1. UPDATESIRGUPDATE October, 2012 Taiwan (satellite image to the right) was formerly known as Formosa. It was named Beautiful Island by Portuguese sailors who sighted the island and were enraptured by its beauty. Social Innovation Research Group Newsletter Contents Oct. Highlights 1. What Makes a Good Ecosystem - Reza Mirza 1. Attended Global Social Innovation 2. Categorizing Market-based Solutions by Forum in Singapore as SIP Scholars Financial Flow - Wendy Pan 2. Attended CEO Club conference in 3. The Next Wave of Social Innovation - Melinda Taiwan with Net Impact Jacobs 3. Conducted eld visit to Guang Yuan 4. Scaling without Losing Social Impact - Remi Social Enterprise in central Taiwan Kanji 4. Delivered seminar at Net Impact 5. Resolving the Tension Between Marketing and NTU introducingour project Social Impact - Remi Kanji 5. Visited the Commerce Development 6. Insights by Social Entrepreneurs, SIRG Research Institute of Taiwan Interviews in Singapore - Wendy Pan 7. Failure Column: The Ups and Downs of a Flat Hierarchy - Reza Mirza 8. Scaling Social Enterprise: balancing doing well with doing good - Melinda Jacobs 1

2. What Makes a Good Ecosystem?SIRGUPDATE October, 2012 Insights From Taiwan By Reza Mirza Cut back to a year ago, before dumplings and porridge off around the world. KPMG became staples in my diet. Before I ew to Taiwan to map out identied huge successes in the social innovation landscape, I was in San Francisco India, Sweden has opened working for a digital innovation agency. A brief call with public-private hospitals, and Joseph Wong, a mentor and former professor changed all that. theres the Canada Line rapid transit system. And its no Who gives up an opportunity to research a burgeoning eld surprise, private-public companies have been shown to be with the capacity to change the world while on a tropical more protable than purely public enterprises and have even island? Not me much to my mothers chagrin. been attributed to the Taiwan Miracle, its period of rapid industrialization[4]. Its ironic that despite its speckled history, Taiwan has a thriving third sector. Speckled might be a tame way of During a Taipei entrepreneur meet-up we attended, there describing the authoritarian regimes Martial Law, which was an exchange that was telling of the gulf between the severely limited the autonomy of civil organizations. However, governments mandates and its actions. The organizer of the in the early 90s (just a few years after the lifting of Martial event attempted to introduce a special guest from the Law) Taiwans non-prot sector saw the development of Taiwanese SMEA (Small and Medium Enter prise commercial approaches and revenue generating arms[1]. Administration). Ive never seen someone try so hard to refuse (Thats another interesting fact our eld work and literature an introduction as this mumbling fellow. Finally after some review has revealed about Taiwans social enterprises: theyre prodding, the government representative discussed some less market-driven and often revenue-generating non-prots. ministry programs available to entrepreneurs, but exclaimed [2]) that not enough people are aware of those services. Its funny that the representative didnt connect his disinterest in The Taiwanese Ministry of Interior pegs the number of connecting with the community with his ministrys failure at registered non-prots at over 60,000 and near 5000 for social marketing of their programs. enterprises. Its no accident that the non-existent SE sector has grown so rapidly in a decade. Inspired by a EU program to This is in stark contrast with Silicon Valley. Like many, I develop the third sector, the Taiwanese government followed was drawn to the Valley by its technology sector. This reverse suit and in particular supported non-prots creating jobs for brain-drain sustains the Valleys dominance, but doesnt target groups transforming many non-prots into social explain how it came to be. The answer is that Silicon Valley enterprises [3]. wouldnt exist without cooperation by public and private institutions. Top research institutions like Stanford and Heres an interesting case study: while visiting Taipeis CalTech won lucrative military contracts from WW2 to the famous hot springs, we learnt our spring was a private-partner Cold War that funded high-tech research[5].And to this day, partnership. The beauty of such an arrangement is that public Mayor Ed Lee of San Francisco regularly engages with tech resources are kept public and protected while still promoting companies as he did with faberNovel, my former employer. competition and innovation. Instead of a single Minister of For Taiwan to sustain its rapid growth and become a social Hot Springs dictating how the springs are run, an individual enterprise hub, it needs to hasten its dialogue with its third- entrepreneur runs it. And unlike government ofcials, the sector to bridge the existing chasm. entrepreneurs livelihood depends on the success of the spring. Its not just Taiwan: public-private partnerships are taking To be published in the Guardian.co.uk. Top Left: Aerial view of Taipei in 1957 Top Right: Aerial view of Taipei in 2010 A look at the tangible aspects of the Taipei Miracle. 2

3. SIRGUPDATE October, 2012 Categorizing Market-based Market-based solutions for the marginalized groups Solutions by Financial Flow By Wendy Pan Social Enterprise In Monitor Groups report Emerging Financial Flow Categorization Examples Markets, Emerging Models, market based solutions (MBS) to the challenges of global poverty were listed and analyzed. The article Revenue The marginalized group as iHealth, , discussed the two main challenges faced by consumers Grameen Bank, todays policy makers: categorization of Aravind Eye Hospital MBS and measurement of their impacts. The marginalized group as Cost of Goods Sold , Below is a process graph for my analytical producers (Leezen), Shokay model that seeks to provide a framework to categorize MBS. Gross Margin If an MBS connects with a marginalized group by offering it a product or service, it serves the marginalized group as its Expense The marginalized group as Motherhouse, employees customers. The MBS entity sells goods or ,Swan Bakery services to the group in exchange for proceeds. This MBS generally benets the Net Income/Profit marginalized group by giving it access to a product or service it had no access to before, The marginalized group as or by supplying the customer the goods or Profit Division a profit beneficiaries ELIV, B1G1, Toms services at a lower cost. Shoes If an MBS entity sells goods produced by the marginalized group without hiring Made by Wendy Pan, a researcher at the Social Innovation Research Group (SIRG- TW) them as employees, the entity is engaging the marginalized group as producers. The marginalized group works independently and After categorizing market-based could choose to interact directly with the solutions into four buckets, one can expect market without the MBS. The MBS entity evaluations and bench marking to be done often acts as an agent and links the producers in more systematic ways. One potential way to a larger market. The marginalized group to evaluate a social innovation is to look at usually benets from secured access to the how many categories its business model ts. market. The MBS entity gains cost The more categories it ts the more social advantage by utilizing excess capacity such as forces it engages, the higher degree of land, labor or local expertise from its nancial integration it has with the producers. community. If an MBS engages two If an MBS entity employs members of a marginalized groups as its producers and consumers, it integrates the marginalized group, the marginalized group marginalized groups better than an MBS that engages one group only as participates in the market by fullling their consumers. obligations as workers of the MBS entities. This model also opens door for benchmarking between two MBS The entity thus creates employment entities that fall in the same category. For instance, if two MBS employ two opportunities and sources of income for the marginalized groups, we could compare the two entities employee expense group in exchange for loyal employees (and to gross margin ratio. In this way, one can clearly see what percentage of potentially good PR) by contributing to a the entities gross margins are being paid out to marginalized groups. social cause. Another example would be if two MBS entities selling products to two If an MBS entity makes a marginalized different marginalized groups, we could compare the price discounts of group beneciary of the entitys prots, the their products and multiple that by their sales volumes to reach a MBS usually falls in between a social conclusion on which entity has a deeper discount or a larger scale. It is enterprise and an NGO. The marginalized highly possible that the more an MBS integrates a community to the group gets access to free resources without market, the higher its impact and sustainability. As the next step of the going through the market exchange process. research, we will look into collecting more cases to test this categorization The MBS entity would gain good PR simply model. for doing good. 3

4. SIRGUPDATE October, 2012 Even experts use the word collaboration as if it comes with a user guide. Perhaps it would be more eective to focus on identifying a mover with the capacity to bring all relevant and eective parties, none more dominant than each other to the table Left: Participants during a workshop at GSIF2012: Inclusive Innovation. By Melinda Jacobs. The Next Wave of Social Innovation where they have an excess of non-nancial resources, like land and human capacity. Cyber connectivity is a new layer By Melinda Jacobs of connectivity on top of centuries of connectivity over At the Global Social Innovators land, sea, and sky. Singapore remains a predominant Forum Imagineering the passage way for goods moving by sea, and short and long haul ights, although economically inaccessible to some, Future, ve speakers postulated on what a future of social criss-cross the world like never before. Assessing the innovation would look like. sustainability of these types of connectivity, and creating Together, the panel sought to globally accessible infrastructure is the current challenge. dene what a future marked by Increasing mobile Internet access is already forming inroads in many emerging economies, and will likely serve as a new more inclusive innovation would look like, and provide a platform for social innovation. framework for understanding its future potential. The audience was urged to visualize what physical and Although there is no doubt that social innovation has global connectivity would look like in a society of inclusive innovation. Some of the ideas were: recently gained more prominence as a concept, its lack of concrete denition has left it perhaps blankly associated with More telecommuting. There is a lag between the ability positive virtues. Unfortunately the panel did little to rectify to connect and the practice of doing it, as telecommuting the gap between a theoretical and actionable understanding currently depends on where you are and what sector you of social innovation. I like to dene social innovation as work in. There will still be brick and mortar - social functions novel or unique delivery methods or inventions that solve the worlds most pressing problems, and will use this will be preserved. This is paralleled by the rise of e- denition here. commerce and the need for new service delivery. Which goods will remain local and social, and which purchasing Parag Khanna, Director of the Hybrid Reality Institute, will be done online? Banking will change. It wasnt stated how, but it will! posited that in the next decade, the process of globalization will be complete. However, unlocking the capacity of places Technology will continue to shape how people interact. where money remains to be a secondary unit of account remains a market failure how can we sell to places that do Even experts use the word collaboration as if it comes not use money? How can buying power be created? How with a user guide. Perhaps it would be more effective to focus on identifying a mover with the capacity to bring all can capacity be built when it lies in illiquid assets? James Fierro, CEO of London based Recipco, believes that for any relevant and effective parties, none more dominant than large scale innovation to take place, all relevant and effective each other to the table (as rst suggested by James Fierro). partners, none more dominant than another must be at the Identifying who has the capacity to spark and sustain table. In his view, this includes the creation of new units of collaboration within and between sectors and social issues is surely one way to begin creating inclusive innovation. account that look and function like money. New access to means of connectivity will help bridge The Global Social Innovators Forum took place October 18 and global prosperity gaps, and bring resources to communities 19 in Singapore. 4

5. Risk MitigationFASHIONMONTHLY 2 October, 2012 Scaling with Social Impact By Remi Kanji Today we met with the Commerce Research TOMS and Development Institute, a Taiwanese think tank has tried to nd studying ways in which Taiwanese business can be communities that successful both on the island and abroad. They can better benet outlined the case of 85 Coffee, a Taiwanese coffee from their products by partnering with Giving and cake shop attempting to scale abroad. The Pa r t n e r s . T h e s e o rg a n i z at i o n s h ave t h e company had chosen a relatively smaller market responsibility of working with communities to ensure (Australia) rst before moving into larger Asian children are given shoes that are the correct size, and markets by deliberately choosing not to scale that shoes go to communities that can benet from immediately, 85 Coffee was able to understand and them. However, this has led to a new source of address the challenges of operating outside of controversy as they have largely managed to attract Taiwan. If they made mistakes in the Australian the support of evangelical organizations who deliver market, it would not stop their expansion before it shoes with an agenda. Outsourcing shoe provision is started. The idea for expanding in steps rather than nonetheless a smart move, as TOMS does not have in one rapid scaling process is good for a startup, the capacity to both identify charitable sites and allowing it room to make mistakes and iterate. manufacture and market shoes. However, had the Despite the allure of nancial sustainability organization not scaled rapidly, perhaps it could through scaling, social enterprise should allow room have been more selective in who it chose as a giving for mistakes as they scale. Take TOMS, an partner. The organization is currently distancing organization that has donated over 2 million pairs of itself from former evangelical partners, likely in shoes to communities in the Global South since its hopes of attracting a broader range of support. inception in 2006. The company operates on a Buy While I have moral misgivings with TOMS that One Give One model, and consumer demand for extend beyond problems resulting from its rapid the shoe and its associated charitable impact has expansion, I wonder whether the organization would been substantial. But the companys growth has also have greater social impact had it scaled in steps. As a been extremely rapid. In 2011, they expanded their smaller organization it is easier to identify and team, doubling it to 160 people. By 2012, 2 million address challenges and critically examine impact, people and counting had bought the shoes. There is iterate, and improve. As an organization that has likely some human capital strain on the startup. recently grown larger, these problems become more Moreover, the company has been donating to challenging to solved, and are compounded by communities that are not a good t for their product adjustments made to accommodate growth. While places where there are shoemakers providing a nancial sustainability is both alluring and service, where people already have shoes, and where important, so is social impact. A social enterprise the environment is swampy and muddy, unsuited to must fulll both its social and nancial missions, not TOMS canvas shoes. one at the expense of the other. Right: TOMS CEO Blake Mycoskie poses with a group of children that have just received TOMS shoes. By 2012, the company had sold over 2 million pairs, donating another 2 million a c ro s s t h e G l o b a l South 5

6. SIRGUPDATE October, 2012 Resolving the Tension Between Marketing and Social Impact By Remi Kanji Social business and charity working with many small- scale individual donors often faces a dissonance between their strategies for marketing and social impact. Take old- school Buy One Give One (BOGO) charitable organizations: they ask consumers to buy the product, offering to donate a matching item to someone in the Global South. On one hand, this was a powerful marketing message the object you were willing to buy for yourself would be given away to someone supposedly in need. On the other, the complexities of aid are being reduced to a simple value proposition to you, the consumer. Take a typical BOGO object, like a t-shirt or shoes. Buy a t-shirt you might buy anyways, and one gets donated to someone in the Global South. It seems like a win, because you have a new t-shirt and have performed a charitable act. But is a t-shirt the best use of your money? For a poor community in the Global South, facing challenges in employment, sanitation, and food, a t-shirt Left: has limited use. There are more effective donations. Masami Sato: Regular charity faces a similar problem. Studies have shown Founder of B1G1 people are more likely to donate to an individual, after hearing a personal story. By comparison, they are not as likely to support a more abstract project targeting a something and give something leveraging the effective community, because their individual contribution is not as marketing technique to support programs designed by non- clearly articulated. This is problematic good aid policy for prots that often have long-term relationships with targeted Southern communities is often complex and should not be communities. Corporations will often donate to a social contingent on its ability to translate into a simple message. cause related to their mandate take TNN engineering, a At the same time, strong marketing is what draws mining company that donates to environmental consumers or donors to invest in a project. reconstruction. As a result of connecting with B1G1, it is B1G1 is making improvements on BOGO reducing its environmental and social impact. while at a Singaporean conference on social innovation, By partnering with NGOs and focusing on my teammates had the opportunity to meet and interview the fundraising process, B1G1 has opened new sources of the cofounder. B1G1 is an organization encouraging revenue for NGOs (among other impact creating corporations to make CSR commitments to donate in organizations), which can in turn devote more resources to exchange for reaching benchmarks tied to sales. It reaches a generating impact instead of marketing. B1G1 and its social group of small to medium sized business owners who might partners each focus on their core strengths fundraising and not otherwise be donating, unlocking a new source of program building/execution, increasing impact as a result. funding for social change. B1G1 uses the same marketing The question is whether this constitutes advanced CSR or a messages as the original BOGO organizations buy new social business model.

7. Insights by Social EntrepreneursSIRGUPDATE October, 2012 SIRG Interviews in Singapore By Wendy Pan Interview Summary: To our surprise, many social Yes, failure, same as success, is a process. You entrepreneurs never thought they would become a social fail and succeed every day in various tasks. If entrepreneur one day. However, one thing they have in you view failure as a process, you wont be as common is the passion to go and make a difference. As business scared as some other people who stop pursuing owners, social entrepreneurs face challenges every day, from their dreams after theyve failed once. lack of nancial resources to doubts of their intentions from outside parties. Some ended up failing because of these Masami Sato, Founder, B1G1 challenges. Some conquered difculties one by one and achieved successes. Below are some of their answers to our locked. There I was, standing in a staircase with the building questions. shaking. I started to fear, what if I die today? I would have left Q. What prompted you go to get into this area? nothing to this world! I decided to start the Be-movement I started with a small consulting company and was very after this incident, hoping to make a difference for people and lucky to be staffed to consult many large enterprises. By doing organizations who care about the social good. Founder, Be- that, I met with many business leaders. I started to shift my movement focus to social enterprise because I saw opportunities in this Q. What was the biggest challenge in getting your eld. James Fierro, Chairman and CEO Recipco Holdings Ltd. enterprise started? There are many challenges we face at the start of our I had my frozen food business in Australia. One day, I was business. One of them is to gain support from governments and holding my daughter in my arms. Suddenly I thought, what philanthropists. We though as long as we made the product would happen to my child if I leave the world? This prompted free, they will be interesting in helping us and customers will me to give back to the children who lost their parents. At the sign up, but thats not always true. Government ofcials and start of my business, I was too busy and found myself not philanthropists sometimes doubt your intentions, and customer having enough time to give back to the community. One day I wont necessarily use products or services just because they are attended an entrepreneurship conference and introduced the free. Shane Hill, Founder and CEO, Skoolbo audience my business. A voice at the back of the room shouted out, Wow, thats buy one, get one. That was when the Buy 1 One of the challenges we faced is people were too busy Give 1 idea comes alive. Masami Sato, Founder, B1G1 doing multi-tasking when we were small. As a result, I decided to give people more focused roles based on their knowledge and It happened during the Japanese earthquake. I rushed to passion. It takes time to get to know my people, but it is a the stairs only to discover the exit door in front of me was worthy investment. - Veronica Gamez, Executive Director, Aidha Q. Failure is an integral part of the innovation process agree or disagree? I absolutely agree. For example, I once trusted a person with my business. It turned out to be a disaster. I ended up having to spend a lot of effort to put out the re. James Fierro, Chairman and CEO Recipco Holdings Ltd. Yes, failure, same as success, is a process. You fail and succeed every day in various tasks. If you view failure as a process, you wont be as scared as some other people who stop pursuing their dreams after theyve failed once. Masami Sato, Founder, B1G1 Concluding Thoughts: To our surprise, many social entrepreneurs never thought they would become a social entrepreneur one day. However, one thing they have in Above: The team hangs with Jack Sim, founder of WTO (World common is the passion to go and make a difference. As Toilet Organization), whos bringing sanitation to the global south. business owners, social entrepreneurs face challenges every day, from lack of nancial resources to doubts of their intentions from outside parties. Some ended up failing because of these Tond a list of social innovation organizationswe metat the Global S o c i a l I n n o v a t i o n F o r u m i n S i n g a p o r e , v i s i t h t t p : / / challenges. Some conquered difculties one by one and www.asiapacicreader.org/ achieved successes. Note: responses are not verbatim.

8. SIRGUPDATE October, 2012 Taipei at dusk. Photo by Melinda Jacobs. The Ups and Down of Flat Hierarchy The Failure Column You may have read about Valve in the WSJ, Forbes, or we found that making an individual accountable for Business Insider. Its a giant in the gaming industry that specic aspects of the project is key to ensure large makes more per employee than Google, Amazon and initiatives moved forward at a timely pace. (Indeed, Microsoft. Yet it has a completely at organizational even projects at Valve end up having leaders naturally structure, meaning they have no management. What arise.) So it seems that leaders even if not in the that means is: theyve been boss free since 1996, strictly traditionally are necessary. projects exist only insofar people decide to participate, and pay is determined by peer consensus. And Additionally, we realized the importance of continuous somehow its been wildly successful. feedback loops. We developed a regular reporting and response framework for the group, which keeps the Maybe thats why we thought it would be effective to group abreast of individual progress and keeps each have a at structure, but we soon realized wed be in for individual accountable to the whole. a ride. It can be a bumpy road when every decision requires unanimous agreement between 4 different Finally, to ensure the different aspect of the project people with different interests, goals and values. didnt end up in individual silos, we have group workdays where we can work on our projects but still Are we focusing on Aboriginal issues? bounce ideas off each other and collaborate. Being physically present makes a world of difference. Is research the end or the means to a larger project? These small changes have increased our motivation and How do we hold ourselves accountable and to whom? efciency markedly, yet were still iterating to nd the organizational sweet spot that balances autonomy and Youd think the fact that were all here because we have structure. extensive leadership experience would help, but youd be wrong. A team of four assertive leaders often leads to The Valve employee handbook says it takes new four distinct plans that can be tricky to align. employees 6-12 months to adjust to the at structure. Though I have a feeling that despite only being one Nonetheless, weve had our successes and have learnt month in, were already getting a handle on how to quite a bit about managing an organization. For one, make this work.

9. Scaling Social Enterprise: balancingSIRGUPDATE October, 2012 doing well with doing good By Melinda Jacobs At the recent Global Social Innovators Forum in "[...] unlike other businesses in the private Singapore, I attended a workshop by Bain and Co. sector, scalability is often not included at about the assessment of social enterprises from the the core of social enterprise model design. perspectives of doing well, the ability to be nancially To maximize the do good, many focus on sustainable and doing good, the mandate to create social value. It was proposed that social sector customization to local contexts instead. enterprises often feel bashful about their desire for Unfortunately, the most customized market leadership, and do not adequately consider the solutions at the local level can ultimately benets of scale. However, the imperative to design be the most difficult to scale." -Leo Praesen scalable models is just as salient in the social sector as the private sector, and the balance between doing compromising on doing well or doing good, as part well and doing good is an important goal for any of the local customization process. organization in achieving maximum impact. Social enterprise is thus tasked with engraining As the representatives from Bain pointed out, there social value into industries and often models that were are many ways that scalability can deliver on both do designed without a mind to social impact. Doing so is a good and do well. Scale reduces costs to the big, daunting challenge with more barriers to scalability consumer, which can be an inherent good in itself, while than the relentless pursuit of only nancial value. also potentially creating higher margins and higher Approaching either do well or do good in isolation prot. Some amount of scale is fundamental in risks compromising on one of the two values: to do delivering value to the consumer. well without a mind to do good could create a sustainable model, but one where the social value exists However, unlike other businesses in the private externally to the core value proposition of the sector, scalability is often not included at the core of organization. In contrast, organizations that do good social enterprise model design. To maximize the do before doing well often struggle to move from one good, many focus on customization to local contexts business model to another, and compromise both do instead. Unfortunately, the most customized solutions at good and do well in the process. the local level can ultimately be the most difcult to scale. In weighing the balance of these two mandates, I believe that any social enterprise relies on their ability to Going global is not a problem isolated to social do well enough to continue doing good. Social enterprise, but one that exists with more nuance than in enterprises need to preserve their ability to deliver in competing, non-social enterprises. Where many social their local environments through nancial sustainability enterprises are designed to alleviate specic and before focusing on scalability and adaptation. localized needs, immediate markets may be too small or overseas markets too removed from the core value In social enterprise, there really is no one size ts proposition to be scaled without considerable all. When looking to scale a social enterprise, how can adaptation. Expansion may not be the answer for some the do well and do good components grow social enterprises because of the likeliness of together? Photo on left: Artist Tim Hamons of Art of Awakening shows off his mind map of the days session. Photo on right: Event MC Paul Dunn speaking to the crowd. Photos by Melinda Jacobs.