Social Innovation: Its Own Animal

                Charity, while often well-meaning, sometimes has the undesired consequence of creating a culture of dependency, especially in instances where a group had previously paid for a good on their own. There’s sometimes an attitude that the first world should give to the bottom of the pyramid countries and that by selling goods to them, they’re profiteering off of the impoverished. These seem to assume that there’s either price-gouging or possibly that these countries are incapable of improving their lot in life on their own. Social innovators would like change to take place, but not to the long-term detriment of the person they help, so concepts that ensure that people in BoP countries are able to raise themselves up with sustainable enterprises are the main focus. When it comes to adequately addressing the challenges of social innovation, this dilemma of how to help and how much to help represents a major hurdle for would-be innovators. This concept, with an emphasis of development and growth of ventures of these organizations, was the theme of week four’s readings. While there are fundamental differences between non-profit organizations and for-profit business ventures, the cases illustrated in this week’s articles demonstrate the hybrid creation that is the socially-innovative business venture. Whereas the focus of business is the delivery of profit and the goal of non-profits is to have a specific and measurable impact, these hybrids seek to use market-based results to create an impact on a social problem or issue.

                These enterprises ultimately need to focus on how to achieve their mission while also providing an opportunity for economic advancement in BoP countries, which makes them similar to any other business endeavor but on a shoestring budget. Products need to be made so they are very cheap but ultimately durable and able to fit well with their market’s way of life. This was seen with the Envirofit case, where much more efficient, cost-effective, and safer cooking stoves saw hurdles due to an initial lack of cultural consideration. This was eventually remedied by relying on an individual who was familiar with the area and was able to utilize television ads to make it more palatable to the public at large, but even then still it faced some resistance due to a lack of penetration amongst males.

                In addition to these goals there is a focus on impact, which causes the attitude towards other enterprises to change from competition to cooperation to ensure that the initial goal is achieved and strategies can be passed to other enterprises to ensure social good to not just that instance but other similar scenarios, as illustrated in the article How to Take a Social Venture to Scale. Perhaps the greatest difference between the typical profit-driven business and a venture focused on social innovation is the focus, social innovation requires the impact to become the focus, but unlike the typical non-profit it uses the market to accomplish that goal and sustain its execution to ensure that it is a long-term solution.