 Welcome to all of you. Thank you for joining us for the next lecture in the Youth Investment Readiness Program. We're thrilled today that we have Javier Muñoz Blanco with us. He's going to be talking to us today about stakeholder management and partners, which I know is going to be a key part to all of you realizing your nonprofit or social business goals. So without further ado, over to Javier. Thank you very much, Lauren. Hello to everyone and I must say that I'm very glad to be here and very honored to participate in this program and to be able to share with you some of the insights that come with this program and with the work that I do and with the learnings that I've been picking up from different experiences. So as Lauren said, my name is Javier Muñoz Blanco and I'm a Sustainability Consultant, a demuser, and I'm doing right now two consultancies, one for FAO on SDGs, as a geo-implementation in the Caribbean, and another one with UNDP with on-environmental governance. So in that sense, those two consultancies that I'm currently doing basically mix the importance of SDGs with the importance of governance. And governance has to be done considering stakeholders and partners. So I've been following the program, of course, the investment readiness program and I've seen that you've already been doing very quite technical work when it comes to investment preposition, pitch training, SDG impact assessment, marketing, revenue models, and so on. And I'm sure you're really full of models that illustrate and guide you through many steps of the way of starting an initiative. That idea can be an unprofit, a for-profit, the social for-profits, social impact investments or environmental impact investment both and so on. So the approach that I wanted to bring here, it comes from this kind of subheading that comes with the investment readiness program of accelerating youth-led solutions for the SDGs and boosting impact investment through a hands-on collaborative approach. So this part of SDGs and collaborative is the one that I want to bring it in this presentation and this presentation is gonna be composed of this 11 stages. First, why are we doing this? Why are we even talking about this? What is the relationship with the 2030 agenda? And then I'm gonna use a model that I'm gonna present later on that has five forces. This model have to say this is gonna be just a guide. I'm not claiming that this is the perfect explanation of the model. There have been many scholars who have already, including the author himself, they have already given interpretations from the very business and MBA point of view to this model with its good and its bads and what one is useful and when it's not. But I think it's a good framework for us to start thinking of our stakeholders and our possible partners. Then I'm gonna illustrate one bad example, something that we could be doing but maybe that shouldn't be necessarily desirable. And then a conclusion and just mentioning what the practical exercise will be. So the first question is, why are we addressing this issue at all? And this comes from, we many times talk about stakeholders. For example, when you were in the UN itself, they usually talk of stakeholders as government, the first one, civil society, private sector and so on. But we, in this case, we are not such big players. So we don't usually have a stakeholder or as a direct stakeholder, someone we have meetings with, we don't have the government. We don't know if we have the government, it would be a municipality, it wouldn't be, we are not that big and it's fine because we have to work on the SDGs on different levels and this smaller level is as necessary as the big one. But like when you are in this situation, you have your idea, you want to put it through, you find out the stakeholder management is a complex issue. There are so many things. I mean, apart from the legal framework and for the other people who are already doing what you're doing and the possible people who might be doing something similar, even your partners, even in terms of stakeholders, your social base, managing all that is difficult and requires different skills that some of them are soft skills that come not from learning a lot in a university but rather trying to be more empathetic, trying to be more reading, having more self-critical and having critical analysis and so on. The second issue of why we are addressing this because in many projects and many initiatives, stakeholder management is not usually taken as a big priority. And of course, one could understand that because we are talking of finance issues. We have to find money to even start. We need resources. We need people to support us. But at the same time, we might have the best idea. We might have the best players. If we don't know who to play with, who to deal with, how to deal with them, it's gonna be difficult anyway. And the third one, I think that might be just to bring in misconception that might come from the NZGs that many times we talk on the SDGs of course implementing the SDGs will benefit everyone one way or another. But when we are talking of a smaller level, we have something that is competition and that's something that we still cannot avoid. I mean, of course we should be promoting collaboration but when we are starting, not everyone's gonna work in our benefit. Not everyone's gonna support us directly or not everyone's gonna see an incentive to support us directly. So sometimes when situations, these three wins means you, your idea and the people who might benefit from that and the people who might be competing with you, those situations are not always possible. Sometimes when people will have a worse situation, it might be powerful people who shouldn't have a, very powerful people who shouldn't have a very high position in the first place. So that situation of everyone winning might not be possible and we have to be critical on how to deal with that. So why is this topic of stakeholder partners, stakeholder and partner management? Important and it has some relation with the 2030 agenda. Well, the first thing and the most evident one there's already one SDG, the SDG 17 that actually refers to it. It refers to it and to many other things I have to point out. SDG 17 talking just about partnerships, it's a bit imprecise, it had to be named in a way but SDG 17 also encompasses issues that have to do with international trade, that have to do with data, that have to do with policy coherence. But nevertheless, there's one SDG that explicitly recognize that we have to work with other people to improve things. The main link to the 2030 agenda that comes with stakeholders and partners management comes from the 2030 agenda principles of universality, integration and leaving no one behind. And this is where like, I'm gonna be bringing this three principles up during the presentation because I think it's very important that we keep them in mind to basically to everywhere, everything that we do with our work include in our initiative. The principle for universality states that every country or everyone is responsible in a way to implement the 2030 agenda and that includes our idea, our initiative, our and the people that we involve with it. The second principle is the principle of integration that we have to be resource efficient when doing that and trying to break the silos and trying to break the barriers that hinder collaboration. So in that sense, not only we have to be efficient with our idea, we have to be efficient with the possible people we can work with. Sometimes just be integrating with someone else might bring us to markets or to an audience or to a possible target market in a way that like, not almost no money in the world could bring. Just for example, being friends with someone can open the doors for many things. And being friends, I don't mean in the corruption way, just being befriending people brings people together as well. And the third one, and this is a very important one that most people in the UN basically highlight that this is the most important 2030 agenda principle that is leaving no one behind. And with our idea, we should be conscious and aware what are the impacts of our idea? We want to improve the situation of a particular topic with our idea, with our initiative. But while doing so, we might come across situations that might reduce the livelihood of someone that might impact someone negatively. And we should be aware of who those people are. And if we're being inclusive when we are hiring, when we are buying from suppliers and so on. And the third link with the 2030 agenda, something that is called SDG or 2030 agenda localization. And that stands for implementing the 2030 agenda at the subnational level. What happens in countries within themselves are very, quite an equal. Usually capital cities are the richest places. Many times might lack infrastructures, then might lack access to, for example, jobs or livelihoods. So in that sense, the type of how we implement the 2030 agenda is different from rich areas or high income areas in a country to the ones that have it worse off. So with our idea, we should be able to use our idea to solve problems, targeted and tailor made to different situations at the subnational level. Or in our markets, we might have to discriminate, what I mean discriminates is differentiates our different targets that might be impacted by idea. So coming for the five forces analysis, and this is a model, the Michael Porter described and came up with in 1979. This model has been discussed for a long time in academia, in business or in MBA schools and so on. And I think although he has some detractors, he has had criticisms, it doesn't always apply. I think it's a simple enough analysis for us to work. Especially when we have, when we are in this investment program in which we have to learn many things in a very short time. It's easier to have simpler models that might be a bit imprecise than having something very comprehensive that we might not understand. So in that sense, what I'm gonna do with this model is transform it into take its components and analyze them from an SDG perspective with a critical perspective for you to consider once you are talking with different of these forces. I have to say that not everyone, like these forces don't include everyone that is should be your stakeholder or your partner. There are many people from civil society, from governments, government institutions and so on that are not included here. But I think this one could help you start with the key ones that you should consider from a business or from a financial sustainability perspective through the process of having a product or an initiative or a project that works. So the first force and it's what we talk, what we mentioned as competitive rivalry. And basically the way we describe it is with the first point. So first know where you're getting yourself into. You might have a very good idea and that idea might already be, might have been implemented in the place that you want to implement it as well. It might have many barriers to start up that you might not know, sorry. You might find also people who might not want your ideas to succeed. So you have to scan or map your situation to see exactly who are your competitors, how do they behave with each other and how is this gonna work. And for example, a competitive rivalry, the same rival is the one that Michael Porter took. And this is because he works in exclusively business, like profit making business. When it comes to profit making, of course we have to make profit because we have to be efficient. But that shouldn't be the only orientation of our idea. So this term of rival might sound a bit aggressive, especially when we want to improve things. So maybe we shouldn't have rivals. If we are an NGO, we want to enter like the scope or the field where another and similar NGOs work, they might not be our rivals. They might indeed be actually our actors with whom to cooperate. But still, if we have someone who will be our rivals or our competitors, for what are, for which reasons are they our competitors? And this comes also with, who are you kicking out once you enter a market? Sometimes we might mean very well and let's say that we have the possibility of starting an NGO that might take all the possible funding from the government. And we have the possibility of starting that idea in two different regions. In one region there's already one NGO that has already, it's getting on very, it's government funding and it's doing quite well. And in the other one, there's no one. So you could, in that sense, you could consider, for example, the impacts of entering the one that has already someone who's doing a good job. And maybe it would be better to join the region that is a bit more idle when it comes to that. So maybe you enter the one and you collaborate in two different regions with another organization. Because sometimes to improve something, if you kick someone, if you kick out someone who's doing a ready, right, it might be, we might be doing more bad than good, but that's very case specific and there's no opportunity to decide. But at the same time, when we were talking about and we enter a market or a field, who are your allies? Who would you be working with? Who are your not rivals? And who would be your mentors? Sometimes there are many small NGOs that take on work very specific than some bigger NGOs are already doing. And sometimes we are learning through a small collaboration and those NGOs or people from those NGOs become our, indeed, our mentors. And we also have to value them and consider that we might need someone to guide us through the start of our idea. And this comes from porters and the way competition works. In general, many times big companies compete through taxes. So they make almost the same profits that they managed to have this fiscal structure. So they don't pay taxes in the country that they're producing the revenue. And therefore they can have higher revenues and they can lower their prices. So they'd make a competition and make the whole rivalry much more difficult. Of course that wouldn't apply to a small idea that you might be starting right now and that doesn't mean small in a bad way. I mean, things have to start with a small thing. It's where we have to consider where we pay taxes. And in that sense, I think we have to be responsible of how it works. And if we have to start in an informal way, because sometimes there are no other options, we should start considering when are we starting to become more formal so we contribute to the fiscal system of our country. The second stakeholder, the second partner in that sense is a vertical integration or not a vertical line is suppliers. The people from whom you buy. And depending on your idea, you might have very simple suppliers. I mean, if you have an NGO that is like basically a knowledge-based NGO, your suppliers might be just the people that transportation, office utilities and so on. But if you have a product or if you're selling something that is physical, you might encounter something that is a bit more problematic. That is like when you're buying stuff to produce your nice product to improve things, where are you getting your raw material from? What is the carbon footprint? And when we want to say, for example, 20%, how much does our carbon footprint increase? And carbon footprint is just one of the different variables of the ecological footprint, which is a bigger concept that has to do with water consumption, basically how much land we take to produce our products. And in that sense, when we are asking ourselves this question, it's like how far can we go regarding traceability of our source materials? Can we actually say that this is responsible if we are producing something that has to do something with electronics? Can we say that like our electronic products can we trace it back to a responsible sourcing? Can we check some reporting from the suppliers? Do we trust them or do we just take the cheapest price? And I have to say here, that sometimes we have no option, but at least we should be able to acknowledge that we cannot trace things and also tell our impossible buyer base that that's as far as we can go with traceability. And another part that comes with buying from other people is how do we treat them? It's not just if we get good prices, like are we being abusive towards them? Are we paying unfair prices? Do we have unfair trading practices with them? And this is something that we have to consider and it's been already very well specified in the SEG number 12 on responsible consumption and production. Next one is the people who buy from us. So let's say that we have a very good product. It's very reliable. It's very good quality. And we meant this product to reduce inequalities, for example. But in the end, after making such a good product, we realized that this product is quite expensive or relatively expensive for the social base that we wanted to have. And in the end, we ended up selling it to people who is not our initial targets. We wanted to make accessible food and then we'd make very responsible food for people in urban areas who have a lot of money. And that's something that we can still, and our idea can still be valid. We just have to be to make sure that that's what we meant in the first place. And this people Fs is like, it refers to social base which is friends and fools, family friends and fools. Who is supporting you in the very start of your idea? Apart from that, have you checked that they will be willing and they think your product is responsible enough to be your social base despite a possible price, a possible uncomfortable price? And the other thing is like sometimes we make products and we declare that when we make a product, we're gonna use the revenues or part of those revenues to fight or to improve a particular situation. So in that sense, when we have to also reflect on how our products affects our buyers, that's our products reinforcing the qualities. If it's very segregating when it comes to money, is it like, do we actually segregate people like that? Does it actually exclude people when that can be different type of social exclusions? Is it inclusive when it comes to people with disabilities? Are we making something that only few people can access? If so, it would also be fine, but we have to be aware of it. And another one is like, are we basing our idea in consumerism? Are we basing our idea in people's insecurities, for example? Do we want to sell a lot of sustainable clothes out of telling people to buy a lot of clothes in the first place? Or to telling people that their clothes or the way they dress themselves is not valid? That would be another question that we should critically address ourselves. Another one has to do with once you are in a field or in a market, there are people who might come in and come up with the substitute. And we will see later on with entrance as subjects and now this is a substitute as products. So we might be doing a project, an initiative, that is very similar to another. But we might be actually suffering from unfair competition on that. Some companies, some governments, or some even civil society initiatives might have a bit more of greenwashing or social washing or whatever washing you want to say. Meaning that they sell something that is apparently fair, apparently green and so on. And you actually might be doing things much more responsibly, but still you're not reaching people as much as the other one that does it in a slightly worse way, when it's slightly less good with. So how are you communicating your added social environmental value? And this, although we are talking a substitute, this is another stakeholder that we have to consider. And it's who are disseminating our products, our ideas are worth people's time and efforts. In that sense, we might want to consider media. We want to maybe become viral. If you manage to do so, you might want to become popular in a very particular place, in a village, in a town, in a region. You might want to be internet based, and you want to have a lot of interaction with social media. And another thing is how we are transforming substitutes into complementary products or services. Some people might be producing or might have an idea that is very similar to ours. And maybe by just tweaking a bit what we're doing, we might be able to both serve a particular goal. So if one project is trying to improve the governance of mining, and another project is trying to improve the environmental aspects of mining, you might want to instead of think that you are substituting each other and competing, you might want to take them in different stages. OK, I deal with this, and the other person deals with that. And it might be just a bit of adaptation from what we have that might not be costly. It just might be a matter of being resilient and adaptive. And the other concept is we mentioned once we are in the field, we talked about rivals and how that term might be a bit imprecise. And now we're talking of new entrants. And the first question, if we are in the field, for example, in the field of women empowerment, we might think that we should be the only one. There should be no new entrants in that field, because otherwise there's going to be competition for that. But if we think about that, are we sure that with our initiative, we are actually covering everything that should be covered? Are we helping as much as needed? Do we have the capacity to solve the problem only by ourselves? That's probably not the case. So maybe what we have to do with possible new entrants is become their mentors and their possible allies as long as we manage to have, and now I'm bringing this back, integration. We should integrate when it comes to building efficient with our resources and possible new entrants and make this a win-win situation and instead of trying to push out people who want to compete with us, trying to bring them in and see how you can collaborate, of course, in a way that is not fixed in prices or things like those. That would be unfair practices that are punished by law. And when it comes, especially in social impacts, we could actually do a lot by just coordinating with new entrants and with substitute products. And so I've been mentioning bits and pieces of what would be bad examples of a very nice, young, proactive, popular idea that eventually might be doing more harm than good. And we can think, for example, for a very good idea that has a very solid revenue model, a very marketing system, a very logical marketing system, very financial, very good financial KPIs and so on. But we have to start considering if that idea takes raw materials source from countries that cannot guarantee that people are treated nicely when we extract those materials, that we actually don't even know. There's no traceability. If they are hiring workers under poor working conditions and this comes not just to child slavery, but there are poor working conditions for adults that come from not respecting the minimum wage. Or in some other cases, even applying the minimum wage in countries where the minimum wage is non-existent or very low, it would be something that is sticking towards legal, but still it would be a bit doubtful in moral terms. Another time would be if you had the chance of smashing and push out possible competitors or people who might be doing things similar to you, although they might actually contribute to improving things as you are, should you actually push them out or should you try to find ways so both of you cover different parts of the problem? Are you advertising your idea based on, for example, racist concepts of these people need saving? When you might be, it might be more like, there should be more empowerment in these communities. Are we promoting insecurities to people? And I mentioned that, for example, we're making a very nice cosmetic product that is very green and it's taking these formulas that don't harm animals, but at the same time, are we telling women that they shouldn't age and so on? We should consider those things because we have different impacts on that. Are we promoting consumerism? Are we basing our revenue model on people consuming over what they need? Are we manufacturing products that are difficult to recycle, that are difficult to, in the triage, is it difficult to separate these different components? We should be considering that. And of course, this comes from the beginning of the presentation. Even if it makes financial sense and it's being recommended by many financial experts and even if you take legal structures that might eventually make you avoid paying taxes, you should be considering whether paying taxes is fair and whether paying taxes is something that you should do and instead of trying to avoid it with the complex legal schemes. So the conclusion for that is like, and I'm sure many people might be watching this, it's like, OK, apart from all the problems that I had, you just gave us more problems and more things to look at and more things to make this more complicated. And to some extent, I actually agree. And this is because we are trying to make things that are almost perfect. We are trying to help people to be financially sustainable, to give proper jobs, and at the same time, be responsible with all the stakeholders that we have to be responsible with. That's even more difficult than conventional businesses. And that's why you are in this program. Otherwise, you would just be in any accelerator or incubator that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with SDGs. They might be telling you to produce a lot and sell a lot and try to pay as little as possible to your workers and try to get as much as possible from the people who buy it from you. But that's not what we want to do here. We want to improve things in a way that works for the most people possible and coming with the principle of leaving no one behind in an inclusive way. We shouldn't be promoting further exclusion. But at the same time, and although this is not going to be particularly easier than the regular way of starting out businesses and or ideas, there are many people who would be willing to pay this extra or to do this extra effort to work for someone who are committed to be your social base of customers, partners. There are some people who would actually like to work with some suppliers of resources that are traceable. They might be more expensive. But they would like to do so. So in that sense, being responsible makes sense. And there is niche for people to join in. And there will be, hopefully, more people willing to pay fair prices for their products. And I think that should include ourselves. So finishing with the practical exercise. And I've been mentioning that we have to reflect on and be critical with our own ideas and how we approach them and how we approach the people that would be involved with that. So the practical exercise to you, because it's something that is basically an introspective exercise, is do a time capsule for yourself. There's been questions throughout this presentation, critical questions, that maybe while you're preparing your idea, when you're working on it in the very early stages, you could answer them and think how you expect them to be. How you expect to be, how responsible you expect to be with your suppliers. How do you expect to be with new entrants, and so on. And at the same time, once you've answered those critical questions to yourself, because that's for you, I would like to have a look at them to make more critical questions or comments to your first impressions on your time capsule. And the second part would be a conclusion with two questions. We want to improve the current reality or our reality or the reality around us with our ideas. So after considering everything, we have to be able to identify the trade-offs and the benefits from the socioeconomic and environmental perspective of our initiative. In the end, if we had to do a social cost-benefit analysis, social environmental justice cost-benefit analysis, is our idea improving things? Yes or no? Hopefully, we will. And it's probably the case, but still we should be able to identify things that we are to improve something. We have to do something that might be detrimental for someone else. And that's fine, because still the system doesn't really allow us to improve everything at once. And with that, I would like to thank all of you for your attention. I hope this presentation prompts you to just critically assess the possible stakeholders and partners that you might have once you enter the field or the markets with your initiative. And yeah, I hope to see you in the forums and the Q&A. And I hope that the rest of the program goes very well with you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Javier. That was a fantastic presentation. I think it was very clear in laying out sort of some of the challenges to partnership. It can take time to build trust. And it can take sort of human capacity to try to identify your stakeholders you want to work with. I liked your point about to be mindful about who you might be kicking out of the space. And I like your point as well that the Porter's Five Forces is sort of a really excellent starting point at trying to map some of your partners. But I want to remind our participants something that you said as well to also, when they're going through their exercise, keep in mind about who might not traditionally be thought of as being part of those Five Forces, who they might want to include. I think it's great too that you showed some of the great strong opportunities and reasons why sort of collaboration can be really beneficial. So you talked about increasing your efficiency. You talked about needing good mentors. You talked about how it can increase your impact, particularly if you're looking at maybe somebody in your supply chain building trust with them, improving their performance as well as your own, reducing risk by sort of upping your social license to operate by making sure that you're not greenwashing something and that you're truly bringing about change. And I agree with you as well. You made a point about how there are lots of people who want to work with businesses like this. There was recently a study that was done on young people just recently graduating from high school and colleges and looking for jobs and how there's an ever-increasing number of people who want to work for an organization that's doing good instead of just earning a lot of money, which had been sort of the previous generation's objective. So I'm glad you highlighted that as well. That was excellent. It doesn't look like we have any questions. Give everybody one more minute to text. But if we don't have any questions, I will remind them as well. Another thing that you said, you'll be logging into the Babeli platform for the next couple of weeks looking at people's homework. And if they have questions, they can reach out to you directly through the Babeli platform. And with that, I think we will close here. Javier, thank you again so much for sharing your time and expertise with us. And we look forward to seeing all of you and your assignments completed on Babeli. Thank you very much, Lauren, and in general, the SDSN youth for having me for this presentation. It was my pleasure. And I'm looking forward to interacting with the rest of the participants in the platform. Thank you.