was pushing this

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forward, which then led me into
the open data space. I joined

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Open Knowledge Foundation, which
is an organization that works in

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promoting Open Data principles,
and was fortunate enough to

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become the data what I call a
data plumber, helping

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journalists, civil society
organizations, researchers think

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about how open data principles
openness can be embedded into

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the work that you do. At the
heart of that was really

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recognizing that accessibility
in terms of solving issues was

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was a big thing to pay attention
to. And I think in their became

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the values that now have led me
to leaving to focus on building

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a farm. And the reason why I
left become a farmer built Growing

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Gold farm was because I saw a
problem that across the world,

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we have an issue around how
we're going to feed the world,

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farmers are a very important
group of people who are going to

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be leading this, but at the same
time, most of the time, they

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don't have access to the skills
and the resources that we need

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to push this forward. And so
Growing gold Farm is seeming to figure

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out ways to do that with farmers
in resource constraints

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environments.

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And so I've talked about social
enterpreneurship. I've talked

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about open science, and I think
at the heart of all of those,

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our community. You hear that
being repeated in these two

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spaces, you hear about the
comments where there's

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collective ownership of some
kind of research. was very

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successful. And then you hear
about society. And I think for

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anyone who believes in these
principles who practices this,

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who uses this social
entrepreneurship is also an

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avenue for you to explore
because you are definitely

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unexpressed, and some of the
challenges that you deal with or

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you have mastered, will become
relevant there. Um, so a little

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bit about Growing Gold Farms, we
have four main phases that we

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want to go through, one to
consistently produce healthy and

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affordable food, using
sustainable and accessible

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practices want to build the
capacity of other smallholder

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farmers to produce sustainably
and smallholder farmers because

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we believe that they actually
build or have the ethos around

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sustainability, food sovereignty
that is needed in this world.

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And we want to make smallholder
farms and farmers more

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resilience to processing of
their produce, and then finally

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want to turn farms into spaces
of education, innovation,

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urgency, and how that's a day or
week look like. In a day or in a

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week I'm reading or my team and
I were reading about ways of

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implementing research to this
problem. So everything from

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reading about freedom plants in
and about GMO, and why that

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leads to outcomes that actually
doesn't benefit communities, or

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even looking at science and ways
to make data much more

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accessible. or helping my dad
was a farmer for over 40 years,

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but doesn't really collect it.
And the way that makes it much

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easier for him to appreciate
that and make that much more

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accessible to him. So putting
together and unable to team up

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on the latest. So that's level
of collaboration, we can do

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things alone. So how do we bring
in teams of different experts to

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do this, and then believing in
ourselves each and every day? So

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I just wanted to say so social
enterpreneurship Should I do it

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there, there are four things
that I put down that may be

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helpful if you want to consider
this, um, you see a social age

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that no one you know, is
solving. Yeah. So that may be

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one factor to consider another.
If there's no fixed salary, no

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problem. That's, that's
something we can talk about

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later. But it's not, the comfort
of having a salary in other

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spaces may not always be
guaranteed. You tend to be a

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generalist by nature, but
especially it's by necessity. So

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you do everything, and then you
specialize in specific areas

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that you want, when it's needed.
And if not, now, when there's

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something that you've always
wanted to explore, and maybe

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now's the time you try it out,
and you figure out whether this

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is a path to pursue, or maybe it
was a waste of your time, at

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least you know that. So these
are some things that you will

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consider if you want to pursue
this path. And then I want to

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wrap up with three anecdotes
that I've picked up that I

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believe have helped me so far.
And even other people that

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advice when proceeded
intrapreneurship path. So be

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versatile. And I said generalize
and then specialize think

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socially intrapreneurship
leverages on the ability to

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generalize, being interested in
different things, different

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issues, and how to solve that,
and then finding a way to

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specialize in whatever that
issue is. And again, so for me

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being able to understand data,
but being able to understand

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product development, being able
to understand different

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societies and cultures and the
way that they behave. And then

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specializing on a specific
skills, I think social

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intrapreneurship gives you the
ability to start off as a

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generalist and then look at an
issue and where you want to

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specialize in that. Um, I think
to do this, you need to see

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people are the heart of this is
people that you're working with,

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they're either dealing with
issues, or they're innovating,

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and being able to start with
them as people before whatever

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technology whatever solution is
important. But also letting

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yourself be seen. As opposed to
either be in academia, or even

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being in a lab. it being a
social entrepreneur, you need to

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be out there, you need to be
talking to customers, you need

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to be talking to communities
need to be building that

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relationship, but you also have
to let people see you. Let them

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know you for who you are.

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And so that's important. And
that's one of the anecdotes that

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I've picked over time. And then
this is kind of a joke, but gound

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the identity in your job,
actually do not ground the

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identity in your job, your job
will go, but who you are as a

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person wouldn't. And I think
being able to find ways to

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thrive outside your job, whether
it's as a social entrepreneur,

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whether it's as somebody who is
in a company who is in a

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university in a lab, letting
your identity not be grounded in

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that because that could always
change is a valuable thing that

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I've learned. In the past maybe
six months, there have been many

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opportunities that I have feel
that I have not been accepted in

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and learning and that that is
not what my identity is. My

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identity is beyond that. It's
been something that keeps me

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going. So without my last thing
that I'll say is that brief, the

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most important thing, especially
in this time of COVID is your

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life. Everything else is
replaceable. And I think if you

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want to go down the path of a
social enterpreneur or any other

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career option, just making sure
that you live in a life that is

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balanced, that you can thrive
and be healthy as well. We'll

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keep you going into whatever
path you take. So stay human,

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and be open. And with that, I
will end here