Specialisterne: leveraging the unique skills of Autistics at competitive market terms

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Specialisterne (‘the Specialists’ in Danish) seeks to harness strengths that many people with Autism Spectrum Disorders possess - good attention to fine details, precision, and high tolerance for repetitive tasks. Their consultants bring the joy of work into areas where it is often missing today.

Thorkil Sonne, founder of Specialisterne, said:

…I wanted to do more than just provide a sheltered workplace for people with a disability. My goal is to create opportunities for people with autism on an international scale. You might find money to support sheltered working environments in Scandinavia but not in Poland or Spain or Brazil. To extend its reach, our organization needs the kind of funding that only a profit-making venture can generate. It must succeed on market terms…

(source:Entrepreneur Thorkil Sonne on what you can learn from employees with autism - Harvard Business Review)

Indeed, the importance of developing countries to the Specialist People Foundation’s ‘Enabling One Million Specialist People’ goal, has been recognised. Thorkil Sonne visited Bangalore, India just over a month ago to speak at the Global Autism Convention. In Bangalore, the IT hub of the world, Sonne spoke to stakeholders about the possibility of realising half of the ‘one million specialist jobs’ goal just in India alone!

Countries like India and China with their massive populations (including huge numbers of individuals with disabilities) offer parties, willing to take Specialisterene’s model up, great potential in terms of harnessing untapped parts of the employment pool:

…[Mirakle Couriers] established by Dhruv Lakra in Mumbai, employs only deaf employees.
“India has one of the highest rates of deafness in the world–and most are unemployed. But they are keen to work,” explains Lakra.
And it was Mirakle Couriers that inspired young Chinese entrepreneur Lydia Mei Leng Lei, currently studying for an MBA at Oxford, to consider employing disabled workers at her family’s textile company.
Dihao Home Textiles faces a severe labour shortage in Guangdong, where its manufacturing is based.
“My family firm is constrained by labour shortages,” explains Mei Leng Lei. “When I read about Mirakle Couriers, I decided to see if the same idea would work for us.”
China has a large disabled population, 60 per cent of which is unemployed.
“Disabled workers offer a readily available workforce in Guangdong, as indeed throughout China,” she says. “We can easily modify the workflows in the factory, if necessary, to suit their needs and I’m confident that sufficient numbers of disabled workers will be able to cope with the work without difficulty. As many Chinese manufacturers are suffering the same difficulties in recruiting workers, I think this is an opportunity to establish a venture that trains the disabled and supplies this under-used workforce to manufacturing businesses.” A pilot programme will begin at Dihao Home Textiles in the spring…

(sources: Bangalore India - Thorkil’s Journey; Real Business - The untapped employment pool)