How Less can be More

Should social innovation be measured by their impact or the succes of the social entrepeneurship itself? Kimberly Dasher Tripp argues in her article „It`s Not All About Growth for Social Enterprises“ exactly that: Instead of asking how do you grow the organization, you should ask how do you scale impact. She identifies a way to make a bigger impact on the problem your social enterprise is trying to solve and it`s called franchising.

Rather than trying to grow your organization and therefore transporting your idea to a broader audience, you should cultivate the ecosystem and let others help you in making an impact.

Problems to this approach can be to maintain the quality of your idea and to get enough funders on board of this, because most of them want to see direct revenue of their „investment“.

However before you can even think about getting bigger, your product or service should prove to be a sustainable innovation and can therefore be taken to the next level. In „Two Keys to Sustainable Social Enterprise“ the authors wrote about what leaders need to create sustainable financial models, which are able to make a real impact on the recipient and the problems they face. They defined type of difficulties that need to be changed: the economic actors involved and the enabling technology applied. If a social venture is able to shift the existing economic system including those two features mentioned above it is more likely to suceed in its mission and ergo be more sustainable.

Being a social innovator and targeting the BoP (Bottom oft he Pyramid) market is not an easy tasked as hinted above, but it is definitely worth it. In contrast to charities sustainable social enterprises have the advantage of not being dependent on the money of others, but rather earn money themself and for that reason offer a better and more reliable help fort he beneficiaries. As well as operating in the existing market and not levering it, by just giving it tot he people. It also creates more competition on the market, which brings down the prices. In some cultures it can even have a dignified aspect to it by being able to pay for what they own and not having to take charity.

Overall I think that social innovators and ventures should be aware of the problems they will have to face but don’t forget to „keep their eyes on the price“, which here is the positive impact they’re trying to create in the world.