Defining Social Enterprise

One of the main questions floating around the summit was one I discussed a short while back, i.e. 'What is a social entrepreneur?' In part this was because one of the three pitches didn't really seem to fit the unspoken definition. You might say the definition doesn't matter, but it does because social enterprises, and startups in particular, need both new policy and funding models to prevent their social goals being overridden by business imperatives.

Pushing profits from an enterprise into non-profit areas, or simply doing charitable work alongside running an enterprise didn't really seem to go down well as social entrepreneurship; which I personally think is a fair point. Philanthropy already exists as a way of life and having a social conscience or running ethical businesses is great, but still not the same thing.

What makes 'Social Enterprise' different to what's gone before is the new trend towards the use of corporate principles to drive enterprise robustness in what was traditionally a non-profit and charity dependent space. Like many others I feel this is a positive move as long as it doesn't compromise the primary goal of making the world a better place.

The hierarchy of importance here is clearly on the social rather than financial connotations of the term that comes from entrepreneurs being traditionally associated with the singular business of making money. The term 'enterprising' in its essence however is about finding workable solutions in challenging situations, and maybe this is the definition of the entrepreneur we ought to be focusing on.

My Definitions of Social Enterprise:

Social entrepreneurs are people who create and implement innovative and independently sustainable solutions for addressing social issues.

Social enterprises then can be defined as "Enterprises effecting positive social change, independently and sustainably."

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Do you believe you are a social entrepreneur and does this definition makes sense to you? Comment and let us know!

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Dummies Guide to Startups - Research 101

"Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work!" - Thomas Edison Continuing from the last post, lets focus on Research for a minute. Market Research is finding out about who else is in your space, what they're doing, how they're doing it, and how they stack up against each other. It is about checking to see if there's any demand for what you're offering and which bits of it your audience will really like. At it's simplest Research for startups is about:

• Segmenting (categorising) your competitors and audience
• Looking for trends
• Reading, reviewing and making notes - Online vs offline
• Capturing both qualitative and quantitative information
• Running Questionnaires, Surveys & Interviews
• Group discussions with stakeholders
• Subscriptions to research houses – Datamonitor, Forrester, Mintel
• Subscriptions to blogs and news related to your idea

Outputs usually include:

• Copied and pasted text and links from the web
• Mind maps - scribbles on paper
• Outlines and overviews in Word
• Comparison tables in Excel
• Screenshots with observation notes in Powerpoint
• Visual Diagrams - always a good bet if you can think that way!
• Stats and Graphs for the more ambitious
• The more reference material you have, the better your analysis will be.

I'd recommend using a tool to manage your notes - Evernote or OneNote, or something like Google Docs or Keep which is always available anywhere online or via mobile, and maybe a bookmarking tool to keep track of interesting links and stuff you may want to go back to one day.

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