Pekka Vänttinen
Comfy trousers and a loose shirt, more casual than business, this soft-spoken thirty-something could be presenting the latest IPhone or some other gadget we all must have. But, the appearance is deceiving. In fact, Jonathan Robinson is a thorn, or at least a scratch, in the shiny surface of big conglomerates.
Today, this itinerant preacher is in Helsinki and he is among devotees. The British Council premise is packed with youngish intellectuals. For them Robinson and what he stands for represent a promise for a fresh start between laissez-faire capitalism and overripe social democracy in cul-de-sac. He is the figurehead of the Hub (or hubs since there are fourteen of them), a new kind of collective with a promise to change the business landscape.
First appears a young idealist. Jonathan takes us to a coffee shop, a safe haven in war-torn former Yugoslavia. He guides us through the shantytowns of South Africa to a place where people try to take responsibility of their own lives. And he sits us in the university auditorium where he and his mates take the mickey out of big corporations by organising mock job fairs and testing their ideas with young hopefuls.
Behind all this was an urge to find an alternative future that wouldn’t mean working for the multinationals or staying on the fringes. “Something wasn’t fitting comfortably – glossy or charitable? We decided to find out something in the middle that would take the best of these worlds,” he explains.
Some four years ago this search bore fruit. Facing the dismay of property developers (“they gave us a few weeks to go bust”) Jonathan and his disciples found a derelict warehouse in London’s King’s Cross district and started turning it into a breathing and living hot spot. Chairs and tables were made out of cardboard, makeshift offices and meeting places opened their doors. Invited was everyone, charged was only a tenner a month. And see, people started coming. The Hub was born.
“Before long there were a hundred people, then two hundred, they were coming and going and paying their share. Soon it was packed, bursting with seminars, lectures and meetings. We had created an infrastructure, a community and there was a diversity of life going on,” Jonathan says.
The website talks about a combination of “a member’s club, an innovation agency, a serviced office and a think-tank”. The Hub is “a place to work, meet, innovate, learn and relax”, one “with all the tools and trimmings needed to grow and develop new ventures”.
But, hang on. What makes this somehow different from the “Labs” and the “Parks” and the “Valleys” we have grown tired of? The idea of gathering people around the village well and starting a movement wasn’t born yesterday.
According to Jonathan what we have here is the exact opposite, even antithesis of the government or business initiated clusters. By his definition the Hub is “an upside down multinational, not controlled by one entrepreneur, but by people who own and run the place.” See, it’s not only about making the ends meet, it’s also about changing the world.
In the world of Jonathan, business and charitable intentions make good bed companions. There used to be an abbreviation for this, CSR – Corporate Social Responsibility. But, since the global recession made it just a laughing stock, there’s been a need for a new definition. Now, enter a trendy catch phrase: social entrepreneurship. This time around, the intention is to go one step further. The focus is on building a better world, not conquering it.
“This is not about franchising, but about building a new kind of global corporation that we hope will continue to attract and start addressing some of the world’s big problems,” he elaborates. The aim is to find solutions for social, ecological and other issues. Making profit is not a sin, but it is rerouted back to good causes and used for expanding ethical ventures.
Unlike multinationals, this new generation of entrepreneurs, of whom many have found home in the Hubs, stems from local strengths and values. The idea is to be locally global or globally local, if you like. Perhaps that’s why large institutions have already asked for assistance. Typical consultants are slow or incapable of dealing with localised problems. The beauty of the Hub network lies in its ability to mobilize experts around the world at short notice.
No wonder, knocking on the Hub doors are companies looking for new business models and universities trying to update their teaching methods towards something more practical. Not to mention political parties, desperately in need of novel openings.
Even if Jonathan is convinced that Hubs can spring up anywhere, there is no clear recipe for setting one up. It’s a question of intangible values. “They are kind of hard to touch, but it’s a magic experience – a trust-based community, as light as possible framework and a tiny staff. The power of the unexpected.”
However, some ingredients are quite concrete. Like architecture. It shouldn’t be too polished.
“What helps is the quality of space. It should be a place that makes you stop, something challenging, but also safe enough. And on top of the right mixture of people, you’d need a host who’s able to lead by example. Not someone hired by the government, but a person with genuine interest – making coffee, being curious about peoples’ world. That is infectious.”
The wide spectrum of human interaction causes quick collaborations and long-lasting co-operations, one night stands and/or marriages. But, the real test is perhaps how to deal with success if it happens to land on your feet. When the first Ferrari appears saving the world can surely wait?
“Some people were leaving after receiving a 10 million investment deal. Still, in the end they did not. They appreciated the quality of community that they invested themselves in. Not a single item has been stolen from the Hubs around the world, nor a single person has complained that someone stole my idea. But, thousands of people say that, my God, they made my idea so much better,” Jonathan Robinson concludes.
