Changing the world seems like an overwhelming task but new ways of approaching this are becoming more successful and gaining traction. Social Impact venture building is a relatively new approach on how to tackle the most difficult problems that people face in their daily lives, such as unemployment, food security and the impact of pollution.
Foundations, Aid organisations and NGO’S are the usual channel to bring about social change, and these rely on donations from private individuals, companies, and governments to meet their impact goals. Quite often this aid economy results in incredible good but creates a cycle of dependency on aid.
Venture Building is a new approach that merges this aid economy on one end and entrepreneurship on the other, bringing the best of both to have the most impact on real issues that affect people daily. It starts with the premise that in order for issues to be solved sustainably their solutions have to be aligned to the market. Social impact venture building is an approach that first identifies a social issue to tackle, designs commercial solutions that do social good, validates them then delivers interventions with the power of entrepreneurship.
Here are 5 ways that Social Impact Venture Building can change the world:
Diversity.
It offers the aid economy a new way of reaching their impact goals using an approach similar to the old adage that begins ‘teach a man how to fish…’ By deploying multiple approaches to these large issues, it is more likely to reach better outcomes.
Reach.
It has greater reach via the entrepreneurs as they know the precise problems that affect their hyper local communities and can aid in the design process to reach solutions that will work.
Sustainable.
How many times have we heard of projects that become abandoned after 3 to 5 years? Using entrepreneurship at its core, there is a stronger incentive for solutions to be sustainable, and thus provide a platform for scale.
Lean.
Inspired by lean principles typically seen within the entrepreneurship community, it takes a phased approach that only grows in cost and scale once solutions show promise. Doing so enables only validated proven concepts to be fully implemented.
Inspire.
At its core it desires to inspire replication so that any entrepreneur around the world can take a concept already proven and implement it for their local context.
Social Impact Venture Building is changing the world as we know it.
I would love to hear from you and your views on how to change the world together.
Hi Elzine! Thank you for inviting us into your world – this is such an important topic and I can’t wait to read more about it. I’d be interested to know what your take is on some of these failed investments/investors.
Hi Oli, yes venture building is a great way to change the world. Projects and programs often fail because of a lack of funding or operational support. I am happy to discuss this further with you.