The Social Innovation Incubator at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill holds an annual workshop on risk reduction for social entrepreneurs. The workshop involves on-campus, two month mentoring sessions by experts in risk management that are open to the public. While navigating through the minutes of the 2012 introduction workshop, I found that Steve Kenney, the Director of Risk Management Services at UNC, made some key points that we did not discuss in class. I have paraphrased the salient points below, while simultaneously relating the content to last week’s class discussion:
(1) You should consider adding technology and reputation risk to the list of risk categories that we created last week (i.e., financial, operation, compliance, or political risk). The objective of assessing your technology risks is to maximize the protection of any sensitive electronic information. The goal of assessing reputation risk is to determine how much of the activity within your business will affect your current/future partnerships, your brand, or competitive advantage.
(2) Begin incorporating risk management in every discussion about expanding or shrinking your business idea. There should be a team member whose responsibility is to outline the opportunities or shortcomings that will come with every decision that is made within the team, as a whole, for your venture.
(3) The status of risks are unpredictable and indefinite. Risks can change at any point, and it is crucial that your team is constantly evaluating the risks that you have already identified and ones that may arise unexpectedly. Remaining informed, inquisitive, and vulnerable is essential.
Also, I found the following article by the Stanford Social Innovation Review that dissects the meaning of “social entrepreneurship” and offers great examples of social ventures that have had wide social impact while remaining profitable. The article even includes an excerpt on Pittsburgh’s own, Bill Strickland and his successful venture, Manchester Bidwell Corporation. The article is rather long, but here it is: http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/social_entrepreneurship_the_case_for_definition
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