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"The Long Tail of Social Entrepreneurship"
Published November 22, 2008 @ 08:20AM PST
We've been having a great debate around the question of whether social entrepreneurs are too obsessed with this notion of scale. Some of the interesting and important points that have come include remembering that different types of social enterprises (nonprofit vs. for-profit, fair trade vs. a different industry) have different needs and constraints and that scale is not a monolithic term.
Some of my favorite comments were those of Nick Temple of the School for Social Entrepreneurs. His basic message was that when we talk about social entrepreneurship, we shouldn't just be talking about the stars of the movement but should recognize the local and regional social entrepreneurs. Nick actual has a great presentation on "the Long Tail of Social Entrepreneurship" that's specifically about just that:
Slides 6 and 7 are the most important in my book. In them he lays out the Benefits and Risks/Critiques of focusing on the head (the stars of the movement with the opportunity to scale and use resources more efficiently, avoid repetition etc) and the tail (the local and regional programs and models that don't have the intention or capacity to scale). These specific bullet points are a far better place from which to start the conversation.
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Author
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Nathaniel Whittemore
- Evanston, IL
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Nathaniel is the founding Director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, which works annually with hundreds of students in dozens of countries around the world through curricular programs and student project incubation.
In free-software world some projects are being forked, which means they get duplicated by a group of people at some point and head for other directions. This makes an evolutionary process where to good projects flurish and the bad ones disapears.
If social enterprises would be transperant in a way that people could learn from mistakes or good practices, then I suggest that duplication as a long tail is not such a bad idea.
Posted by Eyal Levin on 11/22/2008 @ 11:28AM PST
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I agree Eyal, I think there's a lot more impact to be had when we increase transparency
Posted by Nathaniel Whittemore on 11/22/2008 @ 11:31AM PST
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I think this also speaks to the needs of intermediaries - or honest brokers - as Matthew Horne calls them. www.innovation-unit.co.uk/images/stories/honest_brokers_final.pdf
Can we increase efficiency among social enterprises by consolidating things they don't want to do or don't do well? Could there be a CEO for many organization who helps with issues related to incorporation, filing, governance and business models and let others do what they do best?
Sage Centre in Toronto is doing some interesting work in this area but it is just the tip of the iceberg. http://www.sagecentre.org/
Anyone else have any models that are working well and that we could learn from?
Posted by Allyson Hewitt on 11/22/2008 @ 12:17PM PST
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I agree that while it is good to have highly visible social entrepreneurs, the issues we have to resolve in the world (poverty, diseases, financial and environmental crisis, etc...) are so big that the only real hope is if everybody jumps in to contribute to the change. This means that we should try to turn EVERY entrepreneur into a social entrepreneur: the local painter doing his bit to pollute less, or to help the local school with their handicap program. The heroes that do not make the front page cover but make a real difference.This is why I am pushing for everybody to adopt the Vindex (http://www.venyo.org/content/?help=what_is_vindex), so that they start thinking differently about what they do. A small thing (less than one minute to setup) but a huge impact because then you have a number you can track, and try to optimize. And it helps you make the right decision when you wonder how you should go about something. Will this increase your Vindex?I got mine (http://mdangear.venyo.org) and I hope you will get yours (https://www.venyo.org/signup/).
Posted by Marc Dangeard on 11/22/2008 @ 10:05PM PST
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Ditto to what Marc says above, the personality culture and perhaps a narrow media view of social enterprise obstructs those tackling fundamental issues. Here in the UK we see most of the funding go to those beating the drum or for one form or another.
Now on the subject of scale, I'd like to mention microfinance because as a social enterprise that's where we started, by thinking in terms of a city scale application. I make the case that microcredit simply made available in a scattergun approach to eliminate poverty has limitations. How many small retailers can a given location tolerate in the same kind of business?
To leverage the Tomsk initiative in Siberia, our founder made the case for indentifying new business opportunities and creation of new industries and the need for information to set up business and find new markets. The result being 10,000 new businesses over a 4 year pilot with > 99% repayment and survival rate. I'd therefore argue for a district wide holistic approach in contrast to the often competitive efforts we've seen in some regions from NGOs.
http://www.p-ced.com/projects/russia/
In 2004, 6 months before their annual confererence in the Year of Microfinance, I wrote to the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Microfinance offering a presentation on this success. They had no interest.
We advocate scaling up nationally now in Ukraine because there is a national need and we can make the case for full cost recovery and more by applying the same model.
http://www.p-ced.com/projects/ukraine/national/
Now something very interesting is happening right now as a spontaneous interest in co-creating business in the USA just hit the Daily Kos community. As I write 1,000 have gathered so far. Here again, we might make a case for a national strategy for both inforrmation and economic inclusion.
http://kossacksnetworking.ning.com
Jeff
Posted by Jeff Mowatt on 11/23/2008 @ 12:16AM PST
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As an afterthought, I should add that perhaps I may have given the impression of advocating only large scale operations. So I should add that in the national scale strategies I describe above there is strong emphasis on what we alway advocated, localised people-centered economics. In this case, in the order of 25,000 village managed community broadband installations, which yeild more than full cost recovery to support national scale childcare reforms and problems which to-date seem outside the reach of politics and development aid.
Jeff
Posted by Jeff Mowatt on 11/23/2008 @ 01:51AM PST
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