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Carole Carlson uses a variety of real-world examples, cases, and profiles to illustrate how entrepreneurs around the world are changing their communities.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 7, 2024

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This video video is a presentation discussing social entrepreneurship, its significance, and the motivations behind writing a practical textbook on the subject. The speaker, who has taught social entrepreneurship for nearly two decades, highlights that while there are many inspirational books on the topic, there was a lack of practical resources outlining the necessary steps for aspiring social entrepreneurs.

Key points covered in the presentation include:

1. **Definition and Scope**: Social entrepreneurship combines social impact (addressing societal issues) with entrepreneurial innovation. It spans diverse fields including finance, healthcare, and environmental sustainability.

2. **Social Entrepreneurship Goals**: The discussion emphasizes the importance of addressing global issues like poverty, health, education, and gender equity, aligning with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

3. **Entrepreneurial Process**: This video video outlines the steps to starting a social venture, including ideation, stakeholder engagement, financing, and market strategies, drawing parallels to traditional entrepreneurship.

4. **Case Studies**: The speaker shares various success stories from social entrepreneurship, including ventures in New Zealand focused on environmental challenges, as well as a successful initiative in Kenya (Sanergy) that improved sanitation while producing fertilizers from waste.

5. **Skills and Stakeholders**: The importance of understanding stakeholder dynamics and financing is highlighted. Aspiring social entrepreneurs must develop a complex stakeholder map and be adept in financial management and operational planning.

6. **Illustrative Examples**: The presentation includes specific examples of social enterprises that address environmental issues and public health, demonstrating how these ventures can be both impactful and profitable.

Overall, the speaker aims to equip prospective social entrepreneurs with practical knowledge, skills, and case studies to inspire and guide them in their ventures.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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First, I'm delighted to have a chance to talk about one

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of my favorite topics, which is social entrepreneurship.

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And, I think one

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of the things you might be interested in knowing about is

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why I chose to write a book on

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social entrepreneurship and innovation.

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And I'll tell you that the thing that motivated me,

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having taught social entrepreneurship

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and innovation for almost two decades was

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that there were a lot of good storybooks out there,

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but there wasn't a good practical book which laid out the

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steps that a prospective entrepreneur would wanna know

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as they were thinking of becoming a social entrepreneur.

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And so the motivation of a book, which is a textbook,

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but actually remarkably, has seemed to make a transition

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to the practitioner market, is about step

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by step conveying all the information

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that somebody would need to have thought through in order

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to be an effective social entrepreneur.

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So that's the, the first thing that I would,

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add as context.

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I, I will tell you that it's been very well received by

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undergraduates, graduates,

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executive education participants,

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and then by the field as a whole.

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I, I think because it was filling a market gap

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around this practical knowledge, the,

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the reason the practical knowledge is important is

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because I think that social entrepreneurship is a phrase

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that gets thrown around a lot without a particularly

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precise definition.

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And so people think of it as a very different thing.

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And depending on the context in which it's described,

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it's sort of a little bit of a platitude, if you will.

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So, to tell you what I think about,

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when I think about social entrepreneurship,

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there's a few things that are essential.

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One is the social part of social entrepreneurship.

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And what that means is a series

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of activities which is designed to achieve

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a positive societal objective.

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It's pretty simple, it's pretty straightforward.

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But those activities can be varied, very varied, very,

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diverse in their activities.

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First, they can happen all over the

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world, which is important.

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But secondly, those activities can happen in finance field,

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in healthcare and medicine, in environmental, work,

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sometimes in government.

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So the, the scope for where

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social impact happens is very, very broad.

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The second component of it that I think is important

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to think about is entrepreneurship.

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And entrepreneurship isn't necessarily

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starting a small business.

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It's not necessarily business building of

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that, that can be a component.

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Entrepreneurship is the idea of an individual

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who sees a problem and very much wants to solve that problem

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using a series of solutions which are innovative

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and which take advantage of an understanding of the market

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and need needs of constituents.

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And so when you put those two things together,

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entrepreneurship and social impact,

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you have social entrepreneurship, there's a lot of things

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that don't fall into that category.

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Policy, government programs, development programs,

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and traditional business, which has some side effects

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of having positive social outcomes.

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The important thing here is an intent around social impact

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and the use of entrepreneurial skills.

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And there's a lot of social problems out there.

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And not all of them can be solved

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through entrepreneurial solutions.

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A lot of them should be solved by government action,

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for example, or by the private sector and private business.

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So let's be clear that entrepreneurship,

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social entrepreneurship has a role, but not a global

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or exclusive role in solving social problems.

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With that as a backdrop, I like to think

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of the US sustainable development goals.

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And you probably know what those are, but just in case,

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or the UN's sustainable development goals, what

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that is is a series of 17 interlocking goals

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that were initially proposed by the un,

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which are essentially grand goals for society.

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And those cover the GA from reduction of poverty

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to sanitation, to clean water, life below,

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water, human rights.

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There's a whole series of goals.

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And as a global society,

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we've actually made significant progress since those goals

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were introduced a little more than a decade ago.

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So that's very good framing.

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I think there's a lot of other grand challenge type goals,

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but I think that's a very good framing

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for thinking about social impact.

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The places entrepreneurship tends to impact is

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around a subset of the goals.

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So it could show up really in any of those 17 goals,

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but when social entrepreneurs have been pulled around,

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which goals are the primary goals they're trying to achieve,

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over half of them mentioned some very specific goals.

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And those goals are, goal number one in the list.

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Uh, it's called number one

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'cause it's first in the block, and that's no poverty.

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And so there's a very strong orientation of social

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entrepreneurship to poverty reduction.

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And we see that through job, job creation, fair wages,

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the creation of economic opportunity, sometimes the creation

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of banking and credit opportunities.

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And so no poverty is the first goal,

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and around half

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of all social entrepreneurs are targeting the goal.

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The second goal is good health and wellbeing.

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And that has to do with, water sanitation,

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the ability of food access to, access to healthcare.

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And again, about 50% of the, the numbers add

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to more than a hundred percent

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because entrepreneurs target multiple goals.

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But among the Ashoka entrepreneurs who are asked,

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where do your targets lie?

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About half said, good health and wellbeing was there.

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The third very large goal,

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and it's about half of all social entrepreneurs are focusing

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on quality education.

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That education takes a lot of different forms in a lot

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of different countries, but the emphasis is providing

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educational opportunities to people,

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which unsurprisingly also helps to reduce poverty.

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And then the next one, again,

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about half of all entrepreneurs

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Are focused on this interlocked with, for example,

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no poverty and with education is gender equity.

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And so gender equality is something that's often faced

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or focused on by social entrepreneurs.

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And in fact, not in every market,

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but in most places in the world, according to research

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that's been done, there is a very strong,

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tendency towards women starting entrepreneurial ventures,

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which have a social impact.

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So many of the social entrepreneurs are women,

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various country to country, but it's an important

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and underlying trend.

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Uh, the other goals that are, that are often supported

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by social entrepreneurship, there's two more on the list.

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Goal eight, which is decent work

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and economic growth, unsurprisingly,

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highly correlated to no poverty.

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And then the last one is both hand reduced inequities,

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and you can see the connections

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with the other goals as well.

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Those types of outcomes can take place in multiple fields.

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So for example, right now I'm doing a lot

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of work studying the social impact of tourism,

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and it impacts, decent jobs,

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global health education and myriad of other goals.

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Part of, my research was inspired by my students really.

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And so, what I learned about

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what students would wanna know about social entrepreneurship

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came out of my classes and came out with questions.

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So that was a starting point.

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With that being said,

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there's a pretty straightforward framework

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around the things you need to do to start a social venture,

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starting with ideation, stakeholder assembly, financing,

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developing operating plans, developing marketing plans,

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and going to market similar to

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what you would see in any entrepreneurial venture.

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And so the research was framed around those tasks

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or those, things that you would need

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to accomplish in order

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to create a social entrepreneurial venture.

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The research itself drew on research that's been doing, done

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by academics around the world on

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where social entrepreneurship takes place

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and what have been, what has been successful.

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But the thing I really love, in addition

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to a statistical basis for the research, is field work.

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And so I had the opportunity in writing the book to interact

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with, individuals from all over the world in

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the Middle East in Europe.

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Um, I did a field trip to New Zealand

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to look at impact investing in New Zealand

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and my ability to go out

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and both understand what was happening in those places,

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but also about cases about the entrepreneurs

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and what their activities were really became the foundation

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of the work that I did.

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Uh, along with, I credit where creditors do

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contributions from colleagues

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who are experts in each of those areas.

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So for example, finance

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and marketing are areas

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where I heavily drew from the work my colleagues have done.

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I'm going to give you, a few examples if you don't mind,

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because, and there's thousands to choose from.

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But there, there is something I've actually been writing

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about right now because I'm finishing up a case series.

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So I I will give you an example of, and,

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and by the way, there's a couple of things

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that are underlying this that I think

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are very important to know.

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One is that the cost of starting a venture, any kind

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of venture, but this includes mission driven ventures

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globally, has dramatically declined in the last 30 years.

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And so it's much more possible to be an entrepreneur today,

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anywhere in the world than it was

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to be an entrepreneur 30 years ago.

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What you need in order to do that is much smaller.

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There's a bunch of reasons having to do

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with technology and global markets.

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And so that's one of the driving factors.

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Another important driving factor is that the line

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between for-profit

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and non-profit organiz, while not, while still important,

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has, has been blurred and sometimes significantly blurred.

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And so you have nonprofit organizations having operating

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as social enterprises.

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A great example of that is brac, the brand Bangladesh,

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that the, the the organization in Bangladesh

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that does incredible on anti-poverty work through a,

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series of, of ventures, all of which are profitable

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and most of which are profitable.

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That's a great example you have for-profit organizations

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with a strong social mission to what they're doing.

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And so the distinction between profit

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and north non-profit,

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I think is actually a little bit artificial.

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So with that as a backdrop,

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let's think about some successful entrepreneurial ventures.

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And I've been thinking about New Zealand recently,

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and so I'm gonna give you three examples, maybe four.

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Uh, one is one that I wrote about in my book,

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very interesting story.

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There's a gentleman who lives on the

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south island in New Zealand.

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If you haven't been to the south island in New Zealand,

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there's many more sheep than people.

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It's not particularly populated,

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but they do have a very significant environmental problem.

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And the environmental problem are

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what are called wilding pines.

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It's an invasive species that was brought in, at,

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in the, early 19 hundreds, late 18 hundreds

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to create fire blocks and create a source of timber,

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but it's actually pushing out the indigenous,

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indigenous species, the indigenous flora in the area.

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And so that's a big problem.

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And anywhere you go, you see these pine tree covered hills,

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but that's actually, to the detriment

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of the natural environment on

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the south island of New Zealand.

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This guy, Michael Sly, cared about that issue.

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And so he, he started pulling up these pine trees,

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but one person can't pull up millions of pine trees.

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And so he created something which was a venture which would

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commercialize the reduction

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or commercialize the reduction of pine trees.

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And so he started pulling up these pine trees,

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grinding them up and turning them into an essential oil,

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which smells wonderful.

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It's a pine scented oil

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and started selling those pine scented oil,

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small vials at farmer's markets.

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That's not enough to make an impact.

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That's a cottage industry, cottage business.

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But in Michael's case,

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he ended up at a perfume convention in New York, sat next

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to somebody who was the sourcer for a large manufacturer,

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described what he was doing.

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That person became very interested

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and ordered hundreds of barrels of pino at once.

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So suddenly something that had become a very small venture

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with a very small intent became a big venture

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making a really big impact.

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So that's one example of a,

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pretty amazing entrepreneurial venture.

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Another one that I've been thinking about recently,

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it's called Critical and, and it's, it's in New Zealand.

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New Zealand has a problem as do many places in the world

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around pollution and particularly hard to recycle plastic.

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Uh, the people who run critical invented a technology

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or create or developed a technology

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and then patented it, to create architectural panels,

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the kind of thing you might use for a countertop

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or a, divider in a room out of this plastic.

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And then by selling it had a way to recycle plastic as well

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as a way to have people be more aware

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of their use of materials.

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That's a commercially viable business.

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They're making money, they have venture investment,

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they have a plan to grow,

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and they have a plan to, expand

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to markets which have even bigger environmental problems

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than New Zealand does.

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But they're doing it all

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through having a profitable business

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around recycling plastic into a value added product.

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Those are a couple examples of entrepreneurial ventures,

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which are making a difference, but

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because they're profitable entrepreneurial ventures,

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they also have the opportunity to scale.

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And that's important because that is the, one thing

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that stops a lot

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of social good manufacturing from happening.

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See, in my book, I have a series of exercises for students

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to go through either individually

13:33.195 --> 13:35.075
or in teams to do just that.

13:35.855 --> 13:38.595
And I think a starting point is understanding their north

13:38.665 --> 13:40.715
star and the area in which they wanna make a difference.

13:40.855 --> 13:43.955
If you don't have a path to that, then it's,

13:44.615 --> 13:46.075
you don't get very concentrated

13:46.135 --> 13:47.555
or effective in the work you're doing.

13:48.225 --> 13:49.755
Once that happens, once you know

13:49.755 --> 13:53.595
what problem you wanna solve, be it anti-poverty, health,

13:54.085 --> 13:57.875
clean water, then doing some ideation,

13:57.885 --> 14:01.755
doing some discovery around what kind of venture, what kind

14:01.755 --> 14:03.075
of venture be it for-profit

14:03.095 --> 14:04.475
or non-profit might support,

14:04.475 --> 14:06.475
that is a really great thing to do.

14:06.535 --> 14:07.875
And so one of the skill sets

14:08.025 --> 14:12.315
that prospective entrepreneurs need to have is an ideation,

14:12.695 --> 14:15.635
ability and ability to sit down sometimes with a group

14:15.895 --> 14:18.075
and think about what are some solutions to these problems

14:18.075 --> 14:19.675
and what's creative and what's innovative

14:19.735 --> 14:22.875
and what might be different in a way that's value added.

14:24.155 --> 14:26.715
A third thing that I think is really important

14:26.855 --> 14:28.115
for individuals

14:28.135 --> 14:30.715
to realize when they wanna become social entrepreneurs is

14:30.715 --> 14:33.115
it's the stakeholder map is really complicated.

14:33.465 --> 14:35.835
It's actually way more complicated than the stakeholder

14:35.835 --> 14:38.915
stakeholder map for traditional, for-profit businesses.

14:39.375 --> 14:42.595
And so figuring out how to understand stakeholders,

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diagnose stakeholder interests

14:44.755 --> 14:46.315
and work effectively with stakeholders

14:46.895 --> 14:47.915
is an important skill.

14:48.935 --> 14:50.155
You can't get away from money.

14:50.495 --> 14:52.525
And so, social entrepreneurs,

14:52.915 --> 14:55.685
just like any entrepreneurs need to be able to think about,

14:56.225 --> 14:57.405
think very carefully

14:57.405 --> 14:59.285
and critically around how they're gonna finance their

14:59.285 --> 15:02.125
ventures and how to make those ventures have,

15:02.315 --> 15:03.925
good financial characteristics.

15:03.955 --> 15:06.805
They can continue to grow. The list goes on.

15:07.185 --> 15:09.445
Um, the other things that are important in terms

15:09.445 --> 15:12.365
of the skillset are having a good operating plan.

15:12.625 --> 15:15.285
So if you're running a manufacturing business, you have

15:15.285 --> 15:17.925
to understand manufacturing like critical does

15:18.105 --> 15:20.485
or like the other example that I gave you, welding

15:20.485 --> 15:22.085
and company, the perfume company does.

15:22.545 --> 15:26.325
If you are running a, pretty much any type

15:26.325 --> 15:29.925
of business which moves into, into markets

15:30.025 --> 15:32.285
and has to engage consumers, you need to be able

15:32.285 --> 15:33.925
to understand some things about marketing,

15:33.925 --> 15:35.645
particularly marketing social ventures.

15:36.185 --> 15:39.925
So those are all fundamental skills, some of which have more

15:39.925 --> 15:42.365
of a social impact orientation, all

15:42.365 --> 15:45.525
of which have a venture orientation, if you will.

15:46.325 --> 15:48.015
There's another story I'd like to tell you.

15:48.395 --> 15:50.855
Um, this story is an amazing one.

15:51.035 --> 15:53.495
Um, it's one that I love to have a chance

15:53.495 --> 15:54.495
to talk about in class

15:54.555 --> 15:55.655
and that I wrote a case on,

15:55.655 --> 15:57.375
it's an organization called sanergy

15:57.875 --> 16:01.215
and the founders of SAN with three people, young people,

16:01.215 --> 16:04.855
college students, in the Poverty lab, which is a course

16:05.555 --> 16:07.495
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

16:08.315 --> 16:11.235
And their, innovation,

16:11.285 --> 16:15.155
their idea was we could actually dramatically improve

16:16.385 --> 16:19.095
sanitation in, in this case, in Nairobi, Kenya

16:19.515 --> 16:21.455
by developing a network of paid toilets.

16:22.345 --> 16:24.335
There are paid toilets in Kenya already.

16:24.485 --> 16:28.415
They're run by sometimes nonprofit groups, sometimes run

16:28.475 --> 16:29.575
by individuals.

16:29.675 --> 16:32.775
But, creating pay toilets was a very good solution

16:32.775 --> 16:35.615
to the problem in urban slums where you didn't have,

16:35.845 --> 16:38.335
good infrastructure and it was very actually hard to access.

16:38.535 --> 16:41.495
'cause there aren't, for example, roadways and drainage.

16:41.595 --> 16:43.295
And so they created a set of pay toilets,

16:43.295 --> 16:45.855
but rather than just having a pay peruse toilet,

16:46.165 --> 16:49.055
they collected the waste, human waste from these toilets

16:49.195 --> 16:50.735
and took it to fertilizer farms

16:50.755 --> 16:52.895
and created value added products having to do

16:52.895 --> 16:55.935
with fertilizer and, sometimes,

16:56.235 --> 16:57.495
the creation of biogas.

16:57.595 --> 16:59.935
And so they used a systems approach

17:00.475 --> 17:04.495
to create a financially viable business that has

17:05.355 --> 17:09.375
had tremendous impact on the health of individuals living in

17:09.935 --> 17:11.615
informal communities in,

17:11.615 --> 17:13.255
the slums in Nairobi, where they're working.

17:13.915 --> 17:17.255
That's an entrepreneurial story that has huge impact.

17:17.635 --> 17:20.215
And it was all done by three people coming out

17:20.215 --> 17:21.895
of college program who knew that they wanted

17:21.895 --> 17:22.455
to work together.

Understanding Social Entrepreneurship and Its Impact

00:00:00 - First, I'm delighted to have a chance to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is social entrepreneurship. And, I think one of the things you might be interested in knowing about is why I chose to write a book on social entrepreneurship and innovation. And I'll tell you that the thing that motivated me, having taught social entrepreneurship and innovation for almost two decades was that there were a lot of good storybooks out there, but there wasn't a good practical book which laid out the steps that a prospective entrepreneur would wanna know as they were thinking of becoming a social entrepreneur.
00:00:38 - but actually remarkably, has seemed to make a transition to the practitioner market, is about step by step conveying all the information that somebody would need to have thought through in order to be an effective social entrepreneur. So that's the, the first thing that I would, add as context. I, I will tell you that it's been very well received by undergraduates, graduates, executive education participants,
00:01:08 - I, I think because it was filling a market gap around this practical knowledge, the, the reason the practical knowledge is important is because I think that social entrepreneurship is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot without a particularly precise definition. And so people think of it as a very different thing. And depending on the context in which it's described, it's sort of a little bit of a platitude, if you will. So, to tell you what I think about,
00:01:39 - there's a few things that are essential. One is the social part of social entrepreneurship. And what that means is a series of activities which is designed to achieve a positive societal objective. It's pretty simple, it's pretty straightforward. But those activities can be varied, very varied, very, diverse in their activities. First, they can happen all over the world, which is important. But secondly, those activities can happen in finance field,
00:02:12 - sometimes in government. So the, the scope for where social impact happens is very, very broad. The second component of it that I think is important to think about is entrepreneurship. And entrepreneurship isn't necessarily starting a small business. It's not necessarily business building of that, that can be a component. Entrepreneurship is the idea of an individual who sees a problem and very much wants to solve that problem
00:02:44 - and which take advantage of an understanding of the market and need needs of constituents. And so when you put those two things together, entrepreneurship and social impact, you have social entrepreneurship, there's a lot of things that don't fall into that category. Policy, government programs, development programs, and traditional business, which has some side effects of having positive social outcomes. The important thing here is an intent around social impact

Social Entrepreneurship's Role in Global Challenges

00:03:15 - And there's a lot of social problems out there. And not all of them can be solved through entrepreneurial solutions. A lot of them should be solved by government action, for example, or by the private sector and private business. So let's be clear that entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship has a role, but not a global or exclusive role in solving social problems. With that as a backdrop, I like to think of the US sustainable development goals. And you probably know what those are, but just in case,
00:03:48 - that is is a series of 17 interlocking goals that were initially proposed by the un, which are essentially grand goals for society. And those cover the GA from reduction of poverty to sanitation, to clean water, life below, water, human rights. There's a whole series of goals. And as a global society, we've actually made significant progress since those goals were introduced a little more than a decade ago. So that's very good framing.
00:04:18 - but I think that's a very good framing for thinking about social impact. The places entrepreneurship tends to impact is around a subset of the goals. So it could show up really in any of those 17 goals, but when social entrepreneurs have been pulled around, which goals are the primary goals they're trying to achieve, over half of them mentioned some very specific goals. And those goals are, goal number one in the list. it's called number one 'cause it's first in the block, and that's no poverty.
00:04:49 - entrepreneurship to poverty reduction. And we see that through job, job creation, fair wages, the creation of economic opportunity, sometimes the creation of banking and credit opportunities. And so no poverty is the first goal, and around half of all social entrepreneurs are targeting the goal. The second goal is good health and wellbeing. And that has to do with, water sanitation,
00:05:21 - And again, about 50% of the, the numbers add to more than a hundred percent because entrepreneurs target multiple goals. But among the Ashoka entrepreneurs who are asked, where do your targets lie? About half said, good health and wellbeing was there. The third very large goal, and it's about half of all social entrepreneurs are focusing on quality education. That education takes a lot of different forms in a lot of different countries, but the emphasis is providing
00:05:49 - which unsurprisingly also helps to reduce poverty. And then the next one, again, about half of all entrepreneurs Are focused on this interlocked with, for example, no poverty and with education is gender equity. And so gender equality is something that's often faced or focused on by social entrepreneurs. And in fact, not in every market, but in most places in the world, according to research that's been done, there is a very strong,

Social Entrepreneurship: Women, Goals, and Impact

00:06:21 - which have a social impact. So many of the social entrepreneurs are women, various country to country, but it's an important and underlying trend. the other goals that are, that are often supported by social entrepreneurship, there's two more on the list. Goal eight, which is decent work and economic growth, unsurprisingly, highly correlated to no poverty. And then the last one is both hand reduced inequities, and you can see the connections with the other goals as well. Those types of outcomes can take place in multiple fields.
00:06:55 - of work studying the social impact of tourism, and it impacts, decent jobs, global health education and myriad of other goals. Part of, my research was inspired by my students really. And so, what I learned about what students would wanna know about social entrepreneurship came out of my classes and came out with questions. So that was a starting point. With that being said, there's a pretty straightforward framework
00:07:28 - starting with ideation, stakeholder assembly, financing, developing operating plans, developing marketing plans, and going to market similar to what you would see in any entrepreneurial venture. And so the research was framed around those tasks or those, things that you would need to accomplish in order to create a social entrepreneurial venture. The research itself drew on research that's been doing, done by academics around the world on
00:07:57 - and what have been, what has been successful. But the thing I really love, in addition to a statistical basis for the research, is field work. And so I had the opportunity in writing the book to interact with, individuals from all over the world in the Middle East in Europe. I did a field trip to New Zealand to look at impact investing in New Zealand and my ability to go out and both understand what was happening in those places, but also about cases about the entrepreneurs and what their activities were really became the foundation
00:08:29 - along with, I credit where creditors do contributions from colleagues who are experts in each of those areas. So for example, finance and marketing are areas where I heavily drew from the work my colleagues have done. I'm going to give you, a few examples if you don't mind, because, and there's thousands to choose from. But there, there is something I've actually been writing about right now because I'm finishing up a case series. So I I will give you an example of, and, and by the way, there's a couple of things that are underlying this that I think
00:09:00 - One is that the cost of starting a venture, any kind of venture, but this includes mission driven ventures globally, has dramatically declined in the last 30 years. And so it's much more possible to be an entrepreneur today, anywhere in the world than it was to be an entrepreneur 30 years ago. What you need in order to do that is much smaller. There's a bunch of reasons having to do with technology and global markets. And so that's one of the driving factors. Another important driving factor is that the line

Blurring Lines: Nonprofits and Social Enterprises

00:09:31 - and non-profit organiz, while not, while still important, has, has been blurred and sometimes significantly blurred. And so you have nonprofit organizations having operating as social enterprises. A great example of that is brac, the brand Bangladesh, that the, the the organization in Bangladesh that does incredible on anti-poverty work through a, series of, of ventures, all of which are profitable and most of which are profitable.
00:10:03 - with a strong social mission to what they're doing. And so the distinction between profit and north non-profit, I think is actually a little bit artificial. So with that as a backdrop, let's think about some successful entrepreneurial ventures. And I've been thinking about New Zealand recently, and so I'm gonna give you three examples, maybe four. one is one that I wrote about in my book, very interesting story. There's a gentleman who lives on the south island in New Zealand.
00:10:32 - there's many more sheep than people. It's not particularly populated, but they do have a very significant environmental problem. And the environmental problem are what are called wilding pines. It's an invasive species that was brought in, at, in the, early 19 hundreds, late 18 hundreds to create fire blocks and create a source of timber, but it's actually pushing out the indigenous, indigenous species, the indigenous flora in the area.
00:11:02 - And anywhere you go, you see these pine tree covered hills, but that's actually, to the detriment of the natural environment on the south island of New Zealand. This guy, Michael Sly, cared about that issue. And so he, he started pulling up these pine trees, but one person can't pull up millions of pine trees. And so he created something which was a venture which would commercialize the reduction or commercialize the reduction of pine trees.
00:11:33 - grinding them up and turning them into an essential oil, which smells wonderful. It's a pine scented oil and started selling those pine scented oil, small vials at farmer's markets. That's not enough to make an impact. That's a cottage industry, cottage business. But in Michael's case, he ended up at a perfume convention in New York, sat next to somebody who was the sourcer for a large manufacturer, described what he was doing. That person became very interested and ordered hundreds of barrels of pino at once.
00:12:06 - with a very small intent became a big venture making a really big impact. So that's one example of a, pretty amazing entrepreneurial venture. Another one that I've been thinking about recently, it's called Critical and, and it's, it's in New Zealand. New Zealand has a problem as do many places in the world around pollution and particularly hard to recycle plastic. the people who run critical invented a technology or create or developed a technology

Entrepreneurship through Sustainable Plastic Recycling

00:12:38 - the kind of thing you might use for a countertop or a, divider in a room out of this plastic. And then by selling it had a way to recycle plastic as well as a way to have people be more aware of their use of materials. That's a commercially viable business. They're making money, they have venture investment, they have a plan to grow, and they have a plan to, expand to markets which have even bigger environmental problems than New Zealand does.
00:13:05 - through having a profitable business around recycling plastic into a value added product. Those are a couple examples of entrepreneurial ventures, which are making a difference, but because they're profitable entrepreneurial ventures, they also have the opportunity to scale. And that's important because that is the, one thing that stops a lot of social good manufacturing from happening. See, in my book, I have a series of exercises for students to go through either individually or in teams to do just that.
00:13:38 - star and the area in which they wanna make a difference. If you don't have a path to that, then it's, you don't get very concentrated or effective in the work you're doing. Once that happens, once you know what problem you wanna solve, be it anti-poverty, health, clean water, then doing some ideation, doing some discovery around what kind of venture, what kind of venture be it for-profit or non-profit might support, that is a really great thing to do.
00:14:08 - that prospective entrepreneurs need to have is an ideation, ability and ability to sit down sometimes with a group and think about what are some solutions to these problems and what's creative and what's innovative and what might be different in a way that's value added. A third thing that I think is really important for individuals to realize when they wanna become social entrepreneurs is it's the stakeholder map is really complicated. It's actually way more complicated than the stakeholder stakeholder map for traditional, for-profit businesses.
00:14:43 - diagnose stakeholder interests and work effectively with stakeholders is an important skill. You can't get away from money. And so, social entrepreneurs, just like any entrepreneurs need to be able to think about, think very carefully and critically around how they're gonna finance their ventures and how to make those ventures have, good financial characteristics. They can continue to grow. The list goes on. the other things that are important in terms
00:15:12 - So if you're running a manufacturing business, you have to understand manufacturing like critical does or like the other example that I gave you, welding and company, the perfume company does. If you are running a, pretty much any type of business which moves into, into markets and has to engage consumers, you need to be able to understand some things about marketing, particularly marketing social ventures. So those are all fundamental skills, some of which have more

Sanergy: Innovative Sanitation Solutions in Nairobi

00:15:42 - of which have a venture orientation, if you will. There's another story I'd like to tell you. this story is an amazing one. it's one that I love to have a chance to talk about in class and that I wrote a case on, it's an organization called sanergy and the founders of SAN with three people, young people, college students, in the Poverty lab, which is a course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And their, innovation,
00:16:16 - sanitation in, in this case, in Nairobi, Kenya by developing a network of paid toilets. There are paid toilets in Kenya already. They're run by sometimes nonprofit groups, sometimes run by individuals. But, creating pay toilets was a very good solution to the problem in urban slums where you didn't have, good infrastructure and it was very actually hard to access. 'cause there aren't, for example, roadways and drainage.
00:16:43 - but rather than just having a pay peruse toilet, they collected the waste, human waste from these toilets and took it to fertilizer farms and created value added products having to do with fertilizer and, sometimes, the creation of biogas. And so they used a systems approach to create a financially viable business that has had tremendous impact on the health of individuals living in informal communities in,
00:17:21 - That's an entrepreneurial story that has huge impact. And it was all done by three people coming out of college program who knew that they wanted to work together.

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