A teacher, a farmer, and an atomic physicist walk into a bar…

The beautiful thing about social innovation is anyone can do it. Not everyone has a breakthrough idea, but it doesn’t take an atomic physicist to come up with one (although sometimes they do). Whether it’s education, health, technology, or the environment, problems abound in our society. Some issues are more obvious, like refugees struggling with temporary housing, and others are less so, like the need for a cheap alternative computer. The faces of the innovators who find these solutions are as varied as the issues themselves. From a farmer who designed a mobile application to monitor dairy cows, to a teacher who created an entire online education movement, they prove that ordinary people have the power to do extraordinary things.

I find these social innovators inspiring, and it make me wonder how these ordinary people became the social entrepreneurs they are today. The obvious first step is to have an idea, but what does it take to transform that idea into an innovation? One of the first major obstacles is money. When Sal Khan first started developing his online learning videos, he was a one man team creating YouTube videos out of a walk-in closet. It wasn’t until he received his first check from Ann Doerr that he was able to make Khan Academy a reality [1]. Nowadays, there are multiple ways to find funding, whether it’s pitching ideas to investors, or crowdfunding through websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Even if you find funding, though, there’s no guarantee your idea will be successful.

More often than not, social entrepreneurs fail to get their ideas off the ground, even when they are able to design innovative solutions. Many of these failures stem from a lack of knowledge and access to the right people. In my past job, our department had a vision for success that said, “We need the right people, in the right place, at the right time, in the right job.” Imagine how many successful new ventures could be created if aspiring social entrepreneurs had a way to easily connect with the right people who could take their solution from a simple idea to an innovation. The path to innovation is far from easy, but if we can find a way to streamline the process and expand accessibility, maybe we can solve some of the world’s problems a little more efficiently.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelnoer/2012/11/02/one-man-one-computer-10-million-students-how-khan-academy-is-reinventing-education/