Aakriti Agarwal

1

Word Count: 1995/PIN: 10742 “Co-operate Social Responsibility” Social entrepreneurship is an innovative, social value-creating activity that can occur within or across the nonprofit, government, or business sectors. While virtually all enterprises, commercial and social, generate social value, fundamental to this definition is that the drive for social entrepreneurship is primarily to create social value, rather than personal or shareholder wealth. In the process of creating this social value, there are many hurdles faced by company leaders. They are confronted by confusing landscape of conflicting demands, rapidly evolving rules, and changing opportunities for finding the resources they need. This can easily lead to "mission creep"—the random accumulation of new goals and tasks as the organization follows funding (rather than its mission)—or to "mission shear"—direct and consistent pressure that pushes the organization systematically away from its mission and toward other interests.

This staying on mission and building an effective organization to carry out the mission requires a clear strategic focus and a well-developed strategy backed by well-aligned operations. In order to achieve this clear focus, it is important for nonprofits to be know what they are claiming to accomplish.

Externally, it is useful for funders and other constituents to whom the nonprofit is accountable to understand the organization's intentions, so that they can determine in advance whether they want to offer their support, and then assess after the fact whether the organization is making progress to determine whether they want to continue to offer their support.

Internally, it is important so that people working within the nonprofit have a clear idea of concrete goals that the organization is saying it will achieve, because this will help them figure out what actions to take, motivate them to make greater effort, and encourage them to find new approaches. It will also allow them to determine which actions they are now taking (or might take) that are not aligned with achieving these goals. The greater the clarity about key goals, the higher the likelihood that the actions we are taking are going to be highly productive, efficient, and on target—and the higher the likelihood that we will be able to learn, over time, how to do better.

At the same time, it is observed that one can’t really prepare for turmoil, we just have to adapt to it. This is a tumultuous time, and nonprofits are always embedded in an environment of rapidly evolving challenges and opportunities. So they always need to be adaptive. First and foremost, this means that they need to maintain "situational awareness"—a grasp of the key elements of their environment. Second, it means that they need to rethink their approaches—severing themselves from things that used to work, inventing things that will work now. Third, they have to implement change—constantly. So today's tumultuous world may be a bit more tumultuous than usual, but what nonprofits need to do is what they always need to do: learn and adapt.

Aakriti Agarwal

Global Initiatives Symposium in Taiwan 2009

Aakriti Agarwal

2

Adding to the above, it can also be observed that with increased standardization of both products and production processes, what is more important is not ―what‖ you do, but ―how‖ you do it. The technology and skills are now available to anyone with enough initiative and start-up capital to produce standardized products. It is therefore no longer the quality or price of a good that will differentiate a producer in the market. A larger premium is now placed on the softer skills of human interaction and personal relations. Responsible conduct is becoming increasingly important, and what is needed is to synthesize, integrate and innovate – and in an original and ethical way. With the above challenges, it is necessary that social entrepreneurship is considered not just a tool to create social change, but there is also a need for innovation. There is a need for development of new conceptual frameworks and strategies tailored specifically to social value creation. So, what kind of entrepreneur will succeed in this new world? I propose that she who excels in this new global world is not a ladder climber – one who understands and manipulates office politics. Rather, it is a connector – one who understands the power of a network. Business ambition, I believe, should not be understood in terms of a hierarchy of command, but in terms of a web. The network has no hierarchy. It has no fixed structure, or rules or way of doing things. It is in constant flux, making it more versatile and adaptable than a fixed structure. In the network it is not possible to coerce; one needs to induce. Some people are able to create more and stronger connections than others. It is in these pockets of dense and strong connections that influence carries the deepest and furthest. Power gravitates to these areas. Moreover, this network approach requires leaders to focus not only on management challenges and opportunities at an organizational level, but also more broadly on how to mobilize resources both within and outside organizational and sectoral boundaries to create social value. So, if a social player needs to be successful she needs to know how to build a strong network around her. This can only be done through truly connecting with others. These connections cannot be faked, when swapping business cards at ―networking events‖. They need to be real. If the link is not based on an authentic connection, the web will break as soon as it needs to be used to induce action. For truly strong, reciprocal bonds to form there needs to be trust between people; and to be trusted one needs to show integrity. In short: the best players in the game of global change need to be really nice guys, able to connect with a diversity of people and who live authentic, value-based lives. Nice guys really do not finish last. The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association (GDBA) chief executive, Geraldine Peacock used an innovative network approach to achieve tremendous mission impact by mobilizing resources and building capacity beyond GDBA's immediate control. The organization worked with other nonprofits, government agencies, and private sector groups as equals, to build a network of long-term, trust-based relationships to deliver on the mission. We can therefore, see that successful networks depend upon a willingness among all participants to invest significant resources (not just financial), relinquish control, and share recognition with their partners to advance the mission, not their organizations.

Creating a culture of learning and seeking co-operative advantage

Rethinking of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Social Entrepreneurship

3

Entrepreneurs should use elements of the new ecology—especially connection, multiplication, and reflection—to learn in new ways: from evaluation, from communities, from grantees, from each other, from academic institutions, from the growing industry of professionals with expertise about philanthropy itself, and from other types of information intermediaries. If social change’s core strategic advantages are enduring ones, the new ecology has opened up a new source of advantage that is as important as it is underutilized. Social change works in an increasingly interconnected environment but still conceptualizes its role according to a long history of independent action. That, in fact, is the new paradox of modern society: the scarcity of connections (of many kinds) in a more powerfully connected age. Changing that will require letting go of some of the most precious assumptions of recent years, especially around the meaning of strategy. The strategy literature, borrowed from business and in some cases from the military, has, at its core, the presumption of success in competition. But the entrepreneur’s goal isn’t victory over others, and strategies imported from competitive industries that focus on identifying and exploiting a niche must be adapted to an environment where differentiation may be more of a liability than an advantage. The search or scan that precedes your giving should focus on looking for connections as well as the ―white space‖ or empty arena to occupy. Sometimes it will be best to work to amplify what others are already beginning to do; sometimes it will be best to do the new thing that no one has yet done. It will depend. The default option should be to find, trust, and support the part of the system that holds the most knowledge or is making the most progress in the arena that you care about. If the knowledge or the movement absolutely doesn’t exist in the work of current nonprofits or funders, then create it. In other words, rather than seek competitive advantage, entrepreneurs should develop their cooperative advantage—the advantage that comes uniquely from working in concert with others, developing the capacities to harness resources beyond any single institution, and applying them to complex problems. In the new ecology, it may make as much sense to identify a useful network and join or incubate it, as to seek a distinctive niche and occupy it. Once the challenge or opportunity sits in the middle of your strategic sights, you can begin to see how various actors fit into more sustainable, integrated solutions, rather than focus solely on improving a single organization’s response. To start to find and benefit from seeing and making new connections, review your strategy and consider these questions: Who’s already doing it? In light of the multiplication and diversification in the field, your starting assumption should be that someone is already doing, or has done, whatever you want to do, somewhere, at some time. That means you do not have to make the same discoveries and mistakes that have already been made; you can make new ones. Are there grant making associations, affinity groups, or other infrastructure organizations that you can plug into? It may be that those doing what you want to do are not in your town or region, or that they are using a similar model but not in your subject area. Then the alignment could be around knowledge and learning. But if you are interested in a goal that is already being addressed at the level at which you want to address it, and then consider how to combine or coordinate, not fragment or compete. That cooperation could take a number of forms—and increasingly does—as our seeds of change discussion illustrated.

Global Initiatives Symposium in Taiwan 2009

Aakriti Agarwal

4

Who are your allies and who could be your allies? Look for allies in many places, from the most obvious to those that aren’t obvious at all. Allies aren’t necessarily restricted to funders like yourself. Individual donors, institutional funders, and corporations all can be important potential partners. And with continued reductions in government funding for social issues, state and local governments are likely to be open to partnering with private sources. Where are the intersections? One of the gifts of entrepreneurship can be breaking through the confines that trap most of us in class, discipline, or sector. As you do so, you will find the growing intersections that exist within diversity. Few problems can be solved in isolation, and increasing numbers of issues can only be addressed by reaching across existing boundaries—of organization, sector, culture, place, class, race, discipline, and identity. The result would be a truly virtuous circle, in which the more individuals and institutions make good choices and contribute to the health of the whole, the more the health of the whole can support and sustain good choices among the individuals. Conclusion

Significant changes are occurring in the field of social enterprise, including major developments in the flow of funding, growing but often untapped philanthropic resources, and a shift in the role of government, as well as new social investment models and impact measurement tools. All of these phenomena are occurring against a larger backdrop of demographic and market change as boundaries blur among the traditional nonprofit, for-profit, and public-sector silos. Currently, the sector remains on the brink of several possible futures, including consolidation, entrepreneurial growth, and expressive experimentation. The scenario that unfolds over the next 20 years will depend largely on the ability of social enterprise leaders to make a leap forward in thought and action to capitalize on the abundant potential for social change.