social entrepreneurship

SocialEdge kicked off a new discussion yesterday, led by Ashoka's own Rosa Wang.  Continuing on the heels of Tech4Society earlier this month, here's where the discussion starts:

"Technology & Social Innovations

Developing technologies that solve the right problems can be enormously challenging, and then bringing them to the people who need them even more so. Social entrepreneurs from around the world met in Hyderabad earlier this month to share what they have learned about the challenges and successes of technological innovation to serve the poor. Let’s take this further in our discussion here."

Rosa shares a bit about the attendees, connections, learning and conversations what went on at Hyderabad, and opens the same questions to the rest of us:

For all you social innovators in tech and beyond, here's a site with a pretty solid collection of links to resources for social entrepreneurs—tool kits and guides, tools for best uses of online media and others, crowdfunding links, books, and articles.

Essential tools to start a social enterprise >>

Thank you to Martin Montero for taking the time and effort to collect them all.  View his full blog for a few more posts on the subject on social enterprise.

If you are a regular reader, you know by now about the Tech4Society event Ashoka is hosting with the Lemelson Foundation in Hyderabad in February. Though I won’t be there, I am excited for our team putting on the event and am anxiously looking forward to the commentary and insights we’ll gain from the gathering.

Over the past few years I have been somewhat frustrated by health/development/technology conferences that seem to focus on the same groups of stakeholders: international donors, foundations, large government agencies, etc. I’ve often been left wanting more: more presentations, access, opinions, and insights from the entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs on the ground, and end users or beneficiaries of the program. The fact that all 100 of the Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows will be at the Hyderabad event, plus corporations, international organizations, etc. excites me beyond belief!

Image source: All Day Buffet

In this post from All Day Buffet, Jerri Chou tells us why she thinks social entrepreneurs will turn the tables on business and take the lead—and perhaps they already have.  It turns out she's in good company—it's an observation and opinion shared by more and more people, and an exciting thing to watch such a good thing as social entrepreneurship increase in influence in business and all over the world.

Funny coincidence: I just saw that Ashoka's own fearless leader, CEO and Chair, Bill Drayton, said something to the same effect as I read the minutes of the last executive team meeting.  (I have the feeling he's known this for a while, though...)

This post contributed by Mindy Zhang.

Last month, I met Jack Sim, Singaporean social entrepreneur and Ashoka Fellow. His organization, the World Toilet Organization, promotes basic sanitation in developing countries through market-based solutions. According to Jack, one of the major barriers to improving sanitation is consumer perception. Base-of-pyramid consumers simply don’t see toilets as valuable additions to their lives – and therefore don’t bother to invest in them, even when they have enough money to spend. “This is very clear when they have radios, TVs, handphones – and no toilets.”

How did the WTO overcome this challenge? A mix of great product design and sharp business acumen, Jack said. He talked about three pieces of the sanitation puzzle:

Bill Drayton speaks with Reporters Uncensored about social entrepreneurship, business-social hybrid value chains, and promoting youth entrepreneurship.

This post contributed by Paula Cardenau.

One of the themes that we discussed at the beginning of the Sao Paolo gathering (after we dried off the Sao Paolo rain, which took us by surprise on the way and drenched us, literally, and which allowed us to skip the ice-breaking  dynamic) was the main barriers that impede social technologies in reaching the people for whom they were invented. Social technologies are products and services that seek to improve the quality of life of the people who today are exclused from the system because of their economic situation, location, culture, physical disability, etc. All of the 23 social entrepreneurs gathered that first day are developing and/or distributing a product or service of that type, and reflecting with what type of barriers they face at the hour in which they intend to reach the intended audience at a mass level.

We've all heard how solar energy is not very cost effective, and perhaps this belief is what keeps us from implementing it more often--even in developed countries. Well what if I tell you that someone was able to prove that solar energy can be cheap, and while selling to the poor he even made a self-sustainable organization?

Meet Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Harish Hande. Perhaps you heard him at this week's Clinton Global Initiative where he talked about his perspective on the need to drive innovation from the bottom of the pyramid. 

A few moments ago at the CGI panel on "Infrastructure and Human Dignity" Ashoka Fellow Ingrid Munro was talking about the difference between simple charity and enabling someone to increase their sense of dignity.

Ingrid's organization, Jamii Bora, provides credit to the most marginalized populations in Kenya and she was saying: "when a former prostitute or thief say, 'look at me, I am now a tailor, I now have a small business, I now have four employees' that is dignity".  And so she made the point that to provide someone with dignity is to provide them with the opportunity to build something for themselves by themselves, to be enterprising.

Similarly, in a parallel panel on "Infrastructure of Place", Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Albina Ruiz was asked by the panelist if it was controversial that she enabled waste pickers to continue in that line of work. (Waste pickers make a living by sifting through trash and are usually seen as a problem by society and governments).

Instead, Albina said that city government should see waste pickers as a solution to waste management : "[waste pickers] are entrepreneurs, they are not sticking their hands out saying 'please help me,' so we're giving them credit".  

Read more about Ingrid Munro; about Albina Ruiz.