Social Entrepreneurship

For three months, I and about twenty fellow MBAs participated in an experimental seminar offered by the business school in conjunction with Silicon Valley's Tech Museum of Innovation (link). We were enlisted to apply our business knowledge for a select group of "social benefit enterprises", all of whom were chosen for the Tech's annual laureate award. "Social benefit enterprises" are a new breed of nonprofits, often aimed at the developing world, that rely on innovation and employ modern business techniques to achieve (1) self-sustainability through some profit-making activity and ultimately, (2) scalability to reach the most number of people with a nominal level of resources. It is revolutionary because of the importance placed on innovation both technological and process-based and on profits for the long-term mission of the organization. The field of social benefit enterprises or "social entrepreneurship" is cutting edge and is just now gaining traction. The b-school at Stanford is a pioneer in the field (link), as are a number of its alums including Jeff Skoll, one of the founders of eBay and now an active contributor to social benefit enterprises through his foundation (link). There is a very strong link between the Valley and the small community that is developing around the field. One reason is that they are oftentimes one and the same group. The more enlightened members of the generation that came into the Valley during the tech boom and became instantly wealthy are now searching for ways to use their money and their knowledge to make a difference in the world. But rather than revert to old-school "contributions", this new generation of donors is demanding results and greater accountability and have transferred their culture of venture capitalism and startups to the stodgy world of nonprofits introducing their standard toolkit of business plans, metrics, return on investment, strategic partnerships, and exit strategies. Our instructor for the course, Eric Carlson, is a prime example of this nexus. Besides being the longtime mayor of Los Gatos, a wealthy enclave in the Valley, he is very well-connected in the Valley having managed and led several established tech firms including a long stint at IBM Research; he, like a number of his peers, is now employing his expertise for the good of society through social entrepreneurship. One of his friends, Walt Jones, dropped by during the final week and advised us on fundraising. In his previous career, Dr. Jones helped found and lead GE's medical devices division for a number of years and was one of the highest ranking executives at GE by the time he retired. As a volunteer, he now heads fundraising for CityTeam Ministries (link), an organization that cares for the poor and homeless in major cities in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. Commendable and inspirational. It was a real pleasure getting to know both Dr. Carlson and for a brief moment, Dr. Jones. They helped me focus on the task at hand. My particular contribution to the seminar was to evaluate the business plan and funding proposal for Gram Vikas based in Orissa, India (link). For the past decade, Gram Vikas has been providing housing, clean water, and sanitation for hundreds of thousands of rural villagers in one of India's poorest regions. They are now launching a second initiative that seeks to reach a quarter of a million by 2009. Hope they get something out of my forty page report and presentation. I revamped their business plan and recommended some concrete steps they could take as an organization to ramp up their funding. During the course of the seminar, we learned quite a bit about some other notable social benefit enterprises including Ecosystems based in Kathmandu, Nepal (link) and Freeplay based in London and Capetown, South Africa (link). The former constructs wire bridges for peasants traveling between remote villages in the Himalayan mountains, and the latter distributes hand-crank powered radios to the poor children of southern Africa for receiving broadcasts of vital education and health-based programming. It would have been ideal to have included two organizations of personal interest, Unitus (link) and Greenstar (link), both based in Seattle. Unitus is involved in a promising subfield of social entrepreneurship called microfinance, essentially lending to the underserved in developing countries to promote private enterprise and self-empowerment. The high repayment and low default rates are quite amazing when you consider how poor and impoverished the loan recipients are in the urban slums or rural villages of the third world. Many get by on what is the equivalent of a few dollars a month. But the dignity that microlending instills in them produces the desire to make something of the loan and motivates them to stick to the repayment schedule. Amazing. Anyhow, I just heard that PBS will be airing later this month a special four-part series, The New Heroes, hosted by Robert Redford which introduces the field of social entrepreneurship to a larger audience by profiling the work of fourteen influential social innovators (link). Very sweet. And what timing. I'm looking forward to watching all four segments.

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