Over the last few years, as I have spent more time studying the impact of social enterprises and looked to understand how to maximize the impact of entrepreneurs who hold an issue of society, environment, or economy at their core, I have begun to understand that the future of social entrepreneurialism is VERY different today than what it will be in 5 years from now.
At present, if you take a survey of the products and services that are currently on offer, it does not take long to understand that many (if not most) of these organizations are small, struggling to survive, and that for all the resources being devoted to these entrepreneurs, a serious discussion of impact is beginning to take place. Finally.
Which leads me to the slide deck above, social enterprises and technology, that I delivered to an audience that included 30 of China’s leading technology schools last week.
In studying the various models that exist, and overlaying those models with the issues themselves, what I am beginning to see is that the opportunity for scale is going to come not through the development of products or services that are consumer based, but are going to be products and services that are system based. Products and services that are not meant to mitigate, or work with, issues that are faced, but to create systems that will solve problems, change lives, and in the process, be profitable. Hopefully, very profitable.