Venture Development and Growth

The article that I read was “Keys to Sustainable Enterprise”, which looks at two different methods in which social innovators can bring about positive change for society by either working with the status quo to improve it or by introducing new methods to help solve the problem. In the first key, the author looks at “balancing an equilibrium”. By this I am referring to how to bring everyone in the system into equilibrium by involving customers and government. In one example, the author looked at the issue between natives and extractive industries taking natives land. The government was involved to help curb deforestation as well as GPS mapping for natives to show where their land is. This technology along with government enforcement has helped reduce deforestation and protect native’s land. Similarly, the author talks about the power of the consumer to stop negative practices in industry such as the rug market, which used child slave labor to produce cheap rugs. This model I feel is starting to be used around the world as more activist groups are trying to educate consumers about where their goods come from. One of the industries that is currently under attack is the produce sector in the United States in regards to the use of GMOs. Lobbyist have been trying to get the government to force labeling of products to inform consumers about what products are made using GMOs and let them decide whether or not they want to continue buying produce from these companies.    

The other key that the author mentioned was technology. Many social innovators have found success by providing a lower cost to current technology that is being used. The most interesting story that I read from this article was the use of the African giant pouched rat to sniff out landmines and tuberculosis in infected patients. This idea I felt was very simple to think of as it only required someone to compare two animals, (a dog and a rat) and figure out how to vastly reduce the social cost of a big problem that has affected thousands around the world.

After reading this article and how the use of consumer power to create social change, I was reminded of my time working in a campaign office to help save the use of antibiotics. Much of the chicken that is consumed today are fed antibiotics to ensure that the flocks are healthy. The issue with this, is that when antibiotics are overused bacteria can become immune to it which then negatively effects humans who rely on antibiotics to cure many of our own bacterial infections. In this campaign our goal was to target and educate consumers to let them know where their food was coming from and whether or not the meat they were eating was being fed an unhealthy amount of antibiotics. Our goal for the campaign was to get KFC to stop buying chickens that are raised on antibiotics so that we can protect human health and prevent the creation of a superbug.