A quick note on strategic partnerships for distributing social technology

On the first day of the Sao Paolo event, which gathered 23 social entrepreneurs and investors, we focused on Social Technologies and the barriers to distributing them (if you are interested, you can read this post which summarizes what the group discussed and this article by Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow's Gustavo Gennuso on his perspective on why technologies don't reach end users).

We also addressed the question of how Fellows dealt with parnterships and distribution strategies to reach beneficiaries at a massive scale. For instance many of the Fellows worked with their governments to reach a large number of people quickly, but as Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Carlos Simão pointed out, re-negotiating the partnership when the political party in government changes is challenging so it may not be the best strategy for a long-term plan.

Another parnership strategy for achieving scale is partnering with other organizations who can act as distributors for your tech products to reach larger geographic areas. Gustavo Gennuso pointed out that when sales and distribution of the social technology was a priority, picking partners who share the same mission was important. If not, you may get stuck in all the enthusiasm and having a lot of conversations but you will end up selling a small quantity of the product. He says, "even though organizations are enthusiastic at first with the water pumps because they believe it is a great solution for the communities they work with, [if they are not prioritizing water] they will buy just a few."

Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Howard Weinstein reflected on how he selects the organizations who are going to replicate his model -- from production to distribution -- based on a 4 M selection criteria: mind, motivation, management and money. On the other hand, Gustavo added, having partners that do not necessarily have the same mission has been invaluable for ETV (his organization) to connect key people in the field: organizations are also door openers.