Social Innovation and Enterprise in the Future

Today, two factors mark the character of our economy – they are innovation and enterprise. Innovation can come in many forms – products, processes or even new markets while the entrepreneur is the one who works to use innovation to the advantage in order to achieve success and this can be done by either a profit or non-profit business model. Historically, the difference between the two has primarily been that the former was focused on delivering a profit and the latter was marked by the goal of helping others. As we wrap up this class, these details become less clear and more of a cause for discussion.

As we have moved through class discussion, this distinction has started to get blurry as newer social entrepreneurship models seem to do both. As this line continues to get fuzzy, I begin to wonder what happens to this differentiation if meeting social needs becomes the core values for the majority of new economic activities?

Does a double or triple bottom line change the way we perceive a business? Does it affect the way the business itself is run? Probably and yet the financial distinction between organizations has proven that it does not necessarily mean one will be favored by the public over another, or that one is more sustainable than another and in some of the most interesting cases, organizations begin to take the best of both.

This is where I see the continuation and expansion of the social innovation and enterprise models going. I believe that modern entrepreneurs are now aware of the sense of social responsibility and making a contribution to the world through work. At a minimum, businesses understand the trend and are driven by a commitment to be the most visible, most up to date and trendiest members of the business world.

But there are challenges yet to overcome. I know I’ve discussed some of them before – the lack metrics in order to measure quality or effectiveness of some of these technological innovations and well as connecting the dots of the ripple effect these new ideas can have. Perhaps it just needs more time – time may tell us whether things are successful and worth their pursuit as it has been done historically.

Additionally, social innovations aren’t always models that can be reproduced as the need arises. We have discussed over the course how even the best ideas fail because they are ahead or behind their times. So, hopefully recording the ideas, monitoring their progress and advocating their successes when they arise will support and expand the future of social innovation.