The future looks bright!

I believe the three key elements in ensuring the bright future of social innovation and enterprises are:

1) Emerging Markets: Growth is immense in emerging markets and most companies realise this to be a huge opportunity. There is a need to provide goods and services to people in growing economies at afforadable prices. This 'need 'would serve to be the main driver for social innovation in the coming years.

2) New business models: Emerging markets are inherently different from mature markets and warrant the need for new buiness models. Emerging markets are more likely to be a 'low-price, high-volume game' . Companies who come up with new buiness models (and test them for the needs of the customers in emerging markets) would be able to thrive in these conditions.

3) Mobile and Internet: 'Access' is a key issue that any social innovation venture would need to address. Access to information and then the products and services would continue to improve as more of the world's population gets access to mobile phones and the internet.

I hope and wish that social entrepreneurship becomes a virtuous cycle. I hope to live enough to see someone who was once at the bottom of the pyramid to himself one day create an organization like Ashoka