Renjie Butalid

This is certainly one of the best definitions of entrepreneurship as well as social entrepreneurship that I have come across, clearly making a distinction between the two terms:

In its true essence, entrepreneurship is all about innovation and impact. Entrepreneurs are often highly-driven individuals who have a deep passion to realize their ideas and solutions. They are very effective at recognizing opportunities, mobilizing resources, managing risks, crafting compelling strategies, and building strong business models. The word ‘social’, placed before ‘entrepreneur’, merely denotes a shift in mission from traditional business entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurs, in contrast, aim to create social impact innovatively while staying afloat in the marketplace.

This definition comes courtesy of the Youth Social Enterprise Initiative, that has created a guidebook (available for download below), to inspire young people to adopt creative ways of thinking in the face of global challenges.

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Yvonne Roberts from the Young Foundation in the UK, does a great job of documenting Social Innovation as the new global obsession, highlighting examples of social innovation across the world, including Inspire, a web-based organization in Australia designed by and for young people with mental health problems; as well as citing governments, namely the UK, Singapore, Denmark and China, who are currently making generous investments in social innovation.

I would also add Canada to that list, thanks in large part to the  J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, currently the main proponents of Social Innovation Generation. The main purpose of SiG, specifically SiG@Waterloo, is to generate new knowledge on social innovation, what ‘change’ is within society, how it happens, when it happens, why it happens and who is involved in the process. If case studies are documented that answer some of the questions posed above, trends from this information could prove useful to other people trying to achieve similar measures of change within their communities and societies.

What is clear from Yvonne’s article however, is that we are still learning more about social innovation, maybe this is where the ‘innovation’ part comes in:  where invention is the creation of an idea, innovation is its development, implementation and scaling up. The word development indicates an ongoing process that will include a lot of learning, doing, evaluating and changing the way we do things. In essence, I would agree with Yvonne’s statement and her definition of social innovation as finding new ways to satisfy unmet social needs and asking the very important question of:

How do we generate social change from the bottom up, releasing the capacity in people to find fresh solutions?

in reference to certain problems that are proving intractable such as climate change; an ageing population; long-term chronic diseases and economic inequality.

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ChangeFusion is yet another brilliant example of a social enterprise that aims to provide:

… social innovation design, investment and incubation services with a specific focus on catalyzing high-impact, scalable and sustainable social innovation through fostering uniquely robust innovation networks of idea leaders, implementing partners and financial resources.

As a social enterprise based in Thailand, they have been quite remarkable and have achieved a great measure of success, raising close to $4 million USD in funding for their 20 start up enterprises and 5 social innovation projects, ever since their inception in 2001.

Their business model is also worth noting, as it combines a number of different elements that you would typically see in the business world, but adopted in a social entrepreneurship/social investment context: ideas presented to investors, who would then have a hand in supporting the development of the idea, and establishing metrics as well as on-going support system in order to fully realize and harness its growth potential.

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If you are concerned about climate change, passionate about taking action, want to share information and resources as well as find out what other people are doing, then check out Celsias. A major challenge to combating climate change is in changing the way people perceive the issue on an individual level (I used to think climate change was a problem, yes, but not MY problem) as well as the potential solutions that each of us can work on at the individual level.

Something as simple as turning of all the lights when you walk out of a room, may have a very minute impact at the individual level, but aggregated over a population of several million people, the impact will certainly add up. Celsias adopts the Web 2.0 model of social networking, empowering people with the tools and the resources to connect with each other, share information easily as well as hold each other accountable, all on an easy-to-use online platform.

Tools Celsias is all about doing something practical to reduce climate change.

On Celsias, you can:

• Read Articles by internationally recognised writers
• Join a friendly conversation in the Celsias Lounge
• Ask questions or provide answers in the Q&A Hall
• Review and commit to Actions that will reduce your carbon footprint
• Create, follow, join and rate climate change Projects
• Build a network of friends
• Become recognised as an expert
• Win monthly prizes in our Competitions

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Social entrepreneurs and innovators are people who are passionate about social change. As Ashoka defines it:

Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change. Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business sectors, social entrepreneurs find what is not working and solve the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution, and persuading entire societies to take new leaps.

In other words, the art of influence and persuasion comes into very good use for the aspiring social entrepreneur or innovator, as working with people to change thinking and actions is one way of creating change within the system. A great reference that I have come across is the website, ChangingMinds.org, and as Guy Kawasaki put its, ChangingMinds.org is like Robert Cialdini... on steroids.

And for those of you who are unfamiliar with Cialdini, I would highly recommend Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (probably his most famous book), as well as his latest book, Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive, of which he is a co-author. Guy Kawasaki also does a fantastic job of reviewing the latter here.

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