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• Invest2Innovate: Addressing the Disconnect in the Social Enterprise Space

  Jocelyn Ling 1:06 pm on November 26, 2011 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: BottomOfPyramid (4), empowerment, impact (17), social enterprise (2), social finance (7)

  *The post below was orig­i­nally pub­lished on http://www.socialearth.org on Nov 25, 2011

  
  In the social enter­prise world, one key issue that con­stantly resur­faces, as it would in any grow­ing sec­tor, is one of fund­ing and iden­ti­fy­ing a proper invest­ment pipeline. The acces­si­bil­ity and  avail­abil­ity of start-up fund­ing is cru­cial to star­tups, and in the case of social enter­prises, a largely untapped mar­ket. Here’s whereInvest2Innovate (i2i) comes into the pic­ture. They are a social enter­prise inter­me­di­ary that sup­ports the growth of social entre­pre­neur­ship in new mar­kets, help­ing fun­ders and early stage entre­pre­neurs see eye to eye.

  I had the oppor­tu­nity to con­nect with Kalsoom Lakhani the founder and CEO of i2i to inter­view her about her recently launched social enter­prise. A trail­blazer and native to Pak­istan, Lakhani launched i2i’s pilot in Pak­istan in Sep­tem­ber 2011 with plans to expand oper­a­tions to other coun­tries post 2012. Here’s what she has to say about her startup and the space:

  1) What is most inter­est­ing to you right now in the social enter­prise space? 
  There are many inter­est­ing inno­va­tions tak­ing place right now – from ground­break­ing SMS crowd-mapping tools to agriculture-based inno­va­tions for small farm­ers. Inno­v­a­tive tools & approaches of engag­ing and empow­er­ing low-income com­mu­ni­ties are com­ing up con­stantly. But I’m also extremely inter­ested in the growth of the impact invest­ment space, and where we are right now in terms of the com­mu­nity as an emerg­ing asset class, whether or not this type of invest­ment breeds bet­ter social impact met­rics, and whether the cap­i­tal is flow­ing to the right places. There are still a lot of spaces we need to fill when it comes to con­nect­ing cap­i­tal to social enter­prises, par­tic­u­larly at the early-stage, and it’s inter­est­ing to see how crowd-funding and other inno­v­a­tive ways of rais­ing cap­i­tal are becom­ing poten­tial solu­tions to help fill that gap.

  2) Why start up i2i? Why is this the time to enter into the mar­ket? 
  i2i was launched in order to help address some of the dis­con­nects in the social entre­pre­neur­ship space. Prior to launch­ing the com­pany, I worked in ven­ture phil­an­thropy for over three years, pro­vid­ing seed fund­ing and sup­port to early-stage social enter­prises mainly in Pak­istan. I was first exposed to the “space” then, and quickly immersed myself in all things social entre­pre­neur­ship & inno­va­tion. It has been fas­ci­nat­ing and moti­vat­ing to see grow­ing ecosys­tems in mar­kets like India, Latin Amer­ica (Mex­ico, Brazil, Chile are good exam­ples), and East Africa. Beyond higher access to cap­i­tal (a lot of impact investors oper­ate in these coun­tries), we’ve seen the growth of other play­ers that fur­ther sup­port social enter­prise – incu­ba­tors, accel­er­a­tors, gov­ern­ment poli­cies (in some cases), inter­me­di­aries, etc.

  

  i2i was founded to take a sim­i­lar ecosys­tem approach in the “untapped” mar­kets – that’s a lot of jar­gon I know, but essen­tially we pro­vide tai­lored ser­vices to early-stage social enter­prises to grow their busi­nesses and con­nect them to cap­i­tal. Pak­istan, our pilot mar­ket, is a great exam­ple of a coun­try where there is a sig­nif­i­cant need for more inno­v­a­tive and market-based approaches to devel­op­ment – 66% of the pop­u­la­tion live on under $2 a day – but where the envi­ron­ment for social entre­pre­neur­ship is rel­a­tively new. Entre­pre­neurs often lack the tools & ser­vices to max­i­mize the poten­tial of their mod­els and attract cap­i­tal, espe­cially in mar­kets like Pak­istan, where the volatile polit­i­cal and secu­rity sit­u­a­tion hurt the investor envi­ron­ment. There is a lot oppor­tu­nity for i2i, as an inter­me­di­ary, along with other part­ner orga­ni­za­tions, to be the archi­tects of the ecosys­tem, fos­ter­ing the social entre­pre­neur­ship space both from the top-down and the bottom-up.

  3) What is the biggest mis­con­cep­tion you see in the world of social enter­prise and where do you stand on the issue? 
  I think the biggest mis­con­cep­tion in social enter­prise is that it’s ok to stop at the “warm & fuzzy” and throw the term around irre­spon­si­bly. It dri­ves me crazy. Social enter­prise ulti­mately com­bines the best of the busi­ness and the char­ity world – it begs the ques­tion, “Could we mag­nify social impact if we take a busi­ness approach to devel­op­ment?” Social entre­pre­neur­ship is not the solu­tion to every­thing, but in some cases, it can be really effec­tive. For instance, if rural low-income com­mu­ni­ties that are off the elec­tric­ity grid use kerosene as their light and heat source, not only is it a costly prod­uct, but it poses ter­ri­ble health and envi­ron­men­tal ram­i­fi­ca­tions. Dis­plac­ing this demand for kerosene with clean energy solu­tions pro­vides these low-income com­mu­ni­ties with bet­ter alter­na­tives at com­pa­ra­ble prices, ulti­mately con­tribut­ing to poverty alle­vi­a­tion. Social enter­prises need to demon­strate social and/or envi­ron­men­tal impact – that is what tends to qual­ify the “social” in the equa­tion, but at the end of the day, they are busi­nesses that need to have strong mod­els and be sus­tain­able in the long-term. Some­times that gets lost in the “warm & fuzzy” sto­ries we hear in the space, which are great in com­mu­ni­cat­ing an organization’s vision and build­ing a com­mu­nity of sup­port­ers, but there needs to be sub­stance behind that story.

  4) What is one action would like peo­ple to take once they know if i2i? 
  If you are a social enter­prise, espe­cially in Pak­istan (since that is our pilot), get in touch with us to get an assess­ment of your busi­ness and how i2i can pro­vide ser­vices (from busi­ness devel­op­ment to communications/marketing) to help your orga­ni­za­tion grow. If you are a poten­tial investor (both for i2i and/or inter­ested in early-stage enter­prises in new mar­kets), we’d love to talk to you! And finally, if you are just a sup­porter, we are always excited to hear your feed­back and make our model better.

  ***

  Kalsoom is a the founder of invest2innovate based in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. She is a co-ambassador for Sand­box, a global net­work of inno­va­tors under 30, and is also a mem­ber of the World Eco­nomic Forum’s Global Shapers.  She has writ­ten for the Wash­ing­ton Post, the Huff­in­g­ton Post, Foreign Pol­icy, and Pakistan’s Dawn Newspaper. Get in touch: klakhani@invest2innovate.com.
   

• Why I Believe in Social Entrepreneurship

  Jocelyn Ling 12:46 am on August 1, 2011 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (17), education (7), empowerment, impact investing (10), motivation (9), personal (9), world (12)

  Have you ever been asked a ques­tion that sim­ply stops you in your tracks…creating that lump in your throat that results in you awk­wardly star­ing at a per­son for what seems like eter­nity (but really was only per­haps 30s)? I have. It wasn’t that the ques­tion that was unex­pected. Only my response. I thought the answer would be at the tip of my tongue, ready to pro­vide that sweet ele­va­tor pitch… but my words splut­tered and died before I had a chance to arrange them into coher­ent thoughts.

  The ques­tion that caused this sur­pris­ing reac­tion was: why do you believe in social entrepreneurship?

  My brain raced through the rea­sons, each rea­son fol­lowed by what seemed like a giant red sign that screamed CLICHE.

  I believe in a human cen­tred mar­ket based solu­tion to poverty. Cliche.

  I believe in mak­ing the world a bet­ter place and leav­ing it bet­ter than when I’ve found it. Cliche.

  My back­ground and jour­ney has led me to believe in the power of entre­pre­neur­ship. Cliche.

  I come from a fam­ily whose lives have been changed through entre­pre­neur­ship. Cliche.

  I stum­bled into this field unknow­ingly. Cliche.

  Social entre­pre­neurs are the key in unlock­ing the levers of change. Cliche.

  Entre­pre­neurs have the abil­ity to cre­ate and imag­ine. With sup­port and direc­tion, they can be the change we wish to see in this world. Cliche.

  In my head, my emo­tions quickly churned from alarm to frus­tra­tion. Why was it that I couldn’t explain my Why? Was it because I didn’t under­stand my rea­sons, or per­haps was it because I couldn’t find the words to say? Why do these rea­sons seem cliche? Per­haps peo­ple have overused them and they have lost their meaning…and then the ques­tion becomes: how do you do then con­vey any one of those rea­sons with sin­cere belief? After all, how can you cap­ture pas­sion and belief in 30 sec­onds. In a para­graph even. It doesn’t seem to even do it justice.

  About a year ago, I wrote a post on the beauty of imag­i­na­tion. Although I still believe this rea­son to be true, I couldn’t quite get the rea­son of imag­i­na­tion to fit within the social enterprise/international devel­op­ment piece of my beliefs. It seemed to be miss­ing a piece.

  Truth be told, I was then sud­denly mes­mer­ized by the fact that per­haps, just per­haps my rea­son WAS the com­bi­na­tion of all those cliches. And more. After all, isn’t our under­stand­ing of the world a lim­i­ta­tion of what we have expe­ri­enced and inher­ited knowl­edge? Maybe my pas­sion is a com­bi­na­tion of a math­e­mat­i­cal sequence of expe­ri­ences (I like to think so!):

  1) I grew up painfully aware of poverty and socio-economic oppression

  2) My family’s story changed because of entrepreneurship

  3) Hard work and a stranger’s faith in see­ing my poten­tial allowed me to con­tinue my edu­ca­tion in Canada

  4) I unknow­ingly stum­bled into this field through a “less-than-perfect” vol­un­teer pro­gram through my university

  5) Tip­ping point: Work­ing with a women’s group in Lesotho ignited an under­stand­ing that iden­ti­fy­ing change levers in a com­mu­nity can change lives

  6) Through­out busi­ness school, I have devel­oped a nat­ural bias towards a mar­ket based solu­tion to solv­ing problems.

  There­fore: 7) Giv­ing peo­ple the oppor­tu­nity (just like it has been given to me) to cre­ate and imag­ine a bet­ter life is the key to cre­at­ing a bet­ter world. A human-centered mar­ket based solution.

  Social entre­pre­neur­ship shakes up our com­pla­cen­cies by chal­leng­ing how we place value on social and eco­nomic urgen­cies. It spins us round in two ways at once: it shows us the sights and social val­ues that we might ordi­nar­ily ignore; but it also, and more deeply, shows us parts of cap­i­tal­ism that have grown rusty and need changing.

  So what is my answer you might ask? For now, I will have to set­tle for a com­bi­na­tion of cliche answers, my sequence of expe­ri­ences and that nag­ging voice at the of my head telling me that it is the right thing to believe in.

  I’ll be sure to check in with my answer again as my under­stand­ing of the world con­tin­ues to grow!

   

• Designing a better world - together

  Jocelyn Ling 11:11 pm on July 6, 2011 | 4 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collaboration (8), design (5), empowerment, impact (17), innovation (8)

  I just spent the last 3 hours play­ing around OpenIDEO and it is absolutely fas­ci­nat­ing. Seri­ously. To the point that I lost track of time just read­ing con­cept after con­cept, explor­ing the inter­face and past chal­lenges. I had signed up in August last year, but never really got around to sit­ting down and tak­ing a crack at it. But now that I have… I really don’t know what I was wait­ing for!

  OpenIDEO is an online crowd­sourced plat­form “where peo­ple design bet­ter, together for social good.” It’s a beau­ti­fully designed con­cept which high­lights 5 prin­ci­ples — inclu­sive, community-centered, col­lab­o­ra­tive, opti­mistic and always in beta. My favourite prin­ci­ple is the last one because it really reflects con­tin­u­ous learn­ing, improve­ment and evo­lu­tion. Some­thing which most plat­forms do not tra­di­tion­ally announce — usu­ally plat­forms aim to be out of beta mode, sig­nalling “per­fec­tion.” It is founded by IDEO, a design and inno­va­tion firm that lever­ages design think­ing  to help orga­ni­za­tions inno­vate and grow.

  I love crowd­sourced plat­forms,but here’s why OpenIDEO really stood out for me:

  1) Lis­ten­ing — there’s some­thing to be said about com­mu­ni­ties design­ing for other com­mu­ni­ties. It has a low bar­rier to entry and your expe­ri­ences and input can help shape a bet­ter con­cept. Alot of crowd­sourc­ing plat­forms are one way high­ways rather than two ways. I appre­ci­ate the open­ness of the plat­form where I can sim­ple “applaud” an idea to cre­at­ing a con­cept. My involve­ment is as much as I want it to be. Sidenote: thought I would share a really inter­est­ing info­graphic on a com­par­i­son of ques­tions asked to #askobama on Tues­day which breaks down the per­cent of ques­tions asked for twit­ter vs. jour­nal­ists. This dis­par­ity in ques­tions asked only goes to show how impor­tant lis­ten­ing is to what peo­ple want to know and need.

   

   

  

  Pic­ture credit: Info­graphic taken from boston.com

  2) Design — Of course! Great job to the team who designed this web­site. They paid such great atten­tion to detail to the point where you would even had a lit­tle heart next to the num­ber of peo­ple who had applauded your com­ment. Shar­ing the love via great design! 

  On a more seri­ous note on design though — I liked the fact that although there were sev­eral chal­lenges tied to a broader chal­lenge, the way the design was setup was so that con­cepts weren’t lost in the noise. Below is the cur­rent chal­lenge and we’re cur­rently in the con­cept­ing stage. The fea­tured con­cept ensures that the most pop­u­lar con­cept doesn’t just remain at the ‘top’ and the fil­ters at the bot­tom of the screen­shot ensure that each con­cept gets viewed. Get­ting proper expo­sure for each con­cept is impor­tant because I know sev­eral plat­forms that strug­gle to elim­i­nate the nat­ural bias of selec­tion by view­ing what you see first and foremost.

  

  3) Com­mu­nity — In a new plat­form, it really helps to have a frame of ref­er­ence on what to do. I really liked the fact they had a com­mu­nity tab that fea­tured their top con­trib­u­tors to the site. I was able to go into their pro­files and see what they have done and that def­i­nitely sped up my learn­ing process. OpenIDEO also inte­grated a design quo­tient into your pro­file, where it tracks pts on where and what you have con­tributed. I must admit it was very sat­is­fy­ing to see my points increase after con­tribut­ing to a con­cept. I now have 13 pts for collaboration!

  My only feed­back for the site at the moment would be in this sec­tion too. It would nice to expand the com­mu­nity sec­tion into one where I can search more than just the top con­trib­u­tors to the plat­form. The search func­tion on the RHS allows me to search for peo­ple but only if I know specif­i­cally who I want. It would be great to browse in what way peo­ple have con­tributed to the plat­form and con­nect with them. Although, for those inter­ested, there is an infor­mal  twit­ter list by one of OpenIDEO’s top con­tributer: @arjantupan/openideocommunity

  

  All in all, a great plat­form for an even greater cause. I highly rec­om­mend tak­ing this for a spin. If you do decide to cre­ate a con­cept, let me know and I would love to check it out!

   

• The World As It Is

  Jocelyn Ling 3:33 pm on May 1, 2011 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: empowerment, impact (17), Quotes (9), world (12)

   

   

  “Rebel­lion — which is dif­fer­ent from rev­o­lu­tion because it is per­pet­ual alien­ation from power rather than the replace­ment of one power stem with another — should be our nat­ural state. And faith, for me, is a belief that rebel­lion is always worth it, even if all out­ward signs point to our lives and strug­gles as penul­ti­mate fail­ures. We are saved not by what we can do or accom­plish but our fealty to revolt, our stead­fast­ness to the weak, the poor, the mar­gin­al­ized, and those who endure oppres­sion. We must stand with them against the pow­er­ful. If we remain true to those moral imper­a­tives, we win.

  I am enough of an ide­al­ist to believe that the strug­gle to lead the moral life is worth it.”

  - Chris Hedges, The World As It Is