1.3 A social entrepreneur's approach to problem solving

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Social Impact Strategy: Tools for Entrepreneurs and Innovators

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University of Pennsylvania

Social Impact Strategy: Tools for Entrepreneurs and Innovators

372 оценки

This course offers an introduction to social impact strategy and social entrepreneurship, including key concepts, an overview of the field, and tools to get started as a changemaker. Students will learn how to innovate and design new ideas and new organizational forms to implement those ideas. Students who take this course will be better prepared to launch social impact organizations of their own invention. By moving through four stages, Define, Design, Pilot, and Scale, students will turn their passion for changing the world into concrete plans for launching a nonprofit or for-profit venture designed to achieve a social goal. This course will allow students to systematically think through problems; develop and test an innovative solution; assess risk, competition, and performance; and spread impact in a way that is financially sustainable. Students who complete the course become eligible to apply for an in-person educational experience, called the Global Social Impact House. GSIH is a seven-day residential program that provides fellows with the tools, community and training they need to advance their ventures. Workshops are customized to the needs of fellows and explore advanced concepts in business models, design thinking and leadership. The program is also designed to help fellows build meaningful, global connections while living together in an inspirational host location. For more information on the Global Social Impact House, please visit: socialimpactstrategy.org/residential/gsih

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Introduction

Learn about the key qualities of social innovation, social enterprise, and social entrepreneurs. How do social entrepreneurs approach problem solving? How might we identify social initiatives that are truly innovative in their approach to delivering on their mission, sustaining their venture, or scaling their impact? This module introduces the topic and offers examples of initiatives you might study as cases organizations throughout the course.

0.1. What to Expect in this Course1:50

1.1 Introduction to Social Innovation6:25

1.2 Traditional approaches to public problem solving4:49

1.3 A social entrepreneur's approach to problem solving6:17

1.4 Introduction to the social enterprise and the social enterprise spectrum6:28

1.5 The Importance of the business model1:21

1.6 Traits of social enterprise across the spectrum6:10

1.7. Meet Carlos and Coco2:46

1.8. Anatomy of a Social Entrepreneur2:40

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Peter Frumkin
Professor
Nonprofit Leadership Program, School of Social Policy & Practice

[MUSIC]

So if government, business and the non-profit sector all

had their distinctive styles of solving public problems, you might ask well,

what makes social entrepreneurs different?

What makes their approach any different?

I think what makes them different is that they are looking for, as I said before,

something novel, something fresh.

A new approach that says what if we re-conceptualize the problem?

What if we take a different angle at it?

They're trying to drive innovation and they're trying to work above and

beyond the kind on sector limits that I've just described.

So let's take one example.

Let's go to Africa and look at Moladi.

In Africa, there's a question of how can we provide not just affordable housing but

durable housing that can be sustained even amidst storms and violent weather.

A group of social entrepreneurs came up with the idea

of what if we were to construct a house made out of plastic molds?

Small squares that snap together.

And now they're doing it all across Africa.

They are building houses by taking molds, snapping them together, pouring concrete

into these molds, inserting rebar, steel rebar to make the unit extremely strong.

And they're generating housing at very low cost that

can withstand enormous amounts of environmental stress.

This is an idea that I don't think the business sector,

the non-profit sector, or the government sector would naturally gravitate towards.

It involves a fresh idea about what housing might look like.

It involves the idea of a concrete poured house that can be reassembled, molds for

which can be reassembled all over the place and replicated over and over again.

So what's interesting, I think, about the social entrepreneurship approach to public

problem solving is that it starts from a blank slate.

It says we want to solve a problem, and then it says,

how might we do it most effectively, most efficiently, most creatively.

Now, social entrepreneurship has gotten a lot of play in recent years.

A number of people have focused on it.

There's a funding community now that's interested in providing

financial support for this field.

But let's take a couple of more definitions

as we get started in this area.

Social entrepreneurs, said Jeff Skoll the founder of eBay,

social entrepreneurs are the practical dreamers who have the talent, and

the skill and the vision to solve problems and to change the world.

Social entrepreneurs have a unique approach that is both evolutionary and

revolutionary, operating in free markets

where success is measured not just in financial profit but

also in the improvement of the quality of the people's lives.

That definition is important because it gets this double bottom line.

That there's both a mission dimension and

a market dimension in many social entrepreneurship initiatives.

Bill Gates has looked at this area and said, as I see it, there are two great

forces in human nature, self-interest and caring for others.

Capitalism harnesses self-interest in helpful sustainable ways but

only on behalf of those who can pay.

Philanthropy and government channel our caring to those who can't pay,

but the resources run out before the needs are met.

To provide for the poor, we need, he says,

a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way.

I like to call it creative capitalism.

That's Bill Gates' term for this domain.

Finally one more.

One of the leaders in this field is Mohammed Yunus the kind of progenitor of

the whole micro finance movement and of Gramin bank.

Yunus has look at it and

said nonprofits alone have proven to be an inadequate response to social problems.

Charity is a form of trickle down economics.

If the trickle stops, so does the help for the needy.

And in countries where the needs are greatest and the resources for

charity are usually very small.

The need to constantly raise funds from donors uses up the time and

energy of non-profit leaders.

Yunus says, we need to introduce another kind of business, social business.

So he's struggling with a concept that he wants to introduce

of social business that brings these two sectors together.

Whether you call it creative capitalism, social business, social entrepreneurship,

social innovation, we're talking about the same thing.

Creative public problem-solving that spans boundaries and

that breaks through existing ways of thinking.

So, let's tighten this up.

I have a way of thinking about social entrepreneurship that I'd like to

share with you.

And I basically put four constraints on this concept.

I say something is social entrepreneurship if it exhibits one,

the characteristic of innovation.

There has to be something new for it to be social entrepreneurship.

Second, it has to have financial sustainability.

The idea cannot be simply to write grants forever and

hope for the largess of others.

Inside the financial model of the enterprise there has to be the concept of

sustainability.

Revenues have to be generated somehow to make the engine fire and go on its own.

Third, all social entrepreneurs are creating social impact.

If there's not a public benefit that's a accrued from this work,

it's not social entrepreneurship.

There has to be social impact.

There has to be artifacts in the world of change.

Finally, social entrepreneurs are ambitious.

They are interested in scale.

For an idea to be really social entrepreneurship,

I think it has to exhibit the potential for scale and growth.

It can't just be a local, small solution.

Even though those can be very valuable, social entrepreneurs are aiming for

broader and more wide-spread change.

So if you take into consideration those four considerations and

the definitions we worked on just before,

you start to get the idea that social entrepreneurship is a fresh field.

It's cutting across business, non profit and government.

It's trying to find solutions in new ways.

And that people in this field are bold, risk takers and

fundamentally committed to innovation.

[MUSIC]

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