This weeks reading on ways to make your business idea work was a good read. Stories of the mistakes and successes of various organizations will help us in framing a good business plan for ours. The advice given by the author, on educating the general public and other stakeholders involved when the innovation could create a change in the way society has been functioning for years, is something many organisations ignore. I can say this because in my work as a public relations consultant I have seen manufacturing factories been shut down since workers, near by public and authorities lobbying against the organisation, since there was no education given to them about the practices and functioning of the organisation .
I had this question lingering on my mind the entire week, "Whats so special about social entrepreneurs? " Isn't every entrepreneur doing some good with his product or service. Take for example, Kraft manufactures cheese and people who consume cheese get some nutrients which then improves their health so the social good is good health for consumers who eat Kraft cheese. So whats so different about us? This particular New York times article opened my mind up and cleared my doubts http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/what-exactly-is-a-social-entrepreneur/?scp=3&sq=Social%20Entrepreneurship&st=Search.
I will tell you in a minute why, for a social entrepreneur " The passion for a certain project comes from the social side and the entrepreneurial out of necessity." I think thats a beautiful way to put it ! I could also relate it very well to the context of our class, everyone in our class has a social venture in mind not because they want to start a business , rather because of their passion either towards preserving historic buildings, helping the aged, bringing together the community or conserving the environment !
The article for Monday had one component missing in it looking at it as Social entrepreneurs,"Measuring social value" in the buyer experience cycle. How do you measure something like social value? What are your thoughts on the same ?
Nice article, Yanka!
ReplyDeleteAbout measuring social values:
The first that comes to my mind is the concept of value of life. There is a number of different ways of measuring it but it is typically determined via surveying the a group of individuals you are interested in. Simplistically, you ask individuals how much they would be willing to pay (accept) to reduce (accept) a certain risk that is (hypothetically) posed onto them. They are typically on the order of millions of dollars (e.g. EPA uses $5 million). However, these figures change from nation to nation, and you can see low values as low as thousands of dollars in China.
So, you could look at how many life-years-saved your product provides and monetize them accordingly.