Social innovation: Good for you, good for me

Big firms are joining the queue to follow in Muhammad Yunus’s footsteps by developing businesses designed to fix social ills.
Muhammad Yunus has for more than 30 years challenged business leaders to find radical ways of creating new markets in poor countries. The Nobel Peace Prize winner’s latest book, “Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism”, is no less ambitious. It explores how big companies can invest in external partners to develop products and services that will benefit the poor.

Yunus outlines the concept of a “social business”, which he defines as a “no loss, no dividend” company with social objectives. Social business ventures are set up by a “social entrepreneur”, such as Yunus, who combines the risk-taking of enterprise with an explicit mission to address urgent problems, such as access to healthcare, sanitation, education and so on. The new products and services that these inventive individuals devise are examples of “social innovation”.

Unlike charities, social businesses do not need to keep applying to governments or foundations for grants. They support themselves by selling goods and services at cost, or at a small profit – all of which is reinvested to fund their expansion. But to do this, social entrepreneurs must find investors willing to help take a new idea to scale.

Now multinational companies are emerging as an important source of funding for social innovation. Big companies are looking for exciting and potentially lucrative new ways to meet their sustainability goals.

Read the whole text at Ethical Corporation

Business Game

Want to try building a sustainable and responsible business? On the website of British Telecom you can try out if you have the right analytical skills to do so, go here: Business Game
You need flash player but the game doesn't take too long, so have fun playing!

Cheers, Sarah

Business at the Base of the Pyramid

Hey everyone,

last week I had the chance to assist at an event organized by Compromiso Empresarial that brought together researchers and case studies from companies that are working with the "Base of the Pyramid" - BOP (yes, there's lots of acronyms also outside of AIESEC :-)). The BOP is being constituted of 4 billion people all over the world who earn less than 4 Dollars a day. This huge amount of people usually encounters the following obstacles if they want to buy basic goods and services:

• Price: prices are artificially high, for example because there exists a monopoly and not a competitive market
• Quality: Companies don't produce products of a high quality for "poor" people
• Access: low-income consumers usually don't have access to the same range of products as high-income consumers

Different companies that are doing business in the BOP presented their cases, they were:

• Adopem, a microfinance bank from the Dominican Republic
  
• Procter and Gamble, manufacturing products for the BOP market since 5 years, presenting it's challenges and solutions in Colombia.
  
• Codensa, an energy retailer which presented its activities in Colombia
• TIA-Multiahorro, an Equatorian retailer
  

"All these four presenters offered their insights into what had been the most important factors for their respective businesses in allowing them to succeed. Factors common to all four cases are well-known to NextBillion.net readers: knowing the customer, accessible products, products and services adapted to meet BoP needs and with a pricing structure that allows purchasing by BoP customers."

source: thenext4billion.net

If you're interested in the statistics, where do these people live, what do they spend their money on, etc. you might be interested in a publication by the World Resource Institute called "The Next 4 Billion". On the website you can find more information around the concept of the Base of the Pyramid as well as interesting articles on other topics related to the concept and especially around Social Entrepreneurship.

Saludos, Sarah

Intrapreneurship

Do you think being entrepreneurial only means setting up your own business? Is there room for entrepreneurs inside other organizations? Have you heard the term "intrapreneurship"?

"Intrapreneurship is the practice of entrepreneurial skills and approaches by or within a company or at home. Employees, perhaps engaged in a special project within a larger firm are supposed to behave as entrepreneurs, even though they have the resources and capabilities of the larger firm to draw upon. Capturing a little of the dynamic nature of entrepreneurial management (trying things until successful, learning from failures, attempting to conserve resources, etc.) is claimed to be quite valuable in otherwise static organizations.

An Intrapreneur is the person who focuses on innovation and creativity and who transforms a dream or an idea into a profitable venture, by operating within the organizational environment. Thus, Intrapreneurs are Inside entrepreneurs who follow their founder’s example."

Source: Wikipedia

First Learning Circle AIESEC Cantoblanco

AIESEC in Cantoblanco (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) did on November, 29th its first Learning Circle within the Empren-D Project. 10 of us got together to talk about entrepreneurs and their characteristics.

Here are the outputs - some ideas that were mentioned:

Proyecto EMPREN-D

Un CÍRCULO DE APRENDIZAJE consiste en un debate sobre un tema de interés común que tiene por objeto el aprendizaje a partir de los distintos puntos de vista de los asistentes.

El Miércoles 29 estuvimos hablando de ¿qué se necesita para ser emprendedor?

Estas fueron nuestras opiniones:

- CREAR UNA EMPRESA con el objeto de LLEVAR A CABO TUS PROPIAS IDEAS.

- También se puede ser emprendedor dentro de una gran empresa---> empresarios buscan personas emprendedoras

("Busisness angels" empresas que buscan el punto de encuentro entre "ideas innovadoras" y financiación)

- Importancia de conocer los "factores fracasos". Para quién esté interesado, este es un buen libro para estar al día sobre el tema:

El libro negro del emprendedor, Fernado Trías de Bes
En este link encontrareis un breve resumen: http://www.leergratis.com/otros/el-libro-negro-del-emprendedor.html

- Un buen emprendedor debe asumir riesgos.

- Emprendedor es aquel que VA POR DELANTE AL RESTO.

- Sentimiento de seguridad: trabajar para otros nos hace estar más seguro, mientras que asumir responsabilidades nos hace ser consciente del riesgo de la toma de nuestras decisiones, pudiendo crear más inseguridad.

- Responsabilidad se diluye entre las personas.
(ej: varias personas pueden estar viendo un acto de maltrato en medio de la calle y pensad: "ya hará alguien algo" y que nadie haga nada...esto se debe a que la parte de responsabilidad que tiene cada persona es tan pequeña que todo el mundo esperara que "el otro" haga algo).

- Crear una empresa con baja financiación, a través de una buena idea.
(ej: "conduzco por ti": personas que te llevan el coche a casa después de que tú te hayas tomado unas cuantas copillas y no veas ni tres en un burro. Los conductores se desplazarían en bicis facilmente plegables para guardar en el maletero de los coches)

- Para ser emprendedor es necesario que te APASIONE TU TRABAJO.

Según una encuesta estas son las 3 CARACTERÍSTICAS para ser EMPRENDEDOR:

• AUTOCONTROL (fuerza de voluntad, asumir propias responsabilidades)
• AUTOCONFIANZA (sentirse capaz)
• SENTIMIENTO DE URGENCIA (proactividad)

We hope you enjoyed reading, feel free to comment, and tell us about your own learning activities!

AIESEC UB - About entrepreneurs!

The project Empren-D is a national initiative of AIESEC in Spain that also takes place in the University of Barcelona committee. Eight of its members joined on Friday, 14th of December to have a little chat about what an entrepreneur mean, what qualities does he or she has and what should that person do in order to develop an entrepreneurial activity.
The brainstorming led to this definition: an entrepreneur is a person who knows how to satisfy the necessities of others taking advantage of opportunities that he or she foresees in the near or far future. The entrepreneur always brings new ideas in his wish to start new projects or fund new companies, as he or she is always permanently looking for new objectives and challenges.
The entrepreneur is a very complex person, who knows how to find answers to questions, to solve problems, to see things where the rest of the persons do not, to create a necessity in the market that only his or her ideas could satisfy. However, such a person is taking risks all the time, jeopardizing the final outcome of his or her work.
In the same time, the entrepreneur has to be very creative, innovative, organized, self confident, persistent, self aware, ready to sacrifice at any moment for the dream he or she has and the things he or she believes in.
In relation with others, the entrepreneur is a real negotiator and also seller. He or she has to get into contact to many people who could facilitate his or her work and realization of project that he or she undertakes, and persuade them participate in the production of or help the entrepreneurial product to develop.

All the best friends! Until the next time AIESEC UB comes with the outcome of their work, have a wonderful holiday, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Emprendimiento Social Juvenil - The current state in Spain

Last week the Observatori del Tercer Sector (An independent and non-profit research center specialized in the third sector. Its aim is to increase and extend the knowledge on the sector and to work for the improvement of the non-profit organizations management) and the Bertelsmann Foundation organized a seminar about Young Social Entrepreneurs. They invited AIESEC to represent the voice of young people who are interested in social issues and who are entrepreneurial.

It was very interesting to hear the different participants views on what's the current situation of Young Social Entrepreneurs in Spain, and what their ideas are to foster Social Entrepreneurship amongst young people. The other participants were representatives of youth councils (Consejos/Institutos de Juventud), university representatives that are providing support for entrepreneurs in their schools, representatives of different NGOs that integrate young people in the society and also an Ashoka Fellow, Jean Claude Rodriguez who founded the NGO "Desarollo Comunitario". Jean Claude is also an AIESEC Alumni from Barcelona and has participated before in AIESEC Events, hopefully you will be able to meet him once personally because his passion for his work is definitely inspiring. (In the video below from Ashoka he tells more about his organisation)

Some of the ideas that came out of the discussion were the following:
- What's missing is a culture of participation, or of contribution to society amongst young people, and people aren't encouraged to be entrepreneurial either. So both entrepreneurial initiative and social engagement should be encouraged more.
- Entrepreneurial characteristics and awareness about social issues should be more included in the education of young people.
- Existing projects and entrepreneurs should be better known, so as to motivate young people to engage themselves
- There's a general confusion around the definition of Social Entrepreneurship: is it only social engagement? Is it making NGOs more professional? Is it creating more companies that care about society?