If there is one thing about which public and corporate leaders around the world today can agree, it is the ever-growing importance of innovation. The search for innovative solutions to the world’s myriad local, national and global challenges has become a clarion call rallying people across multiple borders defined by nation, industry, and academic discipline. Yet policy making reflects deep ambivalence about innovation. The cheer leading over innovation exists in contrast to the myriad institutional, legal, regulatory, and educational impediments to the work of innovators.
While not innovation experts, we have been privileged to interact over a span of decades with the some of the world’s most recognized innovators—from those working at the grassroots to those at the helm of new industries. This has provided us with some perspective on the nature of innovation and the hurdles innovators face daily as they search for ways to disseminate their approaches and products. Education is a good place to start. A society’s capability to innovate arguably begins, or possibly ends, in school.1 For the vast majority of primary schools, among the qualities of a “star” pupil are tidiness, adherence to rules and directions, and good behavior. In the later grades, outstanding achievement is measured in grades, standardized test scores and sometimes, the number of extracurricular activities undertaken. These constitute the ticket to acceptance to top schools producing the world’s elite. But it is not clear that this is how to develop the talents of tomorrow’s innovators.
The educational system is reinforced by employment policies in most government institutions and corporations.When reviewing candidates, recruiters invariably look for evidence of academic achievement and a steadiness that produces good exam pass rates and grades rather than for experiences that might suggest a candidate is innovative and inspired, perhaps even rebellious. This is because most organizations have a low tolerance for mistakes. Risk-averse societies and organizations keep people from failing. They also keep them from trying. And the key to successful innovation is initial failure and persistence.
It is hardly surprising, then, that among the commonly shared experiences of successful innovators is the recollection of having been described at some point as crazy, not just by acquaintances, but by family, friends and close colleagues. Almost by definition, innovators are mavericks. Most organizational structures and their corresponding managers and civil servants deal with what is. Innovators do exactly the opposite. They focus on creating things the world has never seen. They systematically disregard boundaries— whether of nation, academic discipline, or social status— to the predictable annoyance of those who consider it their responsibility to keep boundaries in place. An irony results: While the world clamors for innovation, it tends to deprive innovators of the resources and recognition that would maximize their potential to transform societies for the better The challenge of innovation in the 21st century is therefore also about reshaping societies to be not only tolerant, but actually welcoming, of innovators.
In the case of the innovators using technology on which this journal focuses, past innovation heroes had their impact on business. From the individual brilliance of Thomas Edison came the global powerhouse that is GE; from the unique inspiration of Kiichiro Toyoda came the car company of today that continues to be a global standard setter. In the coming century, however, the greatest opportunities for innovation exist in domains of public service heretofore left to governments. Social innovators who have taken a business perspective today are pioneering new approaches and helping to map out future markets where most would only see looming problems and risk. In doing so, they are the harbingers of the biggest market opportunities of the century. And history suggests that they have at least as much chance of shaping the twenty-first century as many of today’s great incumbent businesses. On current trends 75% of 2001’s Standard & Poor’s 500 will have disappeared from the S&P index by 2020. In their stead, companies unheard of today, using new business models, will be delivering products and services to new and existing markets, dislodging incumbents who have not been able to innovate fast enough to keep up with 21st century needs.
Already today, there are hundreds of such innovators who are reaching new markets, serving unmet needs, and creating new supply chains. This journal recently profiled KickStart and its founders, Martin Fisher and Nick Moon.
Kickstart designs, produces and sells appropriate technologies to rural entrepreneurs in some of the world’s poorest markets, allowing them to start small-scale businesses. In 2005, KickStart sold over 8,400 pieces of equipment that helped start 5,964 businesses generating an additional $5.3MM in annual profits and wages for new businesses.Martin and Nick have ventured into territory no mainstream company would dream of entering—and in doing so, they have paved the way for a new group of producers and consumers to emerge.
Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty is meeting unmet needs of a different sort through an innovative business model in health. An Indian cardiologist, Shetty’s organization, Narayana Hrudayalaya, strives to make sophisticated healthcare available to all in India. His network of hospitals is able to provide 60% of treatments below cost or for free, thanks to drastically reduced costs resulting from high volumes, innovative cost saving methods and donations. A network of 39 telemedicine centers reaches out to patients in remote rural areas. Two health insurance programs provide coverage for 2 million farmers at Rs 120 per year (USD 3). Again, innovators llead the way in coming up with business models to provide quality health care for the poorest who cannot afford it—while sustaining and growing the enterprise.
In Nigeria, Isaac Durojaiye has both created a new product and tapped into a new source of labor. His company, Dignified Mobile Toilets (DMT) is the first manufacturer of mobile toilets in West Africa. DMT makes, installs and maintains thousands of public toilets in Nigeria through a franchise system providing job opportunities to members of youth gangs that oversee the daily maintenance of the facilities and keep 60% of the profits. The toilets are placed in high traffic areas, such as bus stations and markets, where there is a high demand for sanitation facilities. Thus, DMT offers an alternative to current widespread and unhygienic practice of using the street as a toilet. It also aims to attack the unemployment situation, particularly among youth. More than half of the population of Nigeria is under 35 years of age, and many are unskilled.While Nigerian employment statistics are under debate, it is believed to be in the range of 17%, with an even higher rate among urban youth. Up to 55% of the unemployed are secondary school graduates, underlining the fact that education and skills do not guarantee employment.
Sub-Saharan Africa is not the only region where new solutions are needed to address emerging models of participation in the work force. Sara Horowitz is spearheading a form of portable unionism to promote the interests of the growing number of independent workers in the United States. Unlike traditional trade unions which are limited by law to employees of workplace-based organizations, Working Today, founded by Horowitz, provides flexible and portable benefits applicable to an increasingly mobile and decentralized workforce adjusting to the changing contours of the U.S. and global economy. It has built a membership of 16,000, including 10,000 independent workers who receive health insurance. Its model could be expanded to address the needs of the more than 30 million independent workers across the U.S.—and beyond.
The more acute the societal challenge, the greater need for an innovation-driven societal transformation. Global climate change is number one on the list in terms of the magnitude of the challenge and in terms of the scope of the required response. The climate challenge in this century will not be solved by changing power plants, designing new automobiles, or reformulating gasoline. It will be solved, and must be solved in this generation, by people changing their behaviors and their institutions. National policies, corporate programs, venture financing and consumer behavior will all contribute. But if they are counted upon to be the drivers of change, that change simply will not occur. To catalyze the shift, the general population must be spurred to action, in turn pressuring governments.
One such catalyst is Yann Arthus-Bertrand, a photographer who has demonstrated through creativity and perseverance that there is no real North-South divide when it comes to environmental threats. Bertrand produced a series of extraordinary books, exhibitions and films introducing us to our planet from the air. Like most innovators, he is unrelenting. He has taken over 100,000 images just to put together “Earth from the Air.”As one of his colleagues put it, “With him, I learned that nothing is impossible. People will tell him ‘No’, and he hears ‘Maybe’. And herein lies the strength of such innovators—and their common bond. The word “no” doesn’t exist for them. As Barry Coleman, co-founder of Riders for Health,4 has quipped, “There is nothing as motivating as when someone tells us ‘It can’t be done’. It is our call to action.”
What set of incentives will lead to the deep diffusion across society of the capability to innovate and the inclination to respect and value innovators? The first place to start is to step beyond paying lip service to the importance of innovation in the public interest. Acknowledging the role innovation must play in addressing the challenges of inequity is a prerequisite. But to date, and except in a small number of wealthy countries, such as the U.S., U.K., and the Scandinavian countries, governments have played a modest role in financially supporting innovation, particularly when directed towards social transformation.
The vacuum has been only very partially filled by venture capitalists, private investment, and philanthropy—individual and corporate. Thus, among the examples of social innovators highlighted previously, not one of them secured national public sector support—other than international aid—when launching their initiatives. While one might argue it is better not to be financially supported by a government in the early phases of the venture in particular—because it can compromise the ability to be truly innovative—the existing financing vacuum evident as these social ventures scale up cannot be filled by wealthy individuals or enlightened business alone. Increasing recognition of the importance of social innovation and the concomitant growth of “philanthropreneurs” may spur more funding flows to support early stage innovative hybrids focusing on social transformation.
Many, if not most, of today’s social innovators defy traditional legal pigeonholing as “not-for-profit” or “for-profit” organizations. Rather, they “intersect” across both—they are social innovators with a business case, so to speak, hybrids that straddle between a charity and a profit maximizing company. Consequently, many find themselves maneuvering through a tangled web of legal regulations to identify what benefits and obligations exist in relation to their enterprise. The fact is that to date, no country has developed a specific legal model recognizing the hybrid nature of such organizations and the social and economic functions they serve.
Our fascination with these pragmatic visionaries and their organizations lies much less in the goods and services they provide than in the catalytic role they play in triggering innovations in the social sector. Like the business innovators who come up with major innovations for the marketplace, social innovators are the mad scientists as it were—working away in their organizations that act like social innovation laboratories. They test and perfect different approaches, and when they come up with the most effective and efficient ones with the greatest impact, it should be government and the corporate sectors’ respective roles to celebrate the innovation, take it up, learn from it, and help scale it so that all can benefit. Ultimately, the innovation lies in the models devised for service and product delivery all along the supply chain—not in the provision of the good itself. It is those models that others need to take up and replicate.
Innovators in the public interest are the flame that ignites the fire of social transformation. That flame must be fanned and nurtured by governments, publicly traded and private companies, academia, media and individuals working together to achieve its promised impact.
Read more!
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Social Ventures as Learning Laboratories
If ever the world needed new patterns of production, it certainly does now—during the worst financial downturn in decades. Innovations, developed and tested by entrepreneurs, will help us respond to the challenges of the crisis and move into a new era of prosperity.
Entrepreneurship is part of the solution to the crisis, but, ironically, it was also part of the problem. Capital market innovations, such as interest-only adjustable rate mortgages and credit default swaps, helped to revolutionize the pattern of production in credit markets, resulting in permanent damage. Innovation can be risky business, especially if the innovators and early adopters are focused only on what is likely to be profitable for them in the short term.These capital market innovations present a worst-case version of Schumpeter’s idea of “creative destruction.” In this case, the harm from the destruction exceeded the value of the creation. That is not the kind of entrepreneurship we need more of.
What we need now is entrepreneurship that creates greater long-term value while drawing on fewer resources and generating fewer destructive consequences. We need business entrepreneurs whose innovations will jump-start the economy, create jobs, and cause minimal disruption. We need more of the non-destructive creation that Columbia professor Amar Bhide has written about. We also need more social entrepreneurship.
RECOGNIZING THAT SOCIAL PROBLEMS ARE MORE PRESSING THEN EVER
Nowhere is this kind of value-creating innovation more important than in our efforts to tackle pressing social and environmental problems. This is where social entrepreneurs come in. They reform or revolutionize the patterns for addressing social issues. They measure their success in social impact. Social entrepreneurship has not gotten as much attention as business entrepreneurship and is not as well supported, but it is extremely important to the quality of our lives on this planet. It is particularly important in times like these, where financial pressures are likely to make social problems worse. As economies shrink or, in the best cases, grow much more slowly than previously expected, we can anticipate increases in poverty and unemployment.
This will exacerbate the many problems associated with poverty. Fewer people will receive adequate health care. Because of the financial burden that formal education can place on parents, fewer children will attend school. Tensions and violence may increase as the poor compete for jobs and income opportunities, as they did recently on the border of Zimbabwe and South Africa. Progress will be lost, as families that have been successful in moving out of poverty fall back into it. Though carbon emissions should decline with declining economic activity (though the dropping price of oil complicates matters), any decline is unlikely to make an appreciable dent in the growing problem of global warming. As government, business, and household budgets tighten, costly environmental protection and clean-up efforts are in jeopardy. With declining oil prices, the economics of alternative energy may become less attractive.
Because many social and environment issues are time sensitive, failure to recognize the importance of social entrepreneurship and provide adequate support for such efforts during this downturn would be a serious mistake. Damage will be done that cannot easily be undone. Social entrepreneurship is not a luxury that can be suspended while we wait for the economy to turn around.
FOSTERING A VIBRANT SOCIAL LEARNING LABORATORY
Social entrepreneurs offer us a learning laboratory: they develop and test innovative solutions to social problems. As with any form of innovation, it is impossible to know in advance what will work. This is especially true when “working” involves reducing or solving a social problem. Only by fostering a wide range of experiments can we hope to find which proposed solutions are viable, cost-effective, and scalable. This is the beauty of the small, new, resourceful ventures that social entrepreneurs tend to create. As Stanford economist Nathan Rosenberg and his coauthor L. E. Birdzell, Jr., have argued,“New enterprises are useful devices for experimenting with innovation, because they can be established on a small, experimental scale at relatively low cost and therefore in large numbers, and their efforts can be intensely focused on a single target.” Independent social entrepreneurs have greater flexibility to experiment, uninhibited by the biases, standard operating procedures, bureaucracy, cultures, strategic commitments, and other rigidities common in established organizations of all kinds.
Because of their local knowledge and motivation to find solutions to social problems, social entrepreneurs see and construct opportunities that governments, corporations, and profit-seeking business entrepreneurs miss. Consider 2006 Noble Peace Prize winners Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank. When Yunus conceived the idea of Grameen Bank, with its focus on microcredit and its cost-effective peer-group business model, he was driven by the desire to alleviate poverty. The Bangladeshi government, the banks, the international relief agencies, and local business entrepreneurs did not see this as an opportunity. Yet, microfinance has grown to be a business that now attracts mainstream banks and profit-seeking business entrepreneurs. The business opportunities in microfinance were neglected until social entrepreneurs, such as Yunus and the other pioneers of microfinance, spent decades demonstrating its viability as a market. Grameen has been free from outside funding for over a decade while serving millions of customers in Bangladesh and inspiring replications around the world. Only now are markets responding to this opportunity.
PROMOTING RESOURCEFULNESS AND CREATIVE BUSINESS MODELS
As a matter of necessity, entrepreneurs, social or otherwise, have to be resourceful. They become quite skilled at doing more with less and at attracting other people’s resources to their ventures, directly or through partnerships. This resourcefulness is reflected in their creative and pragmatic approach to business model design, as illustrated by Grameen’s use of borrower peer groups and its very low-cost structure.
It is useful to think of social venture business models as running along a spectrum, from fully reliant on philanthropy and government subsidy at one end to fully commercial at the other. In recent years, many social entrepreneurs have been driving toward the commercial end of that spectrum to reduce their dependence on philanthropic or governmental subsidies. Commercial strategies are not optimal
for all social ventures. The business model has to align with the strategy for social impact, but when possible, social entrepreneurs do work to create sustainable, scalable ventures. For-profit ventures, social business ventures, and hybrid ventures that mix elements from the philanthropic and commercial worlds have become common.
For instance, Water Health International is a for-profit social venture that combines an innovative, relatively low-cost technology for water purification in rural areas of developing countries with an innovative business model in which villages finance the purchase of the equipment and the villagers pay a small fee for the clean water they use. VisionSpring is a nonprofit example of creative business model development. It provides low-cost reading glasses, a productivity-enhancing product, by buying the glasses produced in China and selling them through micro-franchisees, who live in the villages of the countries where it does business. Thus, it provides affordable glasses and creates income opportunities for its vision entrepreneurs.
The emergence of for-profit social ventures and the increase in nonprofits generating earned income are controversial, but this kind of experimentation is essential if we are to find ways to improve the productivity of the scarce resources we devote to social problems.When it works (i.e. aligns with social impact), it leads to a more effective allocation of scarce philanthropic and government funds. These subsidies can be freed up to flow to the organizations and causes that need them most. Through creativity in business model development, social entrepreneurs are crafting more sustainable and scalable innovations.
SCALING IMPACT AND SHARING KNOWLEDGE
While it is essential to support the early-stage innovations that make up the “learning laboratory” of social entrepreneurship, the real value comes in what society does with the results of that learning laboratory. Value is created when successful innovations are identified and then scaled or replicated to maximize their impact. It is important to note, however, that not every successful social innovation (successful in the sense of achieving its intended social impact) is amenable to scaling or replication. Local successes sometimes depend on rare conditions, scarce skills, or inefficient business models. Innovations need to be evaluated not just on their social impact, but also on their transferability and cost-effectiveness, and on the organization’s readiness for a scaling or replication effort. However, with the right kind of rigorous due diligence, key resource providers (particularly philanthropists, social investors, potential corporate partners, and government funders) can identify viable candidates for scale or replication and provide the support they need to achieve widespread impact. In a time of financial crisis, this disciplined approach is even more important. It may be hard to pick a few “winners” for major investment, since everyone is well intentioned, but it is essential to capture the value of the experimentation.
The second way to reap value from this learning laboratory is to harvest the lessons from both the successes (scalable or not) and the failures and to share this knowledge with those who can put it to good use. Tremendous waste occurs in the social sector when knowledge is not captured and shared effectively. No one likes to admit failure, and few are willing to open their failures to inspection. Even the successes are rarely analyzed in a critical way that can contribute to a common body of knowledge. However, the learning laboratory is more likely to yield effective scalable innovations in the future if the players in the laboratory know enough not to repeat past failures and can find ways to build on past successes. This is a role for universities, consultants, associations, think tanks, and journals, such as Innovations.
TAKING SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP SERIOUSLY
The current financial crisis will force us to be smart about our investments in social change. This could be a healthy development for social entrepreneurship, provided that philanthropists, social investors, governments, corporations, and other key players actively foster a vibrant learning laboratory of social entrepreneurs, assess the results of these experiments, support the scaling or replication of high-leverage ventures (those that promise greater social impact per unit of financial investment), and collaborate with efforts to capture and share knowledge along the way. Leaders in any society have much to gain from taking the concept of social entrepreneurship seriously and providing social entrepreneurs with the same kind of disciplined strategic support that they provide for innovation in business.
Read more!
Entrepreneurship is part of the solution to the crisis, but, ironically, it was also part of the problem. Capital market innovations, such as interest-only adjustable rate mortgages and credit default swaps, helped to revolutionize the pattern of production in credit markets, resulting in permanent damage. Innovation can be risky business, especially if the innovators and early adopters are focused only on what is likely to be profitable for them in the short term.These capital market innovations present a worst-case version of Schumpeter’s idea of “creative destruction.” In this case, the harm from the destruction exceeded the value of the creation. That is not the kind of entrepreneurship we need more of.
What we need now is entrepreneurship that creates greater long-term value while drawing on fewer resources and generating fewer destructive consequences. We need business entrepreneurs whose innovations will jump-start the economy, create jobs, and cause minimal disruption. We need more of the non-destructive creation that Columbia professor Amar Bhide has written about. We also need more social entrepreneurship.
RECOGNIZING THAT SOCIAL PROBLEMS ARE MORE PRESSING THEN EVER
Nowhere is this kind of value-creating innovation more important than in our efforts to tackle pressing social and environmental problems. This is where social entrepreneurs come in. They reform or revolutionize the patterns for addressing social issues. They measure their success in social impact. Social entrepreneurship has not gotten as much attention as business entrepreneurship and is not as well supported, but it is extremely important to the quality of our lives on this planet. It is particularly important in times like these, where financial pressures are likely to make social problems worse. As economies shrink or, in the best cases, grow much more slowly than previously expected, we can anticipate increases in poverty and unemployment.
This will exacerbate the many problems associated with poverty. Fewer people will receive adequate health care. Because of the financial burden that formal education can place on parents, fewer children will attend school. Tensions and violence may increase as the poor compete for jobs and income opportunities, as they did recently on the border of Zimbabwe and South Africa. Progress will be lost, as families that have been successful in moving out of poverty fall back into it. Though carbon emissions should decline with declining economic activity (though the dropping price of oil complicates matters), any decline is unlikely to make an appreciable dent in the growing problem of global warming. As government, business, and household budgets tighten, costly environmental protection and clean-up efforts are in jeopardy. With declining oil prices, the economics of alternative energy may become less attractive.
Because many social and environment issues are time sensitive, failure to recognize the importance of social entrepreneurship and provide adequate support for such efforts during this downturn would be a serious mistake. Damage will be done that cannot easily be undone. Social entrepreneurship is not a luxury that can be suspended while we wait for the economy to turn around.
FOSTERING A VIBRANT SOCIAL LEARNING LABORATORY
Social entrepreneurs offer us a learning laboratory: they develop and test innovative solutions to social problems. As with any form of innovation, it is impossible to know in advance what will work. This is especially true when “working” involves reducing or solving a social problem. Only by fostering a wide range of experiments can we hope to find which proposed solutions are viable, cost-effective, and scalable. This is the beauty of the small, new, resourceful ventures that social entrepreneurs tend to create. As Stanford economist Nathan Rosenberg and his coauthor L. E. Birdzell, Jr., have argued,“New enterprises are useful devices for experimenting with innovation, because they can be established on a small, experimental scale at relatively low cost and therefore in large numbers, and their efforts can be intensely focused on a single target.” Independent social entrepreneurs have greater flexibility to experiment, uninhibited by the biases, standard operating procedures, bureaucracy, cultures, strategic commitments, and other rigidities common in established organizations of all kinds.
Because of their local knowledge and motivation to find solutions to social problems, social entrepreneurs see and construct opportunities that governments, corporations, and profit-seeking business entrepreneurs miss. Consider 2006 Noble Peace Prize winners Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank. When Yunus conceived the idea of Grameen Bank, with its focus on microcredit and its cost-effective peer-group business model, he was driven by the desire to alleviate poverty. The Bangladeshi government, the banks, the international relief agencies, and local business entrepreneurs did not see this as an opportunity. Yet, microfinance has grown to be a business that now attracts mainstream banks and profit-seeking business entrepreneurs. The business opportunities in microfinance were neglected until social entrepreneurs, such as Yunus and the other pioneers of microfinance, spent decades demonstrating its viability as a market. Grameen has been free from outside funding for over a decade while serving millions of customers in Bangladesh and inspiring replications around the world. Only now are markets responding to this opportunity.
PROMOTING RESOURCEFULNESS AND CREATIVE BUSINESS MODELS
As a matter of necessity, entrepreneurs, social or otherwise, have to be resourceful. They become quite skilled at doing more with less and at attracting other people’s resources to their ventures, directly or through partnerships. This resourcefulness is reflected in their creative and pragmatic approach to business model design, as illustrated by Grameen’s use of borrower peer groups and its very low-cost structure.
It is useful to think of social venture business models as running along a spectrum, from fully reliant on philanthropy and government subsidy at one end to fully commercial at the other. In recent years, many social entrepreneurs have been driving toward the commercial end of that spectrum to reduce their dependence on philanthropic or governmental subsidies. Commercial strategies are not optimal
for all social ventures. The business model has to align with the strategy for social impact, but when possible, social entrepreneurs do work to create sustainable, scalable ventures. For-profit ventures, social business ventures, and hybrid ventures that mix elements from the philanthropic and commercial worlds have become common.
For instance, Water Health International is a for-profit social venture that combines an innovative, relatively low-cost technology for water purification in rural areas of developing countries with an innovative business model in which villages finance the purchase of the equipment and the villagers pay a small fee for the clean water they use. VisionSpring is a nonprofit example of creative business model development. It provides low-cost reading glasses, a productivity-enhancing product, by buying the glasses produced in China and selling them through micro-franchisees, who live in the villages of the countries where it does business. Thus, it provides affordable glasses and creates income opportunities for its vision entrepreneurs.
The emergence of for-profit social ventures and the increase in nonprofits generating earned income are controversial, but this kind of experimentation is essential if we are to find ways to improve the productivity of the scarce resources we devote to social problems.When it works (i.e. aligns with social impact), it leads to a more effective allocation of scarce philanthropic and government funds. These subsidies can be freed up to flow to the organizations and causes that need them most. Through creativity in business model development, social entrepreneurs are crafting more sustainable and scalable innovations.
SCALING IMPACT AND SHARING KNOWLEDGE
While it is essential to support the early-stage innovations that make up the “learning laboratory” of social entrepreneurship, the real value comes in what society does with the results of that learning laboratory. Value is created when successful innovations are identified and then scaled or replicated to maximize their impact. It is important to note, however, that not every successful social innovation (successful in the sense of achieving its intended social impact) is amenable to scaling or replication. Local successes sometimes depend on rare conditions, scarce skills, or inefficient business models. Innovations need to be evaluated not just on their social impact, but also on their transferability and cost-effectiveness, and on the organization’s readiness for a scaling or replication effort. However, with the right kind of rigorous due diligence, key resource providers (particularly philanthropists, social investors, potential corporate partners, and government funders) can identify viable candidates for scale or replication and provide the support they need to achieve widespread impact. In a time of financial crisis, this disciplined approach is even more important. It may be hard to pick a few “winners” for major investment, since everyone is well intentioned, but it is essential to capture the value of the experimentation.
The second way to reap value from this learning laboratory is to harvest the lessons from both the successes (scalable or not) and the failures and to share this knowledge with those who can put it to good use. Tremendous waste occurs in the social sector when knowledge is not captured and shared effectively. No one likes to admit failure, and few are willing to open their failures to inspection. Even the successes are rarely analyzed in a critical way that can contribute to a common body of knowledge. However, the learning laboratory is more likely to yield effective scalable innovations in the future if the players in the laboratory know enough not to repeat past failures and can find ways to build on past successes. This is a role for universities, consultants, associations, think tanks, and journals, such as Innovations.
TAKING SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP SERIOUSLY
The current financial crisis will force us to be smart about our investments in social change. This could be a healthy development for social entrepreneurship, provided that philanthropists, social investors, governments, corporations, and other key players actively foster a vibrant learning laboratory of social entrepreneurs, assess the results of these experiments, support the scaling or replication of high-leverage ventures (those that promise greater social impact per unit of financial investment), and collaborate with efforts to capture and share knowledge along the way. Leaders in any society have much to gain from taking the concept of social entrepreneurship seriously and providing social entrepreneurs with the same kind of disciplined strategic support that they provide for innovation in business.
Read more!
The differences between “entrepreneurship” and “social entrepreneurship”
According to Webster’s dictionary, an entrepreneur is a person who “organizes, manages and assumes the risks of a business enterprise.” In a 1998 column for Inc
magazine, Norm Brodsky expanded on the definition. “Starting with nothing more than an idea or a prototype,” he wrote, “entrepreneurs have the ability to take a business to the point at which it can sustain itself on internally generated cash flow.”
The most commonly quoted definition of “social entrepreneurship” today was formulated by Prof. J. Gregory Dees of Stanford University in 1998, but his essay contained a fundamental oversight. He outlines five factors that define social entrepreneurship:
1. Adopting a mission to create and sustain social value (not just private value);
2. Recognizing and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to serve that mission;
3. Engaging in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation, and learning;
4. Acting boldly without being limited by resources currently in hand; and
5. Exhibiting a heightened sense of accountability to the constituencies served and for the outcomes created.
He never mentions earned income.
We think that is not only conceptual flawed, but also psychologically crippling. It lets non-profits off the hook. It allows them to congratulate themselves for being “entrepreneurial” without ever seriously pursuing sustainability or self-sufficiency. They still return, year after year, to the same individual donors, foundations and government agencies.
What, then, is social entrepreneurship? And how does it differ from entrepreneurship per se? A social entrepreneur is any person, in any sector, who uses earned income strategies to pursue a social objective, and a social entrepreneur differs from a traditional entrepreneur in two ways:
1. Traditional entrepreneurs frequently act in a socially responsible manner: They donate money to non-profits; they refuse to engage in certain types of businesses; they use environmentally safe materials and practices; they treat their employees with dignity and respect. All of this is admirable, but their efforts are only indirectly attached to social problems. Social entrepreneurs are different because their earned income strategies are tied directly to their mission: They either employ people who are developmentally disabled, chronically mentally ill, physically challenged, poverty stricken or otherwise disadvantaged; or they sell mission-driven products and services that have a direct impact on a specific social problem (e.g. working with potential dropouts to keep them in school, manufacturing assistive devices for people with physical disabilities, providing home care services that help elderly people stay out of nursing homes, developing and selling curricula).
2. Secondly, traditional entrepreneurs are ultimately measured by financial results: The success or failure of their companies is determined by their ability to generate profits for their owners. On the other hand, social entrepreneurs are driven by a double bottom line, a virtual blend of financial and social returns. Profitability is still a goal, but it is not the only goal, and profits are re-invested in the mission rather than being distributed to shareholders.
Read more!
magazine, Norm Brodsky expanded on the definition. “Starting with nothing more than an idea or a prototype,” he wrote, “entrepreneurs have the ability to take a business to the point at which it can sustain itself on internally generated cash flow.”
The most commonly quoted definition of “social entrepreneurship” today was formulated by Prof. J. Gregory Dees of Stanford University in 1998, but his essay contained a fundamental oversight. He outlines five factors that define social entrepreneurship:
1. Adopting a mission to create and sustain social value (not just private value);
2. Recognizing and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to serve that mission;
3. Engaging in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation, and learning;
4. Acting boldly without being limited by resources currently in hand; and
5. Exhibiting a heightened sense of accountability to the constituencies served and for the outcomes created.
He never mentions earned income.
We think that is not only conceptual flawed, but also psychologically crippling. It lets non-profits off the hook. It allows them to congratulate themselves for being “entrepreneurial” without ever seriously pursuing sustainability or self-sufficiency. They still return, year after year, to the same individual donors, foundations and government agencies.
What, then, is social entrepreneurship? And how does it differ from entrepreneurship per se? A social entrepreneur is any person, in any sector, who uses earned income strategies to pursue a social objective, and a social entrepreneur differs from a traditional entrepreneur in two ways:
1. Traditional entrepreneurs frequently act in a socially responsible manner: They donate money to non-profits; they refuse to engage in certain types of businesses; they use environmentally safe materials and practices; they treat their employees with dignity and respect. All of this is admirable, but their efforts are only indirectly attached to social problems. Social entrepreneurs are different because their earned income strategies are tied directly to their mission: They either employ people who are developmentally disabled, chronically mentally ill, physically challenged, poverty stricken or otherwise disadvantaged; or they sell mission-driven products and services that have a direct impact on a specific social problem (e.g. working with potential dropouts to keep them in school, manufacturing assistive devices for people with physical disabilities, providing home care services that help elderly people stay out of nursing homes, developing and selling curricula).
2. Secondly, traditional entrepreneurs are ultimately measured by financial results: The success or failure of their companies is determined by their ability to generate profits for their owners. On the other hand, social entrepreneurs are driven by a double bottom line, a virtual blend of financial and social returns. Profitability is still a goal, but it is not the only goal, and profits are re-invested in the mission rather than being distributed to shareholders.
Read more!
The differences between “innovators”, “entrepreneurs” and “professional managers”
Perhaps the single most important lesson learned by the pioneers in the field has been a deeply personal one that strikes to the very heart of their self-perceptions. So often, non-profits discover (too late) that their entrepreneurial efforts have been doomed simply because they are being led by people with the wrong types of skills. The mistake occurred because they did not truly understand the difference between:
Regardless of whether a non-profit is attempting to engage in a variety of earned income strategies or trying to launch a business venture, it’s important to understand the differences between the three types of leaders: They are all needed in the evolution of a healthy organisation, but at different times, and rarely does an individual possess more than one of the three skills.
Innovators are the dreamers: They create the prototypes, work out the kinks – and then get bored, anxious to return to what they do best, which is inventing more prototypes. They are rarely concerned, ultimately, with the financial viability of what they do.
Entrepreneurs are builders: They turn prototypes into going concerns – then they get bored. For them, financial viability is the single most important aspect of what they do.
Professional mangers are the trustees: They secure the future by installing and overseeing the systems and infrastructure needed to make sure the going concern keeps going.
Unfortunately, in the non-profit sector, often because resources are scare, organisations try to shoehorn people into positions where they don’t fit, and many of the problems non-profits have when they begin adopting entrepreneurial strategies arise from having an innovator or a professional manager trying to do an entrepreneur’s job.
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innovators, entrepreneurs and professional managers.
Regardless of whether a non-profit is attempting to engage in a variety of earned income strategies or trying to launch a business venture, it’s important to understand the differences between the three types of leaders: They are all needed in the evolution of a healthy organisation, but at different times, and rarely does an individual possess more than one of the three skills.
Innovators are the dreamers: They create the prototypes, work out the kinks – and then get bored, anxious to return to what they do best, which is inventing more prototypes. They are rarely concerned, ultimately, with the financial viability of what they do.
Entrepreneurs are builders: They turn prototypes into going concerns – then they get bored. For them, financial viability is the single most important aspect of what they do.
Professional mangers are the trustees: They secure the future by installing and overseeing the systems and infrastructure needed to make sure the going concern keeps going.
Unfortunately, in the non-profit sector, often because resources are scare, organisations try to shoehorn people into positions where they don’t fit, and many of the problems non-profits have when they begin adopting entrepreneurial strategies arise from having an innovator or a professional manager trying to do an entrepreneur’s job.
Read more!
Six Best Practices for Your Own House Social Network
In this section we present six best practices to keep in mind when building your platform, growing the user base, and managing your community on house social networks.
Best Practice 1: Verticalize Your Audience
At the beginning, target a narrow swath of your total eventual audience. Like building a new company, or launching a new program, it takes time, money and resources to get your house social network
rolling. Narrowing in on a vertical segment is more cost-effective, takes less time, and builds financial and word-of-mouth momentum.
Example: Community Gatepath recently launched a community portal, AbilityPath.org, for parents of children with special needs. AbilityPath is focusing on parents of children under five within the California market during the crucial first year of service, with plans to extend to a national network in the long term.
Best Practice 2: Categorize Your Community Type
Social networking communities are not all the same. Social networking features like discussions, ratings/reviews, commenting, and profiles are common to sites with very different purposes. We’ve compiled a list of the types of social networking sites. Use this list to designate the role of your social networking site.
* Research Role: The community primarily serves a market research function for the nonprofit. It is a way for the organization to to learn about the activities,habits, needs, desires or opinions of your constituents via observation and active inquiry.
* Marketing Role: The nonprofit primarily uses the community to promote your brand, programs, events, and mission.
* Service Delivery Role: These communities allow the nonprofit to accomplish the service-based components of your mission such as advocacy, grant making, education, or financial aid.
* Emotional Support Role: These communities allow members to connect and support one another emotionally or spiritually.
* Customer Service Role: This type of social network allows your constituents to help one another by asking and answering questions about your organization, events, services, programs, thereby reducing the burden of customer service on your organization.
After you define the role of your social networking site, use this definition to drive the strategy, design, implementation, promotion and on-going community management. Remain true to this role, for example, in the social networking features you integrate into the site, the audience you target, and the messaging you craft. It is possible to evolve your site into new roles over time, but do so consciously, with a plan, and only after successfully achieving your original objective.
Best Practice 3: Identify Your Differentiating Assets
Identify the most unique aspects of your site, and then incorporate them in to your community development plan. To flourish, each new community must bring something new and different to the market. Differentiation ensures that members clearly understand and value your community.
Example: Sierra Club manages a community site focused on hikers and hiking trails—SierraTrails.org, where the hiking trails are contributed by community members. In this case, the most important and unique components of the site are the hiking trails and the community—the hikers. Focusing on these two elements will help Sierra Club to prioritize marketing, site and community management resources for maximum effectiveness.
Best Practice 4: Build in Increments
When building the marketing, implementation, and financial plans for your community site, it is tempting to ‘plan’ for very rapid growth. Recognize that several factors may limit your growth, so be sure to plan for them:
* 1. Technology: The white label social networking software—the commercial software with which you build your community—is maturing quickly, and there are numerous examples of large communities operating on these platforms. Having said that, this industry is still relatively young—building and testing your social networking sites incrementally is required.
* 2. Resource: Recruiting the specialized resources—people and tools—to promote and manage your online community is crucial, and sometimes slow. Community managers, moderators, and social media marketing expertise are not always easy to find.You’ll need them, so allocate the time to find the right resources.
* 3. Process: Social networking communities require processes for content work flow management and production, user-generated content moderation, member policing, and product development. Scaling these processes cost-effectively is intrinsic to the growth and development of the site and community. But these processes may be new to your organization, so allow time to get them right and grow them correctly.
Best Practice 5: Seed Your Community
The marketing conundrum is simple: you need people to make the site valuable for visitors, but at the beginning you have no members. So how to get started? Seed the community with people who are familiar with and sympathetic to your organization. Consider employees, board members, volunteers, funders, peer organizations, and commercial partners. Send out personal invites to these audiences and ask them to check out the community, register, join a discussion, and post content—photos or blog comments. A seed community of 250 to 1,000 members is crucial to get started.
Best Practice 6: Make Joining Easy
In today’s Internet world, most visitors will view registering on your community as an inconvenience. Yet, getting visitors registered is a crucial step in growing a thriving community. Make it easy for people to register, so the time and effort required by registrants is low.
* 1. Keep registration simple: Keep required and non-required fields to a minimum. Once the visitors are in, there are other ways to get more profile information.
* 2. Limit the registration process to one page: Multi-page registration forms allow you to collect more information about members, but they also increase the abandonment rate—the percentage of visitors that leave before completing the registration process. Unless you have a very good reason to do otherwise, limit your registration process to one page.
* 3. Be careful with single sign-on: single sign-on allows you to register visitors on multiple databases. For example, using single sign-on technology, visitors are automatically added to an organization’s Convio online constituent database and to the social networking software member database. Carefully review the registration process for new and existing constituents. Make sure the process for retrieving username and passwords for existing account holders is clear for registrants.
Nonprofits will succeed at building social networking sites much as they have succeeded over the years in introducing unique new services, new fundraising programs, and fundamentally making change—via a thorough, disciplined, strategic and creative application of new concepts and technology. Social networking is indeed a new phenomenon, but nonprofits have all the skills and resources to successfully capitalize on it today.
Read more!
Best Practice 1: Verticalize Your Audience
At the beginning, target a narrow swath of your total eventual audience. Like building a new company, or launching a new program, it takes time, money and resources to get your house social network
rolling. Narrowing in on a vertical segment is more cost-effective, takes less time, and builds financial and word-of-mouth momentum.
Example: Community Gatepath recently launched a community portal, AbilityPath.org, for parents of children with special needs. AbilityPath is focusing on parents of children under five within the California market during the crucial first year of service, with plans to extend to a national network in the long term.
Best Practice 2: Categorize Your Community Type
Social networking communities are not all the same. Social networking features like discussions, ratings/reviews, commenting, and profiles are common to sites with very different purposes. We’ve compiled a list of the types of social networking sites. Use this list to designate the role of your social networking site.
* Research Role: The community primarily serves a market research function for the nonprofit. It is a way for the organization to to learn about the activities,habits, needs, desires or opinions of your constituents via observation and active inquiry.
* Marketing Role: The nonprofit primarily uses the community to promote your brand, programs, events, and mission.
* Service Delivery Role: These communities allow the nonprofit to accomplish the service-based components of your mission such as advocacy, grant making, education, or financial aid.
* Emotional Support Role: These communities allow members to connect and support one another emotionally or spiritually.
* Customer Service Role: This type of social network allows your constituents to help one another by asking and answering questions about your organization, events, services, programs, thereby reducing the burden of customer service on your organization.
After you define the role of your social networking site, use this definition to drive the strategy, design, implementation, promotion and on-going community management. Remain true to this role, for example, in the social networking features you integrate into the site, the audience you target, and the messaging you craft. It is possible to evolve your site into new roles over time, but do so consciously, with a plan, and only after successfully achieving your original objective.
Best Practice 3: Identify Your Differentiating Assets
Identify the most unique aspects of your site, and then incorporate them in to your community development plan. To flourish, each new community must bring something new and different to the market. Differentiation ensures that members clearly understand and value your community.
Example: Sierra Club manages a community site focused on hikers and hiking trails—SierraTrails.org, where the hiking trails are contributed by community members. In this case, the most important and unique components of the site are the hiking trails and the community—the hikers. Focusing on these two elements will help Sierra Club to prioritize marketing, site and community management resources for maximum effectiveness.
Best Practice 4: Build in Increments
When building the marketing, implementation, and financial plans for your community site, it is tempting to ‘plan’ for very rapid growth. Recognize that several factors may limit your growth, so be sure to plan for them:
* 1. Technology: The white label social networking software—the commercial software with which you build your community—is maturing quickly, and there are numerous examples of large communities operating on these platforms. Having said that, this industry is still relatively young—building and testing your social networking sites incrementally is required.
* 2. Resource: Recruiting the specialized resources—people and tools—to promote and manage your online community is crucial, and sometimes slow. Community managers, moderators, and social media marketing expertise are not always easy to find.You’ll need them, so allocate the time to find the right resources.
* 3. Process: Social networking communities require processes for content work flow management and production, user-generated content moderation, member policing, and product development. Scaling these processes cost-effectively is intrinsic to the growth and development of the site and community. But these processes may be new to your organization, so allow time to get them right and grow them correctly.
Best Practice 5: Seed Your Community
The marketing conundrum is simple: you need people to make the site valuable for visitors, but at the beginning you have no members. So how to get started? Seed the community with people who are familiar with and sympathetic to your organization. Consider employees, board members, volunteers, funders, peer organizations, and commercial partners. Send out personal invites to these audiences and ask them to check out the community, register, join a discussion, and post content—photos or blog comments. A seed community of 250 to 1,000 members is crucial to get started.
Best Practice 6: Make Joining Easy
In today’s Internet world, most visitors will view registering on your community as an inconvenience. Yet, getting visitors registered is a crucial step in growing a thriving community. Make it easy for people to register, so the time and effort required by registrants is low.
* 1. Keep registration simple: Keep required and non-required fields to a minimum. Once the visitors are in, there are other ways to get more profile information.
* 2. Limit the registration process to one page: Multi-page registration forms allow you to collect more information about members, but they also increase the abandonment rate—the percentage of visitors that leave before completing the registration process. Unless you have a very good reason to do otherwise, limit your registration process to one page.
* 3. Be careful with single sign-on: single sign-on allows you to register visitors on multiple databases. For example, using single sign-on technology, visitors are automatically added to an organization’s Convio online constituent database and to the social networking software member database. Carefully review the registration process for new and existing constituents. Make sure the process for retrieving username and passwords for existing account holders is clear for registrants.
Nonprofits will succeed at building social networking sites much as they have succeeded over the years in introducing unique new services, new fundraising programs, and fundamentally making change—via a thorough, disciplined, strategic and creative application of new concepts and technology. Social networking is indeed a new phenomenon, but nonprofits have all the skills and resources to successfully capitalize on it today.
Read more!
Six Benefits of Building Your Own House Social Network
You have a choice about where you build your social networking community. As described above, platform ownership matters, and building a community on your own site has advantages. Below we outline six benefits to house social networks.
Benefit 1: Control of Community Features
When you build your own social network, you have the opportunity to construct the site to best meet the needs of your individual. You have more leeway with tools and how you incorporate social networking features into your web site. For example, you might accentuate commenting on articles, or choose to focus more on blogs and blog commenting. You could highlight discussion groups on the homepage or feature your most active bloggers. You have complete freedom to design and construct the site to best meet your community objectives, and to bake your services and content seamlessly into the site architecture.
Benefit 2: Full Access and Use of Constituent Records
While Facebook prefers that you keep your constituent data on their platform, social networking software and single sign-on (SSO) technology combine to provide complete access to your constituent information on your house
social networks. Total access to constituent information translates to better reporting, simpler data management, and improved outreach, for example via email marketing.
Benefit 3: Better Community Management Tools
Tools for bad word filters on comments, user flagging of inappropriate content, policing member behavior, moderating discussion group dialogue, and technical support are often more robust on social networking software used to build and manage house social networks. Facebook, on the other hand, has only minimal tools for managing your fans, which are often inadequate for effective community management.
Benefit 4: Streamlined Design and Development
User interface design is challenging on Facebook, MySpace and other commercial social networks. While these sites offer a development platform, it is proprietary and requires highly specialized programmers. House social networking tools rely on simple web page design and development, with minor accommodations for specialized hooks for the social networking features.
Benefit 5: Integrate Content, Service and Social Networking
Very few nonprofit online communities are solely social, as the term social networking might imply. In fact, most community sites deliver content and services intrinsic to the host organization’s mission and programs. The social networking features enhance the effectiveness of this mission-based work. On house social networking communities, there is complete flexibility in crafting the right mix of content, service and social networking features.
Benefit 6: Integrate Fundraising
Facebook (primarily via Facebook Causes) currently offers only basic fundraising technology. House social networking sites integrate handily with CRM software resulting in a seamless, branded, targeted, and integrated fundraising member experience.
Read more!
Benefit 1: Control of Community Features
When you build your own social network, you have the opportunity to construct the site to best meet the needs of your individual. You have more leeway with tools and how you incorporate social networking features into your web site. For example, you might accentuate commenting on articles, or choose to focus more on blogs and blog commenting. You could highlight discussion groups on the homepage or feature your most active bloggers. You have complete freedom to design and construct the site to best meet your community objectives, and to bake your services and content seamlessly into the site architecture.
Benefit 2: Full Access and Use of Constituent Records
While Facebook prefers that you keep your constituent data on their platform, social networking software and single sign-on (SSO) technology combine to provide complete access to your constituent information on your house
social networks. Total access to constituent information translates to better reporting, simpler data management, and improved outreach, for example via email marketing.
Benefit 3: Better Community Management Tools
Tools for bad word filters on comments, user flagging of inappropriate content, policing member behavior, moderating discussion group dialogue, and technical support are often more robust on social networking software used to build and manage house social networks. Facebook, on the other hand, has only minimal tools for managing your fans, which are often inadequate for effective community management.
Benefit 4: Streamlined Design and Development
User interface design is challenging on Facebook, MySpace and other commercial social networks. While these sites offer a development platform, it is proprietary and requires highly specialized programmers. House social networking tools rely on simple web page design and development, with minor accommodations for specialized hooks for the social networking features.
Benefit 5: Integrate Content, Service and Social Networking
Very few nonprofit online communities are solely social, as the term social networking might imply. In fact, most community sites deliver content and services intrinsic to the host organization’s mission and programs. The social networking features enhance the effectiveness of this mission-based work. On house social networking communities, there is complete flexibility in crafting the right mix of content, service and social networking features.
Benefit 6: Integrate Fundraising
Facebook (primarily via Facebook Causes) currently offers only basic fundraising technology. House social networking sites integrate handily with CRM software resulting in a seamless, branded, targeted, and integrated fundraising member experience.
Read more!
What motivates people to join social networks
What Motivates People to Join?
Next we turn to understanding why people join social networks. As you consider how social networking will play a role in your organization, consider what motivates your constituents to join your community. We’ve developed a list of eight reasons people participate in social networks.
1. Social Needs: Participation in the social network ills a basic human need to create relationships and connect with others.
Example: A traveling nurse maintains connections with friends back home via Facebook.
2. Emotional Support: The social network provides the space for emotional reinforcement from peers in the network.
Example: A mother of an autistic child shares daily parenting challenges with other parents via online discussion groups.
3. Resources: The social network offers access to educational materials, expert advice, photos, videos. The resources are submitted by peer members or by the hub manager.
Example: Alumni retrieve job leads from the university’s online community, or cancer patients get access to new treatment studies.
4. Services: Similar to Resources, here members get services from other members or the hub owner. Types of services include medical, travel, leisure or financial advice; collaboration and fundraising tools; customer service, etc.
Example: More experienced volunteer members of an open source software community take turns answering technical questions from other members.
5. Credibility: A member benefits from their association with a prestigious or notable social network.
Example: An executive director benefits from participation as a speaker in the TED Conference social network.
6. Recognition: A member’s contribution or expertise is acknowledged publicly within the social network.
Example: A leading rheumatologist authors an expert blog on an arthritis-focused nonprofit site, thereby exposing the rheumatology doctor to thousands of arthritis community members.
7. Self Promotion: A member receives value after marketing themselves or their product or service within the social network.
Example: A university alumni community site supports profiles that feature the alum’s current profession.
8. Self Definition: Membership in the social network becomes part of the member’s fundamental identity.
Example: A ministry’s Facebook group attracts thousands of dedicated fans. Each community will have its own distinct set of one or more reasons that drive constituents to join and participate. Your marketing and communications surrounding the promotion of the community site should to target these underlying motivations. To build the best possible marketing program, focus your messaging on the specific motivations of your future community members.
Read more!
Next we turn to understanding why people join social networks. As you consider how social networking will play a role in your organization, consider what motivates your constituents to join your community. We’ve developed a list of eight reasons people participate in social networks.
1. Social Needs: Participation in the social network ills a basic human need to create relationships and connect with others.
Example: A traveling nurse maintains connections with friends back home via Facebook.
2. Emotional Support: The social network provides the space for emotional reinforcement from peers in the network.
Example: A mother of an autistic child shares daily parenting challenges with other parents via online discussion groups.
3. Resources: The social network offers access to educational materials, expert advice, photos, videos. The resources are submitted by peer members or by the hub manager.
Example: Alumni retrieve job leads from the university’s online community, or cancer patients get access to new treatment studies.
4. Services: Similar to Resources, here members get services from other members or the hub owner. Types of services include medical, travel, leisure or financial advice; collaboration and fundraising tools; customer service, etc.
Example: More experienced volunteer members of an open source software community take turns answering technical questions from other members.
5. Credibility: A member benefits from their association with a prestigious or notable social network.
Example: An executive director benefits from participation as a speaker in the TED Conference social network.
6. Recognition: A member’s contribution or expertise is acknowledged publicly within the social network.
Example: A leading rheumatologist authors an expert blog on an arthritis-focused nonprofit site, thereby exposing the rheumatology doctor to thousands of arthritis community members.
7. Self Promotion: A member receives value after marketing themselves or their product or service within the social network.
Example: A university alumni community site supports profiles that feature the alum’s current profession.
8. Self Definition: Membership in the social network becomes part of the member’s fundamental identity.
Example: A ministry’s Facebook group attracts thousands of dedicated fans. Each community will have its own distinct set of one or more reasons that drive constituents to join and participate. Your marketing and communications surrounding the promotion of the community site should to target these underlying motivations. To build the best possible marketing program, focus your messaging on the specific motivations of your future community members.
Read more!
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Online marketing checklists
To help you make your website a success, the list below outlines some of the best marketing practices. Review the list and check all that apply to your operations. Work toward implementing each idea that's relevant to your situation.
- The company's URL (website address) appears on the front door / and front window
- The company's URL appears on the cash register receipts, invoices, quotations, delivery notes, e.t.c.
- The company's URL appears on bags
- The company's URL appears on bookmarks
- The company's URL appears on your printed and electronic newsletter
- The company's URL appears on gift cards
- The company's URL appears on your letterhead, business cards, and in your email signatures
- The company's voice mail/ answering machine promotes the website, telling customers you are open 24-hours a day at www.yourwebaddress.co.ke
- Staff meetings to review the website are periodically held
- Each member of the staff is familiar with the website content; you have asked for their feedback.
- Customer email addresses are collected in-store and online, and you expressly ask for your customers' permission to communicate with them.
- An email newsletter, including links to your website, is periodically distributed to your customers.
- The store and the website are cross-promoted, with in-store displays of online promotions
- Website sales and buyer reports are routinely reviewed and analyzed
- · Website traffic reports are routinely reviewed and analyzed
Read more!
Get ready for online sales
The internet is a great promotional vehicle, research tool, and communication channel for connecting with clients and customers. But in today's market place small businesses are discovering that the real payoff of an online presence is electronic commerce: using the web to sell your small business' products and services. Selling online reduces your business expenses, provides added convenience for your customers and opens the door to a global market for your products and services.
Read more!
If you want to succeed as online merchant you have to understand where your products fit within the competitive landscape and be clear about your online sales objectives. In addition, you need to know how to reach your virtual customers and how to meet their needs. Ask yourself the following five questions to start your journey to selling online.
- Will my product or service work online?
- What role will my site play in my overall sales strategy?
- What is the best venue for my products?
- How will i collect money from my web sales?
Will my product or service work online?
Not every product lends itself to e-commerce. The items that tend to generate the greatest revenue are commodity consumer products (such as books, CDs, or videos), technology products (computer and software), and hard-to-find products or those with highly specialized audience (rare coins, specialized craft supplies, regional/ gourmet foods, or collectibles, for example). As a rule, if a product sells well through a catalog or other direct channels, it can be promoted on the web.
Before you take the online plunge, be sure to analyze the competition carefully. If your product is already being sold by a large online competitor, you may have trouble generating profits through your site. Instead, focus your efforts on a specialized niche. For example, if you run a small bookstore, your online competitors would be giants amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. If you market your site as the premier resource for children's books, or better yet, children's picture books, you may be able to generate more sales.
What role will my site play in my overall sales strategy?
Before you begin executing your site, consider exactly what you'd like to accomplish through e-commerce. Will the web be your primary sales vehicle or will it be a way to supplement your existing revenues? This will help you shape the content your site and may also guide decisions about the site location, product selection, payment and order processing. Take the time to put together a plan of execution that addresses not only your goals for taking your business online, but also financial assumptions, challenges and concerns. This document will help to ensure that your investment in web commerce pay off.
What features and information should I include on my site?
When designing your site's content, consider the type of information your buyers will require before they purchase. Take a look at e-commerce URLs that you admire and dislike. Chances are you'll find some common threads among the good sites. The graphics will most likely be clean and relevant; they will download quickly; navigation will be well thought out; and the steps for ordering will clearly be outlined. You might also want to review your competitors' sites, as well as high-revenue sites that are unrelated to your business, to get ideas for your site's content and features. Analyzing these site's sales messages, promotions and guarantees will give you a sense of how they encourage visitors to buy.
What is the best venue for my product?
The location of your virtual storefront is just as important as a traditional store's location. You will need to decide if you want to set up your website as part of an online mall, or if you would like your site to exist independent of other vendors. Online malls - sites that rent out space to merchants who reside at the mall's URL - have not been nearly as successful as many had hoped. Specialty malls - sites that offer products and services related to a particular theme such as golf or boating - have proved better able to meet consumer demand for selection, speed, and convenience. Setting up an independent site will give you the greatest control over the operation and promotion, but also requires the most work. You will need to determine where buyers are, design ways to reach them, and manage ordering and fulfillment.
How will I collect money from my web sales?
To succeed online, it's essential to make it easy for your customers to pay you. Credit and charge cards are the most common solution. This requires you to set up a merchant status, receive authorization to accept charges over the internet.
Although online payments is convenient for both merchants and customers, some of your customers may not currently feel comfortable ordering online. For these clients offer phone ordering, fax ordering or email orders option.
Read more!
Common web site misconceptions
There is a lot of misinformation out there about web site marketing. Many businesses find it difficult to separate hype from reality. The key is to determine if the web is right for you, and then use the right methods to exploit its marketing power. Below are some common misconceptions about the World Wide Web, along with some tip s on how you can make your online marketing program a success.
Read more!
Misconception 1: Every small business needs to have a web site
While many small businesses can benefit from developing and maintaining their own web sites, it's important to realize that this form of marketing is not for everyone. You need to consider using a web site if:
- Your customers are online
If your customer base buy products or get information via the web, then you need to be there. If, on the other hand, they get most of their information from other sources (whether the yellow pages, newspapers and magazines, tradeshows, or other marketing vehicles), then you might want to concentrate your efforts in these areas.
- You want to reach a national or international customer base efficiently
The web is not a form of "local" marketing. By its very nature it has a broad reach, so you need to be prepared to take advantage of that. For example, a home contractor based in suburban New York may not be able to reap the full benefits of a website because it serves a very targeted audience. A candy distributor that offered national shipping would be in a better position to take advantage of the web's broad reach.
- A web site supports your marketing objectives and your budget.
Your website needs to be part of a fully integrated marketing plan and budget. It's important to have a consistent message in all the tools you use.
- The web can take the place of, or be more efficient than other marketing options
The web can give your customers immediate access to information that it might take them days or weeks to get otherwise. For instance, a commercial photographer who put his portfolio on the web can direct potential clients to his site, instead of incurring the expense of sending his portfolio for every job.
- You're committed to your site
A web site requires constant attention. Are you willing to keep it fresh? Can you commit to adding new content every month? Do you have the time and budget to support it properly? If you're not willing to do this yourself, you need to hire someone to do it for you. Otherwise, your web efforts will be wasted.
Misconception 2: A web site automatically levels the playing field between my small business and my larger competitors
Yes, a professional looking web site can make your small business look larger than it is. But without an effective plan and effective implementation, your website can actually make you look less professional than you are, and put at a competitive disadvantage.
Use the web to show off your expertise. By giving away your knowledge, you can position yourself as an expert and attract customers and interest them in your products or services.
One way to make yourself appear larger than you are is to have your own domain name. A web address of "www.yourcompanyname.com" is much easier to find and presents a more professional image using a sub-address of your Internet Service Provider or online service (www.yourISP.com/~yourcompany). The cost to register your domain is minimal, and many ISPs will host your site under that name for a small monthly fee. Talk to your ISP about this.
Another trap to look out for is using technology for technology's sake. Using bells and whistles just because they seem "cool" can actually work against you. Here's an example: the homepage of a consulting firm features a popular traffic, and therefore causes you to question whether the information you're receiving is accurate or compelling.
Misconception 3: Put up a website and people will come flocking to your company
Don't expect people to find your web site on their own. You need to encourage traffic through active promotion both on the Internet and in your traditional marketing materials. Here are some common methods:
Register your web site with all the major search engines like Yahoo!, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos and Hotbot. There are number of services that will register your URL with multiple engines and directories for a small fee - a popular one is submit It. Be aware, however, that while these services will get your site listed, you will lose control over how you want your site described.
Exchange links or banner ads with non-competitors who have complimentary services or products. Send an email to the webmaster at the site you want to link with, and offer a reciprocal linking arrangement. Be sure to stress the mutual benefits of creating this link in your note. Services such as Link Exchange let you swap links with other businesses, giving you free banner advertising directly proportional to how much you put on your website.
Be sure to support your URL throughout your marketing literature. Put your web site addresses in all your ads, in your product brochures, and on your business cards and letterhead. Include it in the signature file for your emails, so customers can automatically jump from your message to your web site.
Read more!
Give consumers confidence in your site
While online shopping is definitely on the rise, many people remain wary of e-commerce. Their fear centers on the transmittal of personal and financial information over the internet and the perceived risk of releasing sensitive data unscrupulous eyes. Unsolicited e-mail campaigns, rumours of hacker break-ins and media coverage of unethical web commerce practices further intimidate would-be-customers.
Read more!
Understanding and addressing customer concerns about online buying are critical to your small business' success selling on the web. Here are some steps you can take to encourage customers to give online buying a try:
Address security issues directly
Include a statement on your web site that informs buyers about your policies. Two elements are important to this statement: what security you have in place to protect transmitted data and what you will and will not do with the buyer information. Most customers feel more comfortable buying from someone who agrees not to release their contact information or buying patterns to outside parties.
Guarantee your security
Demonstrate your confidence in e-commerce. Consider guaranteeing payment. This will encourage buyers to trust your system. Accepting responsibility for this payment will also allow you to remove one of the most common barriers to shopping online - percieved financial risk.
State your security record
Most customers are surprised to learn how infrequently security breaches occur. If your site has never had one, say so. For example, web bookseller amazon.com clearly states that none of its 3 million customers have reported fraudulent use of a credit card resulting from purchases made at the site.
Flaunt your protection procedures
If you take extra steps to ensure buyer information is protected, let visitors know. For example, if your secure service provider makes a weekly effort to break into its own system, just to reinforce security, state this fact on your site. You may also want to mention the technology you have in place by name. Many consumers are familiar with secure socket layer (SSL), Secure Electronic Transaction Protocol (SET), and digital signatures certificates that help authenticate the identity of all parties involved in a transaction.
Seek out approval from the consumer organizations
Certain organizations offer seals of approval for online shops that meet their standards for conducting business. Displaying one of these marks on your site accomplishes two things: it alerts consumers that you are legitimate business and serves as a virtual beware-of-dog sign for would be hackers.
Use statistics
Round up some numbers that testify to the safety of online purchasing. You can find these statistics within the web sites of research organization such as Gartner group and Forrester Research, as well as within sites devoted to computer industry news such as ZDNet. You may not want to clutter you homepage, so consider providing a link to another page within your site that houses these statistics.
Provide alternatives
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3 Rules to Remember with Website Design
Imagine walking through a mall for the very first time and looking for a specific style of shoes. There are dozens of stores to choose from, many of which probably have exactly what you are looking for. So how will you be able to decide which stores to shop in? Whether or not you are aware of it, you’ll immediately begin to narrow down your search by first looking at storefronts that seem relevant, professional and easy to access. Then you’ll begin looking into other things like price, selection, service and so forth.
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The same principle applies to the Internet. Every second, millions of people are shopping online. Everyone who is on the Internet is shopping for something. They could be shopping for products like shoes, but people are also constantly looking for services and information. So how can you help your website attract traffic and become a memorable, valuable place for people to visit?
Having a good website design is a major part of running a successful business. Here are three rules that will help your website stand out and attract repeat visitors.
Rule #1: Simplicity is always better than complexity.
Simplicity is one reason the iPod has become the standard of music players. The rule of simplicity applies in almost every aspect of our lives, and websites are no exception.
It’s easy to get distracted into adding new, cool technologies to your website that you think people will find amusing and fun. But one thing that will make people visit and return to your website is if it’s uncomplicated and easy-to-use.
To keep your website simple, there are some things you need to avoid. First of all, don’t use counters to track traffic. They are annoying, serve no purpose to the visitor, and they’re a dead give away if you don’t get much traffic. You should also avoid putting anything that needs a plug-in on your site because people will be hesitant to download any software just to access information on your site. Odd document formats or too much flash animation can also be a big distraction, as can heavy use of graphics.
You will want to use a layout that is logical and simple to navigate. Navigation bars should be easy to reference, and color use should be simple and attractive instead of multifarious and distracting. Remember, no one ever says, “I wish this were more complex.”
Rule #2: Keep a solid focus
Decide early on what you want your website to be, and then stick to that formula. Websites that are not focused are normally hard to navigate, but they’re also hard for people to remember. Unless you are an encyclopedia, you’ll want to limit your content to a very specific topic and provide as much information on that topic as you can. But make sure the information you provide is relevant, interesting and, of course, correct. If you have a little information on a lot of topics, what you really have is nothing; that is, nothing that people will easily remember.
In keeping focused, you’ll also want to update your website regularly, with new written materials, graphics, and other useful tools and information for your visitors. Stagnant websites seldom warrant regular visits.
Rule #3: Make your website user-friendly
Make sure you keep your website accessible to everyone. That means you need to take the time to do your coding correctly and make sure your website is navigable for all the popular Internet browsers, including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Safari.
And this goes along with simplicity, but don’t forget to make your information easy to find. Search functions and site maps are helpful, but also make sure not to bury information that people will be using regularly. If people have to click through more than a few pages to find what they’re looking for, they’ll probably go somewhere else.
You’ll also want to provide a way for people to easily access you. People have come to expect to see a “Contact Us” link somewhere on your website. Live chat and an FAQ (frequently asked questions) are also extremely helpful resources that can help your website stand out.
At the end of the day, people will go back to the websites that have the best design, easiest access and most relevant information. That is what will encourage people to choose your site over and over again.
Read more!
Choosing A Hosting Company For Your Small Business Website
If you have created your own great website but need to find the best hosting provider to get your site online - here are some important things to consider and some important questions to ask to ensure you choose the right hosting provider for your small business.
Choosing a hosting company for your small business website
What Questions Should You Ask When Choosing A Web Host Provider For Your Small Business Website?
Whether you have created your own great website - or had someone build it for you - a key element to your success online is choosing a great web hosting provider to get your site on the web and put your site to work for your business. But selecting a web hosting provider may not be as easy as it seems. Most small business owners track every penny of business costs to ensure continued growth and success. Yet, if small businesses try and save money on web hosting costs by going with a low cost hosting provider, they may get a frustrating experience that ends up costing both time and money.
So, how can you make sure you choose the right provider? Here are some of the things you should look for when choosing a web host provider.
Reliability
In this web-connected business world, your website defines your business. If you’ve just met with a prospective client for the first time, you want them to be able to go to your website and investigate your business further. It could damage your chances of doing future business with this prospective client, if your site is down when they visit.
In addition, if you’re actively marketing products and services electronically, you need confidence that when a potential customer discovers your business (whether in the middle of the night or the middle of the day), they can easily access your site and place an order. How much revenue can you afford to lose because your web hosting provider is down when prospective customers try to visit your site? And how many of your marketing cash could be wasted if your site is not available when prospects decide to learn more about your business? For most businesses the amount of potential loss will exceed the small savings you may be getting from going with the lowest cost provider you can find.
So, when you’re investigating a web host provider, ask what guarantees. Does this web hosting provider offer a guarantee of their reliability or uptime? The strength of a guarantee is a great indicator of the confidence your web hosting provider really has in being able to provide a reliable service.
Technical support
Many small business owners don’t work a typical 8-5 schedule. If you’re working on your website at midnight, and you need help installing your digital certificate (for example) you need a web host provider that can answer your questions whenever you have them.
So, when making a decision about a web host provider, ask about the technical support they will offer you. Will this web host provider be there to answer your questions whenever they come up?
Technology
If you’ve designed your own site or if you edit your existing site, you know that there are various technologies used on the back-end to ensure the site has the full functionality you intended. These may include FTP, PHP, MySQL and others.
Many low cost web hosting services can offer low prices, because they limit the technologies that are available for you to build or use on your site. Often these hosting providers offer huge storage capacity as the main ‘feature’ of their service. When choosing a web host provider, don’t be blinded by storage space. Some hosting providers will give you plenty of space and little else. Consider the feature set and functionalities the hosting provider offers. Will they support the technologies that you’ll need to build and operate the site that you want?
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Tips for developing a successful site
Make your site easy to use
While it might be tempting to have a cutting edge website with all the bells and whistles - don't forget the basics. You will fail if the visitor can't navigate successfully through your site. Provide clear, easy to understand navigation tools on each page of your site.
Provide useful content
Don't just sell! These days, it's not enough to have a website that lists your products and providing shopping cart for purchases. If you want your visitors to return, you'll want to provide meaningful content. If you sell fashion items, your site could post articles about the latest fashion trends, reviews on fashion items or any other information that would give visitors a reason to want to return for more. A CPA's site could publish tax tips and offer links to IRS forms. A catering service could offer articles on how to host a successful party.
Encourage customer feedback via online forms and email
Ask your customers what they want. Did they find what they were looking for? How could your site be more useful or easier to use? Listen to your customers' frustrations and gripes. They'll tell you what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong.
Develop a Mailing List
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Friday, June 5, 2009
ICT and Social Transformation in rural Kenya
The development of a society largely depends on the access to information. The Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) greatly facilitate the flow of information and knowledge offering the socially-marginalised and unaware community unprecedented opportunities to attain their own entitlements. ICT is a critical tool to tackle development issues in developing countries. Despite ICT’s massive potential, the current global information explosion has had surprisingly little impact on development activities and access to practical information for rural communities, local people and frontline development workers in developing countries. Kenya is one such country rolling within the vicious circle of deprivation and obstacles.
Country Overview and Background
Kenya is in the process of a transition from a predominantly agrarian economy to an industrial and service economy. Kenya's population remains predominantly rural where poverty is widespread.
In recent years the rural people of the country empowered significantly to warrant a renewed articulation of the strategies that they could employ to reduce poverty and improve well-being. The contribution of Agriculture in the economy of Kenya is still highest even with its old technology and ICT can directly contribute in commercialization and increasing value added services within the sector which ultimately tends to empower the rural communities.
The loop of low income, poor infrastructure, low education, poor awareness, poor governance, lack of political commitment, high bureaucratic attitude and non-availability of relevant and related contents make the ICT related development activities in Kenya complicated, particularly in the rural areas. The existing ICT services available in Kenya are not concentrating on the core elements like social awareness, physical access center, local and relevant content, enterprise development, alternate connectivity and capacity building.
ICT - An emerging development tool
The new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is the most powerful tool among the driving forces of globalization. ICT is bringing people together, bringing the unprecedented new tools for development (like mobile phone, online citizen services – paying utility bills online, publishing public exam results on the web, distance education programs, telemedicine, online discussion forums, online business advisory and marketing information service, human right and consumer awareness through online forum, archiving of local heritage on the web, etc) through internet and CDs and have become a powerful tool to contribute in the development process. To empower the local communities with a sustainable approach, ICT is the most effective instrument. At the same time a real danger is mounting in the developing countries like Kenya and the poor communities of the society are being excluded from the emerging knowledge based global economy and the digital-divide is increasing among the rural peoples.
Poverty Eradication, ICT, Empowering the Rural Communities
Access to information is of fundamental importance to any development process. The flow of information from and to the rural communities is an essential pre-condition for the development of rural Bangladesh towards eradication of widespread poverty. The recent development of ICT is greatly facilitating the flow of information and knowledge, beyond the border of social and economic status. It is in this context, ICTs are now widely recognized as a critical tool to tackle development issues in developing countries.
Moreover, poverty is in part a consequence of the present growth and the delivery of education and health services becomes difficult due to population growth. It also revealed that poverty reduction cannot happen in an information-deprived environment (for example, earlier farmers living in the rural areas of Kenya had no access to market information and they were always deprived by the local middlemen who manipulate the prices of agri-products). Poverty reduction is possible only in an environment where publics and particularly the poor have information on the issues that affect their lives. Information empowerment is recognized as an important factor to stimulate debate and strengthen participation in the democratic processes.
Kenya has experienced a very successful model of connecting rural people through mobile phone service.
Multipurpose Telecenter (MPTC): The Kenyan Approach
MPTC has become a popular approach in many developing countries and offers integrated ICT services for the rural communities with accessibility in the net (For example, India – Information Kiosks and Knowledge Center, Thailand – Thai Rural Net, Brazil – Telecenter, Indonesia – Warnet, Albania – Public Information center, etc.). In the Kenyan model of MPTC, the focus should be on youth (Both professional and unemployed) and women community of the society. MPTC offers sharing ICT based services and knowledge. Alternate Connectivity is the strategic strength of MPTC which can be defined as the combination of phases: Collecting the relevant and local / global information and material available in any format (Hardcopy, Soft copy, CD version) with social and development aspect, Selecting the related and relevant content / materials for dissemination, Converting the materials into CD version (PDF/ Word/ Graphics), Releasing the CDs on periodical basis and disseminate to the target rural communities, Ensure minimum infrastructure (PC with CD Rom) at field level. Alternate Connectivity will open new channels that bring new knowledge and information resources to rural communities.The model in Kenya should have strategic partnership with private sector enterprises and are resolving some critical problems like connectivity, local content, SME advisory services, expert opinion, business network building, etc.The model should use both traditional media (like print media – newsletter) and new technologies (like the Internet, CD, mobile telephony) for disseminating information and advisory services. The major challenges for the model are addressing the less aware community (both grass root and policy makers), affordable connectivity solution, developing a Business Model and identifying universal service line.
Sustainability – A critical issue
The benefits of the rural ICT projects should be measured not only from the economic and financial aspects, but also in terms of the real benefits empowering the local communities, which should be considered primarily to assess the sustainability of the projects. Value of the benefits in long run towards poverty eradication and social empowerment, which are the ultimate goal of any social venture, should not be ignored. While just focusing financial sustainability may distract the very objective of rural ICT endeavors, it is important to concentrate on making the rural ICT efforts self-sustainable, through offering different income generating activities in addition to development and social services.
Conclusion
To overcome the vicious circle of poverty, bridge the digital divide and empower the rural communities, ICT can be utilized to build internal and collective capacity. In combination with various components and integration of services with focus to enterprise development, citizen services, social issues, MPTC will bring the benefits of modern technology for the rural communities of Kenya also applicable for other developing countries. To speed up the poverty alleviation in rural areas, policy and program efforts need to support, coordinate and link work in social services, agriculture, infrastructure, natural resources, finance and rural non-farm development. The MPTC approach can bring new window to challenge poverty in the long-run which requires integrating policies and programs in the field of rural ICT.
Read more!
Country Overview and Background
Kenya is in the process of a transition from a predominantly agrarian economy to an industrial and service economy. Kenya's population remains predominantly rural where poverty is widespread.
In recent years the rural people of the country empowered significantly to warrant a renewed articulation of the strategies that they could employ to reduce poverty and improve well-being. The contribution of Agriculture in the economy of Kenya is still highest even with its old technology and ICT can directly contribute in commercialization and increasing value added services within the sector which ultimately tends to empower the rural communities.
The loop of low income, poor infrastructure, low education, poor awareness, poor governance, lack of political commitment, high bureaucratic attitude and non-availability of relevant and related contents make the ICT related development activities in Kenya complicated, particularly in the rural areas. The existing ICT services available in Kenya are not concentrating on the core elements like social awareness, physical access center, local and relevant content, enterprise development, alternate connectivity and capacity building.
ICT - An emerging development tool
The new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is the most powerful tool among the driving forces of globalization. ICT is bringing people together, bringing the unprecedented new tools for development (like mobile phone, online citizen services – paying utility bills online, publishing public exam results on the web, distance education programs, telemedicine, online discussion forums, online business advisory and marketing information service, human right and consumer awareness through online forum, archiving of local heritage on the web, etc) through internet and CDs and have become a powerful tool to contribute in the development process. To empower the local communities with a sustainable approach, ICT is the most effective instrument. At the same time a real danger is mounting in the developing countries like Kenya and the poor communities of the society are being excluded from the emerging knowledge based global economy and the digital-divide is increasing among the rural peoples.
Poverty Eradication, ICT, Empowering the Rural Communities
Access to information is of fundamental importance to any development process. The flow of information from and to the rural communities is an essential pre-condition for the development of rural Bangladesh towards eradication of widespread poverty. The recent development of ICT is greatly facilitating the flow of information and knowledge, beyond the border of social and economic status. It is in this context, ICTs are now widely recognized as a critical tool to tackle development issues in developing countries.
Moreover, poverty is in part a consequence of the present growth and the delivery of education and health services becomes difficult due to population growth. It also revealed that poverty reduction cannot happen in an information-deprived environment (for example, earlier farmers living in the rural areas of Kenya had no access to market information and they were always deprived by the local middlemen who manipulate the prices of agri-products). Poverty reduction is possible only in an environment where publics and particularly the poor have information on the issues that affect their lives. Information empowerment is recognized as an important factor to stimulate debate and strengthen participation in the democratic processes.
Kenya has experienced a very successful model of connecting rural people through mobile phone service.
Multipurpose Telecenter (MPTC): The Kenyan Approach
MPTC has become a popular approach in many developing countries and offers integrated ICT services for the rural communities with accessibility in the net (For example, India – Information Kiosks and Knowledge Center, Thailand – Thai Rural Net, Brazil – Telecenter, Indonesia – Warnet, Albania – Public Information center, etc.). In the Kenyan model of MPTC, the focus should be on youth (Both professional and unemployed) and women community of the society. MPTC offers sharing ICT based services and knowledge. Alternate Connectivity is the strategic strength of MPTC which can be defined as the combination of phases: Collecting the relevant and local / global information and material available in any format (Hardcopy, Soft copy, CD version) with social and development aspect, Selecting the related and relevant content / materials for dissemination, Converting the materials into CD version (PDF/ Word/ Graphics), Releasing the CDs on periodical basis and disseminate to the target rural communities, Ensure minimum infrastructure (PC with CD Rom) at field level. Alternate Connectivity will open new channels that bring new knowledge and information resources to rural communities.The model in Kenya should have strategic partnership with private sector enterprises and are resolving some critical problems like connectivity, local content, SME advisory services, expert opinion, business network building, etc.The model should use both traditional media (like print media – newsletter) and new technologies (like the Internet, CD, mobile telephony) for disseminating information and advisory services. The major challenges for the model are addressing the less aware community (both grass root and policy makers), affordable connectivity solution, developing a Business Model and identifying universal service line.
Sustainability – A critical issue
The benefits of the rural ICT projects should be measured not only from the economic and financial aspects, but also in terms of the real benefits empowering the local communities, which should be considered primarily to assess the sustainability of the projects. Value of the benefits in long run towards poverty eradication and social empowerment, which are the ultimate goal of any social venture, should not be ignored. While just focusing financial sustainability may distract the very objective of rural ICT endeavors, it is important to concentrate on making the rural ICT efforts self-sustainable, through offering different income generating activities in addition to development and social services.
Conclusion
To overcome the vicious circle of poverty, bridge the digital divide and empower the rural communities, ICT can be utilized to build internal and collective capacity. In combination with various components and integration of services with focus to enterprise development, citizen services, social issues, MPTC will bring the benefits of modern technology for the rural communities of Kenya also applicable for other developing countries. To speed up the poverty alleviation in rural areas, policy and program efforts need to support, coordinate and link work in social services, agriculture, infrastructure, natural resources, finance and rural non-farm development. The MPTC approach can bring new window to challenge poverty in the long-run which requires integrating policies and programs in the field of rural ICT.
Read more!
Friday, May 15, 2009
Build Your Email List on Social Media Site
Social media sites offer exciting new ways to showcase your newsletter content and invite people to sign up for your email list. But it's not about adding your voice to the din just for the sake of increasing exposure. It is about making new connections.
The key is demonstrating that you have valuable content to share with new subscribers and then turning those connections into customer relationships -- and additions to your mailing list.
Archiving to Extend the Life of Your Content
Before we discuss where to share your content, let's quickly discuss how you can prepare your newsletter to be shared. The easiest way to do this is to archive your issue. When you do that, not only will you be extending the life of the valuable content you've written, but you'll be provided with a URL that will link people directly to the issue.
After you've archived your issue, take the URL you are given to www.tinyurl.com, where you can turn a long web address into a miniature, easily-linkable version that you can use on any social media site. (For more information, click here to see our tutorial about using Archive with social media sites.) Just make sure that your archived page includes a Join My Mailing List box so anyone who clicks on the link can continue to hear from you.
Twitter
One of the most popular social media sites right now is Twitter. This is a social media site where you communicate with contacts using short messages of 140 characters or less. People sign up for the site, and they can choose to follow what you have to say.
Need a hot topic to Tweet about? Look no further than your own newsletter. Twitter limits "tweets" to 140 characters, so that challenges you to be concise when you write an article teaser. You can tell your followers, " just wrote a newsletter on [insert your topic]. Find it here [insert your tiny URL newsletter archive link]."
Facebook
Facebook used to be a place to share photos of yourself and your family with friends. Now it's also about communities of people who share common causes and passions -- and businesses, organizations, and public figures who hope to reach them.
Tell all your Facebook friends and fans about your newsletter by putting a link to your latest issue in your Status message, just like you would on Twitter. Spark up a timely discussion on your Wall about something relevant to your audience. Post interesting snippets of content that make people want to subscribe and suggest your Facebook page to their friends.
Most importantly, include a link to invite people to subscribe to your newsletter if they'd like to read more from you (click here to learn how to do that). Show visitors that by signing up for your newsletter, they are joining the community of people that you serve with your products, services, and expertise.
LinkedIn
How many past and present business colleagues do you have in your LinkedIn network? Of those people in your network, how many know you have an email newsletter? How many have signed up for it? You can use LinkedIn's Send a Message feature to reach out to up to 50 contacts at a time and invite them back to your website to subscribe. If you belong to LinkedIn groups, use the Discussions feature to inform people about your newsletter and the topics you cover, and tell them how they can sign up.
Other Social Media List Building Hints
1. Follow up new signups immediately with a Welcome email and a sample newsletter. Consider using an auto-responder to send an email to new subscribers, informing them of your content and your promotions.
2. Provide newsletter content that is valuable and worth forwarding and linking back to.
3. Archive your newsletter on your website so bloggers, Tweeters, and other social networkers can link back to your content, spreading it virally.
4. Make sure to read the Terms of Use before promoting your content on any website.
5. Invite readers to follow you on Twitter and Facebook from your newsletter.
Social networks offer potential for expanding your reach. But you need to create genuine customer relationships that go beyond the links you make. It's up to you to translate those new signups from casual connections into customer relationships that generate business. The opportunity for a real relationship starts when your email newsletter arrives in their inboxes.
Read more!
The key is demonstrating that you have valuable content to share with new subscribers and then turning those connections into customer relationships -- and additions to your mailing list.
Archiving to Extend the Life of Your Content
Before we discuss where to share your content, let's quickly discuss how you can prepare your newsletter to be shared. The easiest way to do this is to archive your issue. When you do that, not only will you be extending the life of the valuable content you've written, but you'll be provided with a URL that will link people directly to the issue.
After you've archived your issue, take the URL you are given to www.tinyurl.com, where you can turn a long web address into a miniature, easily-linkable version that you can use on any social media site. (For more information, click here to see our tutorial about using Archive with social media sites.) Just make sure that your archived page includes a Join My Mailing List box so anyone who clicks on the link can continue to hear from you.
One of the most popular social media sites right now is Twitter. This is a social media site where you communicate with contacts using short messages of 140 characters or less. People sign up for the site, and they can choose to follow what you have to say.
Need a hot topic to Tweet about? Look no further than your own newsletter. Twitter limits "tweets" to 140 characters, so that challenges you to be concise when you write an article teaser. You can tell your followers, " just wrote a newsletter on [insert your topic]. Find it here [insert your tiny URL newsletter archive link]."
Facebook used to be a place to share photos of yourself and your family with friends. Now it's also about communities of people who share common causes and passions -- and businesses, organizations, and public figures who hope to reach them.
Tell all your Facebook friends and fans about your newsletter by putting a link to your latest issue in your Status message, just like you would on Twitter. Spark up a timely discussion on your Wall about something relevant to your audience. Post interesting snippets of content that make people want to subscribe and suggest your Facebook page to their friends.
Most importantly, include a link to invite people to subscribe to your newsletter if they'd like to read more from you (click here to learn how to do that). Show visitors that by signing up for your newsletter, they are joining the community of people that you serve with your products, services, and expertise.
How many past and present business colleagues do you have in your LinkedIn network? Of those people in your network, how many know you have an email newsletter? How many have signed up for it? You can use LinkedIn's Send a Message feature to reach out to up to 50 contacts at a time and invite them back to your website to subscribe. If you belong to LinkedIn groups, use the Discussions feature to inform people about your newsletter and the topics you cover, and tell them how they can sign up.
Other Social Media List Building Hints
1. Follow up new signups immediately with a Welcome email and a sample newsletter. Consider using an auto-responder to send an email to new subscribers, informing them of your content and your promotions.
2. Provide newsletter content that is valuable and worth forwarding and linking back to.
3. Archive your newsletter on your website so bloggers, Tweeters, and other social networkers can link back to your content, spreading it virally.
4. Make sure to read the Terms of Use before promoting your content on any website.
5. Invite readers to follow you on Twitter and Facebook from your newsletter.
Social networks offer potential for expanding your reach. But you need to create genuine customer relationships that go beyond the links you make. It's up to you to translate those new signups from casual connections into customer relationships that generate business. The opportunity for a real relationship starts when your email newsletter arrives in their inboxes.
Read more!
Reaching the facebook generation – Innovative ways of using facebook
Reaching the facebook generation - Innovative ways of using facebook
200,000. This is the approximate number of the new users who create new accounts on Facebook every day. For many of the Kenyan people who use the internet, facebook has become a way of life. It has become a platform where people meet new people and become friends, get to know of various events that are happening and get to catch or the latest gossip, tips, upload photos, write on someone’s wall, tag friends in photos,…….. Facebook is a gateway to the virtual world that Kenyans are being introduced to. In facebook, people can kiss, chat, send messages, send flowers, poke, throw strawberry at someone, track what friends are doing and do all sort of things that are done in the real world. Facebook is fast building an interconnected web of networks that are joining people all over the world with over 150,000 people joining facebook every day. Facebook is going to transform the way people behave and relate.
Facebook is very flexible and can be used innovatively by different people and organizations to achieve different objectives. Below are some innovative ways that people can use facebook.
Branding through Facebook
Social web has become an integral part of marketing plans in organizations that want to stay ahead of the curve and facebook has played a big role. Companies such as Coca-Cola, Adidas and Mazda have used facebook to advance their brands. For example, Coca-Cola launched a Coke Tag on facebook that people can use to promote themselves. Mazda invited facebook users to design a new concept for Mazda car during the Mazda Design Challenge. Mitsubishi has created a profile on facebook for its innovative electric vehicle(i-MiEV). The Adidas celebrate originality brand campaign was supported by facebook and youtube videos. Mars snackfood has used facebook in a very innovative way. Using the Facebook Celebrate application, people can give each other virtual gifts like candy bars. If they give a Mars candy bar, the recipient gets a virtual gift and a coupon for the real thing. Clinique, Harley Davidson, East Africa Breweries and more use free gifts as ads. When a user sends a virtual gift of a product with their brand name on it, their brand gets a nice bit of advertising. The possibilities for brands to leverage the social web, including social networking sites such as Facebook, are incredible. Is your brand on board yet? Don’t get left behind!
Improving recruitment experience through facebook
Human resource managers are now using facebook to investigate prospective employees before they hire them. Careerbuilder.com recently did a survey of American hiring managers and their use of facebook. Of the 3169 hiring managers who were surveyed, 22 percent said that they screen potential employees using social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Of those 22 percent, a little over one third of them have found content that made them drop the candidate from consideration for jobs for content ranging from drug-taking, excessive drinking and sexual promiscuity. Do you check candidates out via social networking sites before you send them on to your clients? How often has a Facebook profile or a MySpace page made you change your mind?
Non-profits can use Facebook
Non profit making organizations can use facebook in many innovative ways for instance, fundraising campaigns, communicate with potential supporters, to stir and broaden support for important social issues, to empower members to engage in their own actions, to organize, promote and manage events, to promote your organization's blog, latest news and meetings, to raise public awareness and money for advocacy efforts, to find and recruit volunteers, to create a single branded page of your organization's work and to stay in touch with core audiences on an ongoing basis. Dollars for Darfur, the brain-child of high school students Nick Anderson and Ana Slavin, is a nationwide fundraising competition among high schools to raise money for the advocacy efforts of the Save Darfur Coalition and humanitarian assistance for Darfuri refugees. The Facebook page encourages students to post ideas for fundraisers and talk about the crisis. It also encourages students to visit the organization's website and create a personal fundraising page for their school. With Facebook pages application, nonprofits can create a single branded page. The best thing about these new pages is the ability to post videos focusing on the work of your organization.
Facebook for Musicians
Musicians at every level have been eager to find a way to promote themselves to the millions of music fans. Any musician, whether signed to a label, independent, or just starting off in college or high school, can promote themselves inside of Facebook’s highly personal and highly viral environment. Through “My Band”, an innovative application designed to help artists promote their music on Facebook, artists can post unlimited songs, band info, show schedules, and even a “join the mailing list” function directly to their Facebook profile page. Their friends can play and share full-length tracks, add them to their own pages, and even buy the music and tickets. “My Band” even provides artists with stats about how their music is spreading. Over 750,000 artists are using “My Band” application on facebook to promote themselves and their music.
Facebook and the Church
Churches are taking advantage of this new community created by face book. The facebook Page for your church is a good way to get your church into social networking scene. With Facebook being so popular, having your church where people are having your church involved where your members and others are involved is a great way to connect with people. The Facebook Page allows your church, as an organization, to have an official presence in Facebook. You customize the Facebook Page even use HTML and Flash.
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