A Different Measure of Social Innovation Success

Many of the readings for this week discuss how various social innovations or enterprises can measure success, be it impact, profit, or significant funding.  The traditional approach based upon our economics courses would tell us that the ultimate measure of success or failure is the bottom line-does the enterprise make a profit, or not.  But some people may not be comfortable with a firm turning a large profit if they are primarily serving poor countries. This issue was thoroughly discussed in the article featured in Fast Company.  For the social innovator success can also be measured by the funding received by philanthropies or by venture capitalists, as these sources of money often are the lifeblood of a startup.  As we read in the HBR article, another way of measuring success can be not by measuring profit or growth, but by measuring impact.

The linked article from the Stanford Social Innovation Review (http://www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/losing_ownership_of_new_ideas_a_mark_of_success) introduces another way to measure success for social innovations.  The idea presented within the article holds that the way success should be measured is whether or not a new and edgy idea eventually becomes mainstream.  As the article specifically discusses the acceptance of LGBT in the Jewish community, it is important to not that this idea of success is probably more applicable within the developed world, as the missions are more focused on social inclusion than on bringing disadvantaged individuals out of poverty.  The points raised are worth consideration, as in 2001 Idit Klein founded Keshet with the mission of bringing LGBT issues to the forefront in the Jewish community.  The Keshet group was then supported by Joshua Venture Group, which focuses on funding social entrepreneurs within the Jewish Community.

The Joshua Venture Group views their support as a success, for slightly more than a decade after the founding of Keshet, the Jewish Community is viewed as one of the strongest proponents of marriage equality.  What was once a non-issue within the Jewish Community is now a significant political matter, and much of that change in perception can be attributed to the work of Keshet with the help of Joshua Venture Group. Lisa Lepson, Executive Director of Joshua Venture Group states that "Success for the social entrepreneur happens when their views are no longer feared but embraced," and it is this mantra that guides the venture group that she leads.

This overview now brings me to two primary questions.  Bearing in mind the lectures and readings thus far, would you consider Keshet to be a social enterprise?  Most of what we have discussed has been more focused on improving the lives of the disadvantaged in more material ways-bringing laptops to poor villages to increase education, or introducing the Plumpynut to Niger and other parts of SSA to eradicate hunger.  Keshet did not focus on these groups, but instead focused on gaining support for LGBT within the Jewish religion.  If the lives of a subset of the population was improved by inclusion, is this a case of social innovation?  My second question, closely related to the first, is whether you agree with Lepson's means of measuring success, not by a material measure but by the acceptance of a once unpopular idea.  I am not certain that this measure of success fits within the framework of our class to this point, but within the realm of American society I can see that improving the perception of minority groups, especially those who are subject to bullying (both by traditional schoolyard bullies and by close-minded politicians) can certainly benefit from "opinion-based" social innovation.