The Business Done Differently Workshop took place June 6th 2011. The objective for this year’s workshop was to review where we are and to discuss the challenges of starting up this kind of research project. We wanted to reconnect, to share the challenges and successes that we experienced and to, perhaps, solve some of the problems that we were encountering.

Before the workshop, we asked the case study teams to tell us what they wanted to do with the day. The following graph shows the response to this question.

We also asked participants to rate some common challenges for discussion: finding time to do the research; organizational understanding of the research; staff participation; appropriate research tools for the employees of social businesses; how will academics and community partners use the research; what to do with negative findings and how will the research be presented? The challenges that were seen as very important to discuss were the eventual use of the research, negative findings, the manner of presenting the research and the appropriate research tool (see below).

Using the responses to the questionnaire, the workshop was organized to give brief updates about the various case studies and to facilitate discussion of the challenges encountered by the case studies. 

Agenda: Case Study Workshop Day

*Notes* on the discussions that took place