HarvestWISE:Harvesting Wisdom for Innovation & Social Entrepreneurship

http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/docs/aspen%20network%20of%20development%20entrepreneurs/ANDE_SGB_BACKGROUND_ANALYSIS_JULY_2008%5B1%5D.PDF

http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ1.htm

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/Innovation/Market_rebels_and_radical_innovation_2292

INDIAN INNOVATION SYSTEM Perspective and Challenges

Who Benefits from Promoting Small and Medium Scale Enterprises? Some Empirical Evidence from Ethiopia

The Addis Ababa Integrated Housing Development Program aims to tackle the housing shortage and unemployment that prevail in Addis Ababa by deploying and supporting small and medium scale enterprises to construct low-cost housing using technologies novel for Ethiopia. The motivation for such support is predicated on the view that small firms create more jobs per unit of investment by virtue of being more labor intensive and that the jobs so created are concentrated among the low-skilled and hence the poor. To assess whether the program has succeeded in biasing technology adoption in favor of labor and thereby contributed to poverty reduction, the impact of the program on technology usage, labor intensity, and earnings is investigated using a unique matched workers-firms dataset, the Addis Ababa Construction Enterprise Survey. The data are representative of all registered construction firms in Addis and were collected specifically for the purpose of analyzing the impact of the program. The authors find that program firms do not adopt different technologies and are not more labor intensive than non-program firms. There is an earnings premium for program participants, who tend to be relatively well-educated, which is heterogeneous and highest for those at the bottom of the earnings distribution.

Small Enterprise Growth and the Rural Investment Climate: Evidence from Tanzania

This paper analyzes characteristics of nonfarm enterprises, their employment growth patterns, and constraints in doing business in rural Tanzania. Using unique survey data, the authors describe a low-return sector struggling to compete in a difficult business environment. However, about one-third of rural enterprises are growing fast. Most enterprises engage in agricultural trade. Due to a rapidly growing agricultural sector in recent years, limiting demand-side constraints, rural enterprise constraints in Tanzania mainly operate from the supply side. This suggests that, in particular, access to finance, road infrastructure, and rural cell phone communication is correlated with employment growth. A major finding is that subjective and objective measurements of business constraints are broadly comparable. The authors discuss a number of factors that would help to unleash the full potential of private sector-led growth in rural areas. The findings show that marginal improvements in the rural investment climate matter for growth.

Social entrepreneurship research: A source of explanation, prediction, and delight

Social entrepreneurship, as a practice and a field for scholarly investigation, provides a unique opportunity to challenge, question, and rethink concepts and assumptions from different fields of management and business research. This article puts forward a view of social entrepreneurship as a process that catalyzes social change and addresses important social needs in a way that is not dominated by direct financial benefits for the entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurship is seen as differing from other forms of entrepreneurship in the relatively higher priority given to promoting social value and development versus capturing economic value. To stimulate future research the authors introduce the concept of embeddedness as a nexus between theoretical perspectives for the study of social entrepreneurship.

Case Studies in Social Enterprise

The term social enterprise was created by the American non-profit community in the 1970s, which began to create and operate their own businesses as ways to create job opportunities for the disadvantaged, homeless and other at-risk people. The idea is that a nonprofit business venture or revenue-generating activity can create positive social impact while operating with reference to a financial bottom line. Today, NGOs understand that only by establishing an independent means of support, can they continue to fulfill their mission. An NGO’s new vigor and growth enables it to provide and expand vital services to its constituents and members while moving the organization toward self-sufficiency.

Case Studies in Social Enterprise: Counterpart International’s Experience explains: (1) social enterprise, (2) its importance as a developmental tool in emerging economies around the world, and (3) through four in-depth case studies in Ukraine, highlights the beneficial impact of social enterprises on the non-profit sector, families and communities. These projects were developed and implemented by Counterpart under a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development between 1997 and 2002.

Counterpart’s experience demonstrates that social enterprises have high potential as a nonprofit sustainability strategy in emerging economies where markets are underdeveloped and entry barriers are low. Comprehensive and well-structured programs like the Counterpart Alliance for Partnership, which complements business training with loans, advocacy and legal advice and networking, increase the likelihood of NGOs’ successful creation of sustainable social enterprises that will achieve both financial viability and social impact in the long term. Counterpart’s social enterprise methodologies provide the tools and inputs that assist their NGO participants in their business activities. With Counterpart’s assistance, NGOs have successfully established or expanded their income-generating activities and, at the same time, are meeting their organizational mission.

Mirage at the Bottom of the Pyramid – How the private sector can help alleviate poverty

Poor people – at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) – represent a very attractive market opportunity. The ‘BOP proposition’ argues that selling to the poor can simultaneously be profitable and help eradicate poverty. This is at best a harmless illusion and potentially a dangerous delusion. This paper shows that the BOP argument is riddled with fallacies, and proposes an alternative perspective on how the private sector can help alleviate poverty. Rather than focusing on the poor as consumers, we need to view the poor as producers. The only way to alleviate poverty is to raise the real income of the poor.

Investigating social entrepreneurship: A multidimensional model

Social entrepreneurship is an emerging area of investigation within the entrepreneurship and not-for-profit marketing literatures. A review of the literature emerging from a number of domains reveals that it is fragmented and that there is no coherent theoretical framework. In particular, current conceptualizations of social entrepreneurship fail to adequately consider the unique characteristics of social entrepreneurs and the context within which they must operate. Using grounded theory method and drawing on nine in-depth case studies of social entrepreneurial not-for-profit organizations, this paper addresses this research gap and develops a bounded multidimensional model of social entrepreneurship. Implications for social entrepreneurship theory, management practice, and policy directions are discussed.