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Emerging Resources for Social Entrepreneurs: A Handy Guide

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Emerging Resources for Social Entrepreneurs: A Handy Guide

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The continued growth in social ventures and the challenges social entrepreneurs encounter when seeking funding have resulted in an increased number of resources available to provide assistance. A recent Huffington post article sizes the current social enterprise sector at employing over 10 million people, with revenues of $500 billion-roughly 3.5 percent of total U.S. GDP.

The subject interests me because I'm one of them, a social entrepreneur launching a tech startup called AMP-a collaborative bookmarking platform and resource marketplace for sustainability professionals. Our target audience includes students of sustainability, people working within established businesses to drive social and environmental progress, and those starting social ventures of their own. Having received my MBA from Presidio Graduate School, a program dedicated to sustainability, I speak from personal experience when saying this is currently a difficult space to navigate, in part due to its dynamic growth.

Yearly conferences like SOCAP, Investor's Circle, Net Impact, SXSW Eco, Bioneers, Sustainable Brands, Opportunity Green and ISSP create environments to learn, share and connect in-person with a select number of key players. But maintaining inspiration and translating information gathered into action can be a challenge.

Additional online resources to support social entrepreneurs exist at destinations like the Social Venture Network, setoolbelt, MosiacHUB, Echoing Green, Ashoka, Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, Social Edge, Stanford Center for Social Innovation and the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE).

But when a question arises, which destination do you choose, and for what?

Many social entrepreneurs are seeking more individualized support in the form of shared working spaces, incubators and/or accelerators that provide a mix of networking opportunities, events, funding, and mentorship in exchange for a monthly membership fee or equity stake in their company.

Founded in 2005, The HUB is now the largest and best-known social entrepreneur community offering shared office and event space, with over 30 locally owned HUBs now spanning the globe. For Elizabeth Stewart, co-founder of the newly opened HUB L.A., creating an urban space offering to house educational programming for the individuals and teams creating the sustainable, impact economy in L.A. seemed an obvious evolution given her background.

"I'm grateful for the opportunity to apply my experience in fostering community collaboration, social enterprise strategy, and urban development to create unique programming and start-up tools for our members, all of whom are accepted based on the action they are taking to make the world a better place," says Stewart.

For social entrepreneurs interested in a more structured experience that typically ends with pitching to a roomful of investors, the tech incubator/accelerator trend is slowly bleeding over into the social venture space with companies like Greenstart, Fledge, HUB Ventures and Green Business Basecamp, which will soon take its weekend bootcamp international. Not all companies coming out of these programs secure additional funding, however, and while open access networks like Angelist are great for increasing exposure, there's no guarantee of fund matching. B Revolution is trying to close this gap by creating an angel network of individuals interested in funding Benefit Corporations while consulting startups on how to register as a "B-Corp" and deliver convincing investor pitches. But how are the majority of social entrepreneurs now beginning to raise money? You guessed it: crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding democratizes the fundraising process and provides valuable market research, making it a go-to solution for social ventures seeking to build community and gain leverage needed to progress. Several platforms currently enable charitable donations with emerging platforms like Crowdfunder positioned to add debt and equity models of financing to their offering once the SEC finalizes rules associated with the JOBS Act. Empowering social entrepreneurs and small-to-medium sized businesses is a motivating factor for Chance Barnett, co-founder and CEO of Crowdfunder. Says Barnett, "Our platform allows business owners to tap into local community support and successfully scale growth and sustain operations, adding jobs and creating additional opportunities that wouldn't have otherwise existed."

Business plan competitions and contests offer another venue for social entrepreneurs seeking exposure, funding and support. Presidio Graduate School partners with Bainbridge Graduate Institute for the Madrona League competition, with others of note including the Hult Prize, the Global Social Venture Competition, Clean Tech Open, The Tech Awards and The Purpose Prize. But not everyone is a fan of this approach. Steve Blank-author, speaker and respected entrepreneur- criticizes business plan competitions for rewarding entrepreneur's ability to articulate known variables, instead of preparing them for the dynamic and iterative reality startups face.

Ryan Kushner and Ali Hart, co-founders of COZMOS-an early stage startup and portfolio company of the design-focused tech incubator Mix & Stir, would likely agree. When asked what's allowed them to continue moving their venture forward? Says Kushner, "Confidence, commitment, and working with our alpha clients to continue evolving our product to meet their needs." Sounds like someone's read The Lean Startup, yet one more resource worth checking out.

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Emerging Resources for Social Entrepreneurs: A Handy Guide

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The continued growth in social ventures and the challenges social entrepreneurs encounter when seeking funding have resulted in an increased number of resources available to provide assistance. A recent Huffington post article sizes the current social enterprise sector at employing over 10 million people, with revenues of $500 billion-roughly 3.5 percent of total U.S.

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Startup to Help Young People Crowdfund Their Careers

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Startup to Help Young People Crowdfund Their Careers

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Design Thinking: Interview with IDEO Founder David Kelley

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Design Thinking: Interview with IDEO Founder David Kelley

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The Timeless Strategic Value of Setting Unrealistic Goals

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The Timeless Strategic Value of Setting Unrealistic Goals

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In terms of people, processes and technologies, Toyota and Google's YouTube have little in common. As global innovators, however, they share a remarkable core value and best practice: they invest in the innovative capabilities of their suppliers. They don't just partner; they provide resources that add value.

USA Today ran an excellent - if over-flattering - profile of YouTube's splashy but serious effort to provide a high-tech incubator for content and channel creators. The Google unit calls its 41,000-square-foot state-of-the-digital-art playpen the Space. To start, a specially selected class of 25 artists - each with between 10,000 and 300,000 YouTube channel subscribers - was given the run of the Space.

"I just tell them, 'Please make something great,'" says Liam Collins, who oversees the Los Angeles facility, told the paper. "We provide the space, equipment and expertise. They provide the talent."

By sheer happenstance, I had just gotten a copy of Gemba Walks, a collection of essays by James Womack, a co-author of the automotive classic The Machine That Changed The World and a pioneering importer of Toyota-inspired lean production insights and methodologies to America. Because he and I have taught executive education classes together, I thought I should read his book.

The more deeply Jim's essays discussed the nature of supplier relationships, work-flow and value creation in lean enterprise, the keener the connection with YouTube's Space. While lean production has almost nothing to do with video production, the clear message was that genuinely lean enterprise craved innovation that made their suppliers more innovative. Toyota wasn't just looking for superior quality and just-in-time inventory management from suppliers, they were vested in helping suppliers become more innovative and creative. Toyota was prepared to educate and train its suppliers to embrace lean production and lean experimentation techniques and insights. (Toyota's successful relationship with high-tech sensor supplier Tamagawa Seiki beautifully illuminates that innovation investment theme.) Toyota was prepared to help its best suppliers scale.

That's exactly the investment YouTube is making: helping its suppliers creatively scale. Organizations don't - and shouldn't - accomplish that by dangling financial incentives and lures. These investments are more about the development of human capital than finance. Access to innovation resources and skills matter far more than money. I recently wrote an ebook asking Who Do You Want Your Customers To Become? The strategic/ cultural question here is "What kind of innovators do you want your suppliers to be?" The answers will determine if and how (much) you invest.

For a YouTube and a Toyota, it's blindingly clear and obvious what investing in a supplier's innovation capabilities can mean. What does it mean for your company and industry? What should it mean?

For one marketing services firm, it meant being exposed to their biggest client's development teams and sitting through technical tests and focus groups to better appreciate and understand how its products were actually designed and built. For stock exchange personnel, it meant sitting through demos and simulations from a high-frequency, algorithmic trading firm intent on communicating how technology could improve efficiencies and liquidity. For a materials company, it meant going out on maintenance calls with a huge public utility. In each case, the client was intent on giving its vendor access, software and/or other resources that put the vendor in a better position to come up with better innovations.

Obviously, innovation investments shouldn't make it easier for suppliers to compete with or disintermediate their customers. Building a supplier's innovation capability is not to undermine your own. The goal is creating healthier and more vibrant innovation eco-systems - ones where suppliers feel clients are genuinely interested in making them better and stronger.

Who knows if the Space will - God forbid! - facilitate the next Gangnam style video. Or whether Toyota's ongoing efforts to create more "environmentally correct" vehicles will lead to meaningful breakthroughs in fuel cells or "natural gas" powered cars. But there's no avoiding the cultural fact that these organizations are prepared to invest in making their suppliers more innovative. (Does Apple similarly invest in its suppliers? Half the people I know at that secretive innovation icon say, "Of course - but on our terms". And the rest won't talk....)

"Open architecture" and "open innovation" approaches are wonderful. But whether they offer the best possible investments you can - or should - be making in your suppliers is probably unclear. Reading the YouTube story and Jim's essays reinforces my belief that there's a very thin line between investing in "continuous improvement" and "continual innovation". Smart firms invest in both. Innovative firms innovatively invest in their suppliers.

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In terms of people, processes and technologies, Toyota and Google's YouTube have little in common. As global innovators, however, they share a remarkable core value and best practice: they invest in the innovative capabilities of their suppliers. They don't just partner; they provide resources that add value.

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http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/01/the_future_of_you.html

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http://blogs.hbr.org/johnson/2013/01/instead-of-making-resolutions.html

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As January approaches, and we bid another year adieu, our thoughts turn to making resolutions: this year I will lose that extra weight, drink less alcohol, give up sugar, get out of debt. All worthy goals, but why do we perennially return to resolutions that seem based on the idea of fixing all the things we're doing "wrong?"

You can't know what resolution you need until you know what your objective is. In photography, the resolution of the image is entirely dependent on the output you want. If you're looking at an image on your computer monitor, 72 dpi (dots per inch) is fine, but if you want to print that image, you'll need a much higher resolution, say 240 dpi. If you then want to make that image into a billboard, you actually need a relatively lower dpi, because the further away you are from it, the more your eyes will blend the colors for you (think of a Georges Seurat painting).

And that is why I believe we've got it backwards when it comes to making New Year's resolutions. Instead of starting January trying to "fix" all the wrongs, let's take some time to figure out what our objectives really are.

So, dream.

While resolutions are about "shoulds," dreaming is about hope - and who we may become. Dreaming is at the heart of disruption - it is only when we dream that we can hope to create something truly new, something that will overtake old habits, old customs, and old ways of thinking and being. And we all know by now that a disruptive path leads to a greater measure of success.

According to psychologist Timothy Pychyl (in his article " Teenagers, Identity Crises and Procrastination ") "until we have a vision of who we are and who we want to become, we can't accomplish much." Pychyl explains the interconnectedness between identity and agency as follows: "Identity is that knowledge of who we are. Agency is the belief that we are in control of our decisions and responsible for our outcomes. It means we make a difference; we make things happen, we act on the world. Thus, being an active agent depends on identity, or knowing who we are."

In other words, the more you know who you are, the less likely you are to procrastinate. And the more we dream ourselves into becoming who we want to be, the closer we'll come to accomplishing our resolutions.

If you've already made a few resolutions, these might provide some clues as to what your deeper dreams are. Especially if those resolutions were made while gazing fixedly into your personal Mirror of Erised - a mirror that, as Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling describes, "shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts." When Professor Dumbledore discovers Harry entranced, he explains why the mirror is so beguiling (and dangerous): "You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge nor truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible...."

I suspect that most of us have a desperate desire of our heart, something we may even deserve that we don't or can't have. When you take a moment to look at the "why" of a resolution, you may find the fierce desire that fuels it. Harry Potter, for example, can't have his parents, but he can be beloved. Inside of the something you can't have, there is often the makings of something you can achieve.

And what better time to be plumbing our deepest desires for dreams and planting the seeds of our personal disruption than the shortest days of the year. For "the shadow is the seat of creativity," wrote Carl Jung. After a few weeks, possibly even a month of inner reflection, the resolutions required to make your dream a reality will become evident. And rather than procrastinating, or worse, chucking your resolve after a few days or weeks, this year you may actually see your resolutions through. You may even discover that some of your pesky wrongs have inadvertently been righted.

So resolutionize away. But begin in February. During January, dream.

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As January approaches, and we bid another year adieu, our thoughts turn to making resolutions: this year I will lose that extra weight, drink less alcohol, give up sugar, get out of debt. All worthy goals, but why do we perennially return to resolutions that seem based on the idea of fixing all the things we're doing "wrong?"

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Daniel Goldstein: The battle between your present and future self

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Daniel Goldstein: The battle between your present and future self

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Daniel Goldstein: The battle between your present and future self

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Every day, we make decisions that have good or bad consequences for our future selves. (Can I skip flossing just this one time?) Daniel Goldstein makes tools that help us imagine ourselves over time, so that we make smart choices for Future Us.

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Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

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Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

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http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

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Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

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Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers -- and as a counterpoint Tivo, which (until a recent court victory that tripled its stock price) appeared to be struggling.

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The Timeless Strategic Value of Setting Unrealistic Goals

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The Timeless Strategic Value of Setting Unrealistic Goals

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http://blogs.hbr.org/govindarajan/2012/10/the-timeless-strategic-value-of-unrealistic-goals.html

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Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad's 1989 HBR article "Strategic Intent" brought about a discontinuous shift in my career - from a professor of accounting to a researcher on strategy and innovation. As an idea, strategic intent is about setting a bold and ambitious goal, out of all proportion to a firm's current resources and capabilities. Strategic intent takes the long view: the act of such intent is to operate from the future backward, disregarding the resource scarcity of the present.

In the early 1970s, for instance, an upstart company called Canon set out a bold intent: "Beat Xerox." Xerox at that time was the undisputed leader of the copier industry, leasing a wide range of copiers to corporate copy centers through a huge sales force. Canon standardized copy machines and components to reduce costs and sold its offerings through office-product dealers, appealing to people who wanted to own the machines outright. By developing very different capabilities than Xerox's, Canon created a new recipe for success, and in the process short-circuited Xerox's ability to retaliate quickly.

There are two views on strategy. The conventional view is that the firm should assess its resources and match resources with opportunities. If Canon had followed that advice in the early 1970s, it would have never taken on Xerox. Hamel and Prahalad have an entirely different point of view. According to them, the firm should expand its resource base to meet its ambition. This latter view has strongly influenced my work. I did my chartered accountancy degree in India (the equivalent of a CPA), got my doctorate in accounting at HBS, and was teaching financial and managerial accounting at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business when I read the "Strategic Intent" article. In accounting, we always argued that "realistic" goals are the best, since they are achievable and as such are better motivators. I've even contributed to this literature on goal setting. But according to Prahalad and Hamel, firms should set unrealistic goals, not realistic goals.

At first, I found their view completely counterintuitive. But the more I reflected on the article, the more it made sense. Realistic goals promote incremental moves; only unrealistic goals provoke breakthrough thinking.

Take, for instance, JFK's audacious goal in the early 1960s when the U.S. fell behind the Soviet Union in the technology race: "this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." Why does a statement like this produce breakthrough innovation? Performance is a function of expectations, since we rarely exceed our expectations or outperform our ambition. As humans, we are drawn to a bold, challenging, and unrealistic goal. Deep inside, we feel uplifted by the thought of climbing a mountain in a way we are not by the idea of scaling a molehill. JFK's intent produced many breakthrough technologies.

In a similar way, "Strategic Intent" inspired me to think about mountains and not molehills as I shaped my research agenda around breakthrough innovation. One result was my 2010 HBR blog (with Christian Sarkar) on The $300 House - a vision highly consistent with the theory of strategic intent.

As rare as it may be to find examples of strategic intent in business, history is replete with examples of greatness sowed by families. Without resources or sophisticated planning systems, families routinely focus their long-term intent on their children, even when they can ill afford even the basic necessities, and so are able to nurture greatness. Many of these children become CEOs, but the same people sometimes blame the need to deliver short-term results for their inability to think in the longer term. They have forgotten that their parents had to deliver the immediate present (pay monthly bills, take care of groceries, meet mortgage payments, and so on) and still managed to imagine the future (dream to send John or Kate to Harvard one day).

This is the time for leaders to step up their game - in business, in politics, and in the social sector. Leadership is tested during adversity. Post the 2008 financial crisis, the world has been reset.Today's leadership challenge is about new growth norms in a slow growth world. More than ever, we need to set audacious goals during these austere times. Strategic intent is more critical today than when the article originally appeared.

Harvard Business Review stands for "ideas with impact." Newspapers like The New York Times and magazines like Fortune publish current news, while HBR articles speak not to the fads and the flavors of the month but to insights that have enduring value. "Strategic Intent" is a classic example of the best of HBR. It's an evergreen idea. It was valid in the past. It is valid today. And it will be valid in the future.
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HBR's 90th Anniversary: Why Management Matters

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The Timeless Strategic Value of Unrealistic Goals

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Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad's 1989 HBR article "Strategic Intent" brought about a discontinuous shift in my career - from a professor of accounting to a researcher on strategy and innovation. As an idea, strategic intent is about setting a bold and ambitious goal, out of all proportion to a firm's current resources and capabilities.

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Adam Savage: How Simple Ideas Lead to Scientific Discoveries

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Adam Savage: How Simple Ideas Lead to Scientific Discoveries

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How simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries

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Adam Savage walks through two spectacular examples of profound scientific discoveries that came from simple, creative methods anyone could have followed -- Eratosthenes' calculation of the Earth's circumference around 200 BC and Hippolyte Fizeau's measurement of the speed of light in 1849.

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It spreads ideas through the video mini-lectures of some of the world’s brightest and most inspiring people. From the initial scope of technology, environment and design (T.E.D.), it now includes business, science and global issues.

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A collection of TED Talks (and more) on the topic of Social change.

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It offers ideas and solutions to attain social change. Its articles inspire and challenge what is possible in doing good business, global issues, and government to non-profits, philanthropy and social entrepreneurship.

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Stanford Social Innovation Review: Informing and Inspiring Leaders of Social Change

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After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the "energy rebels" of Schönau, Germany, launched a grassroots revolution in the Black Forest to take control of their community's power. Their creation, EWS, not only triggered the country's transition to renewable energy but also demonstrated the need for grassroots democratic control of energy production.

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McKinsey on Society features the collective insights of the world’s best management consulting firm on the challenges in society. Its articles offer topnotch insights on global health, economic development, education, social innovation and sustainability.

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Read our latest research, articles, and reports on Social Sector.