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!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
