Street Safe App - For Ketaki & Sangeeta

I just saw this new app called 'Street Safe' on the news. It's a mobile app to prevent/respond to street harassment and assault (seems to be targeting female customers). From what I understand, it sounds like a perfect cross between Ketaki and Sangeeta's ideas because of the problem it addresses and the fact that it is a paid service that allows customers to store medical data and call help in instances of abuse. Here are some of the key features:

		Walk With Me service with a live, professionally trained Safety Advisor to talk you through uncomfortable situations and escort you as you walk alone or with others Instant silent alarm notification to emergency services with GPS information and personal profile Unlimited access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year Affordable monthly subscription plan – for less than the price of a large pepperoni pizza you can have a month's worth of StreetSafe service

Learn more here: http://streetsafe.com/static-products-overview

Is Broke Student Life Good Training for Social Entrepreneurs?

I don't know about you guys, but I'm broke. Not in the romanticized college student eating Raman noodles everyday but still can attend concerts and live a semi-comfortable lifestyle broke. I mean mom and dad paid this month's rent and I'm really excited about my federal tax return kind of broke. But it's okay, because I have a job in the fall and my husband just got his work permit and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. This state of frustrating financial purgatory is actually a good point of reflection for the aspiring social entrepreneur in me. I feel like I'm an expert at bootstrapping and making something out of very little. How can I apply the lessons of my personal financial trials and tribulations as a student to valuable insights for risk assessment, planning and financing my social venture?

1. Plan for nothing to "come through"
Whether it's that small scholarship I applied for last month or that loan I'm hoping a friend will pay back, I've learned that relying on external things to 'come through' simply because I need them to is like running full speed into a busy intersection and hoping traffic will adjust in time. Don't count on it.

2. Squeeze the most out of every resource you have.
A petty example: I got a nice restaurant gift card as a thank you gesture and instead using the card to go on a romantic dinner, my husband and I are going to use it for brunch or lunch, when we can get more for two for $30. Simple, but it makes a difference.

3. Take advantage of 'free' anything, even if it's not really free
I got a sandwich and a pen for participating in a panel on how to turn consulting internships into full-time offers. I probably would have done it anyway, but a free lunch does go a long way.

4. Provide fulfillment if you can't afford pizza and beer (or partner with a pizza joint and brewery)
Coinciding with my own state of personal brokeness, I'm working with Kelechi and others to build a new grad student organization on campus, the African Business Collective, which is also currently broke as it has yet to be officially recognized. We are planning to host events by partnering with other organizations with similar missions or target groups who have funds to provide marketing support and food. Similarly, I've also been volunteering with GTECH for the past almost two years and have found their partnership and intrinsic motivation approach to be very effective. I've helped them develop the Social Capital Council, a cadre of young professional who commit to a financial donation every year in order to be part of and support GTECH's network. How are these all connected? Prof. Zak mentioned the whole notion of paying with pizza and beer today - if you don't even have the pizza and beer, there are still other means of motivating folks to join your cause.

How do these four insights from my life as a student translate into valuable lessons for me as a social entrepreneur? I'm prepared now for possible 'hard times' and have a more realistic sense of how to plan and not rely on optimism but the most probable scenario. I've become even more resourceful and strategic about the use of my limited resources. I've seen and employed creative 'out of the box' techniques for intrinsically motivating others (peers, colleagues, target groups) and to form strategic partnerships in order to increase my capacity and resource pool. All of this makes me really think that if I ever want to do something with as much risk as my DiasporaConnect venture idea, I should do it now, while I'm out of  my comfort zone and perhaps at my most resourceful.

By the way, here's a cool resource site for student by students interested in social entrepreneurship: http://setoolbelt.org/resources/1430

Social entrepreneurs or not

I used to hear the term "entrepreneurial spirit" often. But as I think about entrepreneurs I can't actually name anyone that I know personally who I'd classify as an entrepreneur.  I know small business owners (contractors, dentists, day care centers) but those aren't businesses I'd use to categorize an entrepreneur.  They are small business owners supporting their families.  Even as I think about the successful (14 years operation or more) social service organizations started and run by one person I still don't consider them entrepreneurs.  But what I do know about one of the social service organizations is that the founder approached it from a business standpoint and hired administrative people who had significant for profit business expertise in areas other than she had and she did not try to be everything to the agency. It eventually became successful enough that they increased their contracts and grew their sites to include operations outside of the founding location.  Their growth was gradual and specific to not include things outside of their initial realm, their mission stayed the same.
While I don't think of this organization as as entrepreneurial I do think the application of growth has been disciplined and grounded in the realities of the ideas of if something doesn't work for them consider it carefully before getting rid of it and reworking it to something else that does  

Active Risk Mitigation

I've been really into the "slap in the face" analogy ever since Brett's talk last Wednesday. For those who were absent, the key message here is that it can be of tremendous value to have someone point out the flaws in your business model. I suppose this class is used as a forum for us to give and receive constructive feedback, but I'm not sure that any of us have actually received that elusive "slap."

However, while we eagerly wait for that point of realization, we can all learn by studying the mistakes that others have made. This concept feeds into next week's topic of risk mitigation. By gathering knowledge from others and learning about their setbacks and pitfalls, we can reduce our downside risk of making the same missteps.

There are many articles online that discuss common pitfalls (such as this entrepreneur.com article), but the message becomes more clear when hearing it directly from someone else in person. The message that I received from Brett's talk was that I need to actively seek out ways to mitigate risk for my particular venture. In order to do this I will need to locate others who have engaged in SIMILAR ventures and learn as much as possible about how to prevent their mistakes from becoming my own.

Yes, it is helpful to gather information from any and all who have started their own companies, but this by itself would not create a robust picture of the risks inherent for your specific venture. Without pursuing the proper advice or mentorship from someone who has been through a similar venture, it would remain very plausible to miss out on critical details. The next step to potentially getting "slapped in the face" is for us to seek out the right person(s) who is able to relate to our specific ventures. I know that this is something that I will need to do in order to move from idea generation to implementation.

Something a little different this week ...

As I was sifting through several entrepreneurship-related articles to find something , not just interesting, but adding value to all the articles we read and discuss in class, I came across a gem from Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, in WSJ titled "How to get a real education."

Mr. Adams writes about his life in college, and his belief that most students need to learn how to run a business, instead of learning art history and calculus (at least the ones not actually interested in art history and calculus, that is). While the article starts with discussing the unfair nature of having students in class who might not all be interested or have the aptitude for certain subjects, it then gets really interesting when Mr. Adams tells his story. In brief, he was able to master the strange art of transforming nothing into something - from keeping books for student-run coffee shops, to running dorm governments, and organizing soccer clubs. He embodied, what we refer to as, the inherent entrepreneurial spirit.

He then goes on to share a few basic skills which might come in handy in the entrepreneurial world. Of these, I would specifically like to share the following:
1. Create value by combining a whole bunch of regular, even average, skills - what sets you apart is not that you have mastered each; the rare part is that each of those modest skills is collected in one person.
2. Failing forward, or using failure as a stepping stone to the next venture without thinking of it as an obstacle.
3. Luck finds the doers - to succeed, you must first do something. And if that doesn't work, which will probable be 90% of the time, do something else.

He also mentions the importance of enjoying speaking to the crowds, writing simply and avoiding excess words and finally learning the art of persuasion (example Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett) - all skills that would be extremely useful to the budding entrepreneur in each of us. What really got me excited about this article (other than the fact that Mr. Adams wrote it) is that he is able to very simply explain what it takes to understand and stand out in the entrepreneurial world, with skills that many of us can combine with relative ease. And finally, you will not know if you've got what it takes, until you get your hands dirty.

“An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.” ~ Buddha

Parallels to iterative design with a little fiction and a little Tyson

In this week's reading on entrepreneurial discipline, I was struck by the parallels between managing entrepreneurial risk and the iterative design process I have been taught in my Human-Computer Interaction courses.

Both start from the premise that the experimenter (whether entrepreneur or designer) does not know everything about his market. In learning to iteratively design technology solutions that are both usable and useful, we are literally instructed to exclaim, "The user is not like me." The experimenter must create a low-fidelity prototype or "first draft," often on paper, which he then shares directly with users in the target market segment.

In sharing, the experimenter records each user's reactions and ranks them along various usability dimensions, for example, Jakob Nielsen's usability heuristics: seamlessness, error prevention, visibility of options and so forth. In all likelihood, all of the experimenter's assumptions will have been wrong (a good reason to start with field research, though this is by no means a magic bullet). He then applies his findings to subsequent rounds of prototyping.

For the designer, the number of rounds of experimentation, scale of each experiment and experimental fidelitydepend predominantly on the amount of time available prior to product release. For the entrepreneur, "fidelity" is represented most likely not by the medium of implementation but by its scope and degree of outsourcing.

I would be interested to see how the above usability heuristics could map to similar heuristics for analysis of venture experiments. If anyone would like to discuss this with me, I would be happy to share my hunches in more detail.

As an illuminating aside, iterative design was developed in response to an earlier computer science programming model known as waterfall design, in which the whole product/service is laboriously planned out in advance and executed in one fell swoop. As we have learned, entrepreneurial bootstrapping is a similar response to an otherwise full-scale release--a plan to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket.

Of course, to be fully prepared for the experimental carnage to come--the proverbial punch in the face--I recommend you go into the process reciting the fiction writer's mantra (in response to fear of editing prose): "Don't be afraid to kill your babies."

You can picture Mike Tyson saying that too if it helps.

Human Centered Design Connect

This past week, IDEO.org launched their latest project, HCD Connect. HCD Connect is an online platform for people who are doing work in social enterprise, to leverage human centered design principles to their projects.

HCD Connect was born out of the Human Centered Design Toolkit, which is a toolkit that shows people how to integrate human centered design principles into their projects. "The Human-Centered Design (HCD) will help you hear the needs of constituents in new ways, create innovative solutions to meet these needs, and deliver solutions with financial sustainability in mind (HCD Toolkit)." The toolkit is broken up into three phases: Hear, Create and Deliver.

1. Hear: During the Hear phase, your Design Team will collect stories and inspiration from people. You will prepare for and conduct fi eld research.

2. Create: In the Create phase, you will work together in a workshop format to translate what you heard from people into frameworks, opportunities, solutions, and prototypes. During this phase you will move together from concrete to more abstract thinking in identifying themes and opportunities, and then back to the concrete with solutions and prototypes.

3. Deliver: The Deliver phase will begin to realize your solutions through rapid revenue and cost modeling, capability assessment, and implementation planning. This will help you launch new solutions into the world.

The goal of the toolkit is to bring innovation to emerging markets in a manner that is contextual to the region, understanding the needs and wants of individuals and creates new methods for monitoring and evaluation. The toolkit is a great resource for new or experienced researchers and entrepreneurs.

HCD Connect was created to foster relationships and communications between other researchers and entrepreneurs in social enterprise. In essence HCD Connect is a social network for people designing for those at the bottom of the pyramid. It's a great place to elicit feedback about your project and get inspired as you read the stories of others. It's also a great place to see how people are using methods from the Human Centered Design toolkit in context.

I would encourage everyone to sign up and explore HCD Connect, the website is www.hcdconnect.org. You can also download the toolkit from there, it's free!

Running Partial Experiments and a Grain of Salt

This week's reading on "Disciplined Entrepreneurship" was useful, but I'm going to take it with a grain of salt. The article highlights the importance of identifying strategies that reduce the uncertainties.

One of these strategies, which directly applies to my social venture is running partial experiments. The article states that "partial experiments when a known unknown is involved and the value and cost of obtaining information can be quantified."

A few of my unknowns are:
1. Blend of coffee or type of chocolate to provide through the Friend a Farmer Fair Trade Cart
2. Maximum willingness to pay per cup of coffee or tray of chocolate
3. Whether or not students can "taste" the difference between conventional and fair trade

A partial experiment I could run to reduce these uncertainties would be to:
Table in front of Doherty Hall with two blends of coffee. La Prima has already offered to provide me with Colombian fair trade coffee and conventional fair trade coffee. I could keep the containers unlabeled and provide a brief questionnaire to students. I could also alter the prices to measure maximum willingness to pay.

The reason I would take this article with a grain of salt however, lies in the fact that it describes the payout of most new ventures as bi-modal: these ventures "create significant value if they succeed but are worth little if they fail" This seems very cut and dry. Even if these ventures fail, they may actually be worth a lot. This reasoning stems from my experience working in international development and the best example I can think of is related to successful knowledge management - communities will note failures and lessons learned of social ventures that sustain livelihoods and conserve the environment. If an initiative to create a community based biogas plant failed, what's worth alot is knowing why it failed and providing strategies for other communities to extract the lessons learned to develop a more efficient biogas plant that would better serve its needs.

Discovery Driven Planning's Place in Business Modeling

           Discovery driven planning is a distinct and unique paradigm of business development. It provides an alternative means of business development in an environment marred with uncertainty. Many new ventures that begin in such climates fail because the basic tenants of the business are assumed to be correct even though there is no historical precedent against which these tenants can be compared. I prefer to look at discovery driven planning as a means of giving the social entrepreneur tools when vying for market space and fiscal sustainability. In some respects I feel it is working a bit backwards.

Traditionally, one builds a business model with projections of ultimate returns based upon the model. The entrepreneur then judges the ultimate success or failure of the organization by how it faired in contrast to projections. When using discovery driven planning, the ultimate goal is to spend as little as possible while attaining the largest informational and experiential returns. The entrepreneur also begins at the end in terms of social impact and returns and works backwards through building the organization. It is a model of perpetual experimentation, trial and error, and exploration that could prove very valuable.

The techniques used in discovery driven planning facilitate ongoing information attainment and could help in the creation of an organization that is strategically placed, competitive, and purposeful with credible milestones and salient direction. This can save a social start up tremendous losses because the venture begins by thinking about its bottom line in terms of social impact and revenues.

Business Model Generation

Considering one of our recent topics was systems visualization I thought I would share this one more time. The book Business Model Generation uses a super simple method for visualizing the entire business system and the relationships and overlapping areas within it. Using a map known as the business model canvas, it breaks down the different sections of a business model so that one can fill in the known sections and easily identify week points or missed building blocks. You can work in any direction, meaning, you can start with the key partnerships and cost structure and work towards a customer segment and eventual revenue stream, or start with customer segments and revenue streams and work backwards through distribution channels and the intended value propositions to identify key partnerships and necessary cost structure. 

Below is a blank copy of the business model canvas. 

Below is a pretty short video explaining the business model canvas. 

Social Innovation Camps

During an afternoon of surfing the internet, I stumbled upon an innovation article that vaguely mentioned a "Social Innovation Camp" with a link attached to it. Curious what this meant, especially in light of this class, I clicked on the link and was taken to the main website describing these camps. They last for 48 hours in total and tout that they "bring together ideas, people, and digital tools to build web-based solutions to social problems."

What started out as sounding like a slightly implausible idea, quickly became extremely interesting to me after reading a bit more. Originally founded out of the UK, these Innovation Camps are now spreading throughout the world including Nigeria, South Korea, Australia, Slovakia, Georgia, the Czech Republic, and Azerbaijan. These camps take submissions of ideas for web-based tools that have the potential to have a social impact and bring about change. After the submission period ends, a panel of judges pick a handful of these ideas to be presented and worked on at the camp. At the camp the goal is to take the initial concept and develop a working prototype web-based tool by the end of the weekend. From there, the camp hopes that those who submitted the idea or others will take this working prototype and the relationships established at the camp, and begin a social venture that succeeds and makes a difference.

While the concept of a so called "Social Innovation Camp" is by itself a novel idea, it was the "About" section on their website that really interested me and I also think pertains to what some of our classmates are focusing on in their ventures. The big idea, the website writes, is that the web has changed and will continue to change our lives in so many HUGE ways. They write about the evolution of social media and connectivity as well as the notion that the old top down structures of non-profits are failing to meet the needs of society. Thus, they claim, we are at a tipping point of sorts. Technology has become boring and therefore it has now ironically become socially interesting. However, due to inefficiencies and lack of incentives there is a mismatch between what technology supplies and what society needs. That is where the Social Innovation Camp gets its start and its mission.

The link to the About section is pasted below. I suggest, even if you read nothing else about the camp, to read this section. It is truly interesting, exciting, and beneficial topic for many of our classmates.

http://www.sicamp.org/about/the-big-idea/

What Foundations Can Do to Sustain Non-Profits

In the Q&A portion of Brett's presentation, he mentioned that he has not approached venture capitalists a channel for additional funding. Brett claimed that it's difficult for him to obtain funding from VCs because the social mission of a social enterprise often conflict with the bottom-line (i.e. the return on investment). The majority of OnlyInPGH's funding have come from grants, competition winnings, and family/friend contributions.

The reality of social enterprises is grim; you're restrained by current funding and there is no guarantee that you will obtain additional funding to further your venture. The idea of starting a social venture is ambitious and noteworthy, but it's sustainability that makes it worthwhile. What contributes to sustainability? The easy answer is money, but I would argue that money is necessary but not sufficient. Foundations that award social enterprises start-up capital need to invest more than just money. They need to invest in the social enterprise's organizational structure, by being more involved and committed in the development of its people, processes, programs, systems, operations, finances, etc.

The article "Virtuous Capital: What Foundations Can Learn from Venture Capitalists" provides a creative way of merging the social enterprise world with that of the private sector. [1] The article highlights certain venture capital practices which could be helpful in addressing the weaknesses of the current state of foundation funding. Here are some key insights:

• Risk Management: Foundations have significantly less risk than VCs when it comes to assessing the viability of companies. Foundations are considered "free spenders" and lack rigorous evaluative process to measure the performance of grantees. 
• Performance Measures: Unlike VCs (who measure performance based on financial ratios), it is harder for foundations and non-profits to quantify the improvement of their social mission.
• Closeness of Relationships: VCs tend provide extra non-monetary assistance to their companies, such as extensive coaching and mentorship. Additionally, some investors work closely with companies by sitting on the company's board and take an active role in decision-making. In contrast, foundations oversee the management of its companies but do not engage collaboratively.
• Amount of Funding: Both VCs and foundations provide limited funding to the companies they support. However, VCs tend to give out fewer funding to recipients as compared to foundations. The distribution of grants to a high number of recipients forces foundations to give out less than what they would like to any particular non-profit.
• Length of the Relationship: VCs engagements are usually 5-7 years. Foundation engagements are usually 1-2 years, at most.
• The Exit: VCs will normally have an exit strategy in which VCs will sell their stake in a company to investors. This exchange in ownership provides the company with additional funding for it to grow. In contrast, there is often no logical process for one foundation to succeed another foundation.

References:

1. Letts, Christine, et al. Virtuous Capital: What Foundations Can Learn from Venture Capitalists. Mar-Apr 1997. Harvard Business Review.

Dream Ice Cream coming to East Liberty soon!

I recently heard about a cool social enterprise set to open this spring. Check it out here:
http://dreamcreamicecream.weebly.com/

I thought it might be particularly relevant for Amy as both a potential means of fundraising and marketing (if you are here over the summer) and a cool model to perhaps borrow from for aspiring entrepreneurs on campus.

I propose a class field trip to this site if it opens on time! :-)

Two of my favorite TED talks about rural innovators

http://www.ted.com/talks/bunker_roy.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/anil_gupta_india_s_hidden_hotbeds_of_invention.html

Enjoy,
Sangeeta

Text to Change (project resource for Cynthia)

Thanks Sangeeta for posting the useful money transfer resource for me. Cynthia, I'm paying it forward to you. I came across this 'Text to Change' video that I think is relevant for your project (although with different goals in mind): http://www.designother90.org/cities/solutions/text-change

The site I found it on, 'Design with the other 90%',' is a follow-up to the 'Design for the other 90%' curated forum. Both are really interesting and inspirational project platforms for all of us to check out.

Enjoy!