The Future of Social Innovation and Enterprise

The readings for week 7 cover contents related to the future of social innovation and enterprise. There are many cases about new innovation practice. Although there are many problems and challenges, opportunities and progress are inspiring.

So where the future of social innovation and enterprise will head for? Although we cannot depict the future in detail, there is one thing for sure: resources all over the world will be better utilized. By optimizing resources that are idle or are omitted, we can create more value and benefit more people.

In the “Reverse Innovation”: GE Makes India a Lab for Global Markets, the author introduced us the changes of GE’s healthcare industry. In the first, GE imported the system for Indian customers, after which GE focused on products that are made specifically for India customers. Then GE India started organizational changes. India offered not market share, but also human resource, infrastructure, cultural interaction and specific needs. The focus on underserved areas is not only beneficial for Indian people, but may also bring opportunities for GE’s whole healthcare industry.

From another article Nestlé: Agricultural Material Sourcing Within the Concept of Creating Shared Value (CSV), we can learn another approach of optimizing resources. To meet its vision within the limitations, Nestlé started to explore Creating Shared Value(CSV) method. SAIN and the SAI platform are created for sustainable agriculture. The bottom-up approaches made both farmers and big-name partners involved to produce agricultural products both efficiently and environmental friendly.

Those two cases are good examples for innovation. Globalization and high-techs indicates huge potential for change making. Because of the innovation, our life is totally different with people’s life ten years ago. Take CSV as an example, we now have lots of relatively newly established companies like Uber and Airbnb to change how people live and travel. There are also many outstanding companies in China. Huijiachifan is a homemade food online ordering app. This app helped many young people who are too busy to cook to keep healthy diet, and also offered opportunities for elderly retired senior citizens to start a small business of selling homemade food. Another example is OFO, which raised fourth fun recently. OFO is a bike sharing system in campuses. The OFO company saved money for students and also encouraged people to use green transportation methods.

So the direction of the future development for social innovation may be quite simple. Just try to satisfy people’s needs and try to share resources, and we can generate positive effects in the world. Although we have to admit that the mechanism and approaches of giving and sharing remains to be explored.