World Economic Forum: Where will the “Household Names” in Social Enterprise come from?

World Economic Forum: Where will the “Household Names” in Social Enterprise come from?

The priming ideas come from millions of social entrepreneurs who are stepping forward. Working on  their own or with philanthropic and sweat equity, these efforts are testing solutions designed to bypass broken policies and systems (or anti-systems in many cases.)

Picture: Helge V. Keitel, KK-Net, Sotkamo, Finland (2013)

Why aren’t the big players flocking in to scale these enterprises that are solving problems and could be doing so profitably when they reach scale?

Experimentation now consumes the reallocated investment,  beginning with select innovators funded to test and learn alongside “go to market” partners who already have testing infrastructure in place.

With this vision, companies shift from passive sponsors of competitions to active innovators. Conversations are no longer about the role of the corporation as donor and customer. The real market creation levers for most corporate partners come from any of five possible roles:

• Innovator/Tester
• Integrator
• Capacity Builder
• Marketer
• Distribution Innovator

Focusing on these critical roles aligns the social enterprise with the corporation and enables bi-directional leaning and capability building from the best talent and assets of both organizations.