Refining the Social Venture

In my previous posts, I have writing about the required steps to start a social venture. I wrote about finding a problem and its potential solution, and creating a pitch. But it is time to refine the project in order to prepare for presenting it to potential stakeholders. In the next paragraphs, I will explain the three steps that I followed to accomplish it. The first step is to look for data that support the idea. The second one is to interact with the potential clients. The last step is to ask for advise from specialists.

First, although we can observe social issues easily, it is important to delimit the potential market for the social venture. It is needed to look for statistics that can support the incursion of the social venture in a specific market, and the description of it –size, type, competition, etc. Furthermore, data becomes essential to support the project, especially because it is important to foreseen the impact that the social venture will create.

Secondly, I believe that even if we have data to support the project, it is important to interact with the potential clients. Talking to them, and explaining them about the project could bring more insights to it. This is important, because sometimes statistics generalize facts, but they do not explain the quality of them. For example, although statistics or research papers establish that one of the biggest problems of small and medium size enterprises in a specific region is related to management of inventory, sometimes those statistics do not explain which are the reasons for this issue. This can be space, lack of control, budget, weather, or others. Talking to clients would give directions on it. Surveys can be a way to do this step.

Finally, it is important to ask for advise from specialists. In order to refine the product or service that the social venture will provide, it is important to hear from experts on the field about their experiences, improvements or mistakes that they have done in challenging that social issue. This can reduce time and money for running successfully the social venture.