Exploring issue-driven entrepreneurship

Issue-driven entrepreneurship towards a broader understanding

It has been a while since I last wrote, sorry for that. The past months me, my friends and teammates further discussed about the concept of issue-driven entrepreneurship. Input for the discussions where my blogposts and thoughts of the last year. I think we made a step forward. See for yourself and I am curious for you comments again. Here we go.

Making meaning!

One thing about issue-driven entrepreneurship is very clear for us. It is about passionate people that create triple bottom line value through innovative business initiatives. Issue-driven entrepreneurs feel familiar with the famous quote of Micheal Braungard: 'why doing less bad is no good.' Sustainability is not a side job or something for the Corporate Social Responsibility manager. Sustainability is at the very core of the issue-driven company and the entrepreneur. Issue-driven entrepreneurs stay true to this concept and their businesses are aimed at solving major social or environmental issues in a sustainable way. They make meaning as Guy Kawasaki would state it (google his video: 'The art of the start' its great!). They right a wrong or prevent us from losing something good.

Maximum impact without making financial loss

Issue-driven entrepreneurs strive to maximize their ecological and social impact and because they are 'entrepreneur' they don't like to make a financial loss. Traditional business concepts like top-down technology distribution and isolated R&D labs don't fit in this way of thinking. In the mind of the issue-driven entrepreneur Intellectual Property issues, profit maximalisaton and competition are therefore less relevant.

The issue-driven entrepreneur strongly believes in concepts such as: co-creation, open source business models, network economy and mutual inclusion of key stakeholders related to the solution of the addressed environmental or social issue. Issue-driven entrepreneurs dare to take risks and learn through trial and error. They often have discovered that linking together many hundreds or even thousands of individual brains, creative minds and living networks can highly increase their impact (e.g. the quality of the solution, public support, etc.). They address the talent and passion of individual people and show them that by combining forces we can make real meaning. The networks can exist by means of mutual personal or professional development and are not driven by profit maximalisation.

The drive to maximise their impact makes it that issue-driven entrepreneurs do not rely on subsidy to operate their core business (they might use subsidy to start-up their company) but explicitely choose to use a business model. They believe that by having a continuous motivation to add value to the market, both quality and innovation levels will go up and the impact of the issue-driven venue will be unlimited. Compare this to a subsidy model where the social or ecological impact is in most cases limited to the amount of subsidy provided to the executing organisation, quality of products and services are often below market expectations and innovation levels are in most cases zero.

Summarising our exciting discussions we have filtered four key values of an issue-driven entrepreneur:

·       Sustainable impact: striving for maximum social and ecological impact by aiming for scalable and re-useable business solutions and not making loss.

·       Mutual inclusion: a broad involvement of and with formal and informal stakeholders, including “unusual suspects” in the whole process from issue identification to implementation and improvement of solution.

·        Pro-active accountability: by sharing information, expertise, networks the issue- driven entrepreneur believes that he/she will create more value. Through a broad perspective issue-driven entrepreneurs are aware that their actions have impact on their surroundings and that they can be held accountable for their actions and promises.

·        Passion (from within): true passion for changing the game for the better of the collective will trigger innovation that can be radical or incremental depending on the context.

Pioneering
Within Enviu (www.enviu.org) we try to live the concept of issue-driven entrepreneurship and are pioneering in this field. We strongly believe that all our actions should contribute to create a tipping point where the existing economic system flips to a situation where our economy creates value for people and planet. Google is our inspiration. In a sense that the search engine is (in our opinion) big by being great! It changed the world for the better by focussing on maximising impact, content and using a minimum of resources. We want to become the Green Google.

De issue-driven ondernemer II

Mobieltjes, brillen en handtasjes maken de wereld mooier

Anita Roddick heeft de Body Shop groot gebracht door zich te verzetten tegen dierproeven. Zij startte net als andere ‘issue-driven’ ondernemers, een bedrijf vanuit haar hart. Hieronder een kleine greep uit de huidige generatie inspirerende ‘issue-driven’ ondernemers in duurzaamheid en armoedebestrijding.

Een prachtig voorbeeld is de Grameen Group. Het bedrijf van Muhammad Yunus geeft de allerarmsten uit Bangladesh toegang tot micro-financiering en mobiele telefoons. Op deze manier krijgt een grote groep mensen aansluiting op de gangbare economische systemen. Hij benadert het armoede probleem niet vanuit het perspectief: ‘hoe kunnen we deze arme mensen helpen?’ maar hij denkt vanuit de markt. Door zich de vraag te stellen: ‘Wat is van toegevoegde waarde voor de specifieke doelgroep en hoe kan ik dit vertalen naar producten en diensten. Een minder bekende ‘issue-driven’ ondernemer die een product voor deze markt aanbiedt is U-specs. Het bedrijf verkoopt een hippe ‘doe het zelf’ bril voor één euro aan arme bevolkingsgroepen met oogproblemen. Wereldwijd kunnen meer dan één miljard mensen slecht zien door onbehandelde oogafwijkingen. Het overgrote deel van deze mensen ontbreekt het simpelweg aan een bril om scherp te kunnen zien. De gevolgen hiervan zijn onder andere blindheid, wat vaak resulteert in het niet kunnen volgen van onderwijs en de vicieuze armoedecirkel in stand houdt. U-specs levert zo op een commerciële manier een oplossing voor dit probleem.

Andy Krumholz is ontwerper in de VS. Hij ontdekte dat een kleine groep Braziliaanse vrouwen in de sloppenwijken van Brasilia een bijzondere tas produceerde voor de lokale markt. De tas is gemaakt van de lipjes van cola- en bierblikjes. Andy hielp de vrouwen met het ontwerpen van een trendy tas zodanig dat het geschikt werd voor de Amerikaanse en Europese ‘mainstream’ markt. Het bedrijf van Andy en de dames is booming. Inmiddels werken er vijftig vrouwen die hun brood verdienen en hun buurt in de sloppenwijk meetrekken in een positieve vibe.

Het laatste voorbeeld is ontstaan vanuit het duurzaamheidsdenken. Zo wil het jonge bedrijfje de Sustainable Dance Club zoveel mogelijk dance clubs in de wereld op een eigentijdse en rendabele manier duurzaam maken. Over twintig jaar moeten zoveel mogelijk clubs een ‘zero’ impact hebben op het gebied van CO2 uitstoot, water, afval en zelfs energie (in de breedste zin des woords) teruggeven aan hun omgeving. Het project kijkt naar alle activiteiten die gebeuren in een club van drinken, flirten, dansen en naar het toilet gaan laat hier de duurzaamheidsgedachte op los. Een bekend voorbeeld van het project is de dansvloer die energie op wekt. De vloer vangt de trillingen van de dansende mensen op en zet dit om in energie om bijvoorbeeld de lichten aan te sturen.

De issue-driven ondernemer

Broedplaats voor issue-driven ondernemers

Issue-driven ondernemen is een aansprekend en uitdagend concept voor jongeren en sluit prachtig aan bij de trend van het praktisch idealisme. Enviu speelt in op deze trend en bouwt sinds 2003 kennis en ervaring op rondom dit thema. Enviu is een broedplaats voor jonge ‘issue-driven’ ondernemers. Het is een plek waar prille voortuitstrevende ideeen de ruimte krijgen en starters direct kunnen beginnen. Zij krijgen ondersteuning bij het ontwikkelen van hun business case, het vinden van een investeerder of het opzetten van een eerste pilot. Zo werken ze aan een nieuwe oplossingsgerichte manier voor het aanpakken van onze wereldproblemen.

Voor meer informatie over de issue-driven ondernemers genoemd in dit artikel en anderen, zie www.enviu.org

some delay in updates

Due to lack of time I am not able to regularly update my log. If you are interested in these and similar topics I can however recommend to visit this site: http://woutersinnovationspace.web-log.nl, which deals with very similar topics like sustainability, (open) innovation, sustainable entrepreneurship, contemporary roles of NGOs and all the links between these topics.”

Difference between CSR and issue-driven entrepreneurship

How is issue-driven entrepreneurship different to CSR minded management?

In short my opinion on Corporate Social Responsibility:
CSR mostly is about efficient use of resources in order to reduce the impact of a company on its external environment (biodiversity/society). CRS also entails employee volunteering and activities like corporate philantrophy. It is about reducing their companies impact on various issues (waste, energy, human rights etc.). CSR is an instrument for companies that mostly affects the overhead of the organisation, it will not change or hugely affect the core business.   

Issue-driven entrepreneurs build their business around a solution for a specific environmental or social issue. They develop a business model (earned income), have impact by contributing to the solution of an issue and are innovative. For instance, they develop new main stream products from waste (waste = food) or new business models for people that have no access to capital (Grameen Bank). Issue-driven entrepreneurs regard their contribution to a solution as their core business. Issue-driven companies of course can embrace a CSR policy to reduce the impact of their already sustainable core business.

Curious what you think about this? Cheers.

Enviu day about issue-driven entrepreneurship

Saturday the 28th of October Enviu organised an idea lounge gathering with the theme: exploring issue-driven entrepreneurship. With 40 young professionals and students attending we had a huge brainforce to explore the several cases.

Oriol Pascual from Onsustain gave an inspiring presentation about the Escama case and the group formulated two more issues (unsustainable export of used cars to low income countries and inefficient use of office space) before we started brainstorming.

All together we generated more than 200 ideas that were rapped up in three short presentations of each group.

Another great day! If you would like to join us next time just check the Enviu website.

Brainfood

• When are you satisfied with the impact of an entrepreneur and his/her contribution to a solution of an issue?
• When is something becoming an issue that is relevant for an issue-driven entrepreneur?
• When is a business model applicable to a sollution for an environmental or social issue?
• Are issue-driven entrepreneurs complementary to governments or are they partly replacing them?
• Does a business that solves a direct industrial waste problem aply for issue-driven entrepreneurship?

All questions that I am working on.

issue-driven entrepreneurship

Today is the day to further explore this for me new way of entrepreneurship.

What is Issue-driven entrepreneurship? For me it is:

Working in a professional way on profitable and innovative sollutions for social and environmental issues. Profit in this sense is not only defined as finacial value creation (scaling-up your company), but also as social value creation (e.g. more social equality) and positive contributions to the conservation of nature or sustainable management of natural resources.

The advantage in comparison to social or environmental entrepreneurship is that it covers both and in this sense might work towards a sustainable situation more effectively.

An issue-driven entrepreneur:

• Has ideas that emerge from chaos;
• Has goals that are based on the contribution to a solution for a social and environmental issues;
• Has a vision, ambition and leadership (the sustainable entrepreneur (personality) and his/her enterprise create synergy);
• Is driven by innovation and using this as a tool to come to solutions;
• Does business in a professional way;
• Is transparent and willing to share information;
• Believes that practice is leading;
• Works cross-sectoral, is innovative and creative in working together with other parties.

Towards a definition

In my opinion Sustainable entrepreneurs differ from established businesses or NGOs in having a practical business case for their contribution to a solution for a societal or environmental issue. This way they generate an income in order to take care of their own economic sustainability. Profit is not solely defined as financial value creation, but also as social and environmental value creation.

Environmental profit: financial sustainability for nature conservation, alternatives for polluting activities, less environmental impact, sustainable management of natural resources.

Social profit: positive social change, social and economic inclusion of minority groups.

I distinguish two main point of departures for sustainable entrepreneurship:

The first group of sustainable entrepreneurs is departing from the environmental pillar (planet) of the concept of the triple bottom line. This type of entrepreneurs is working on profitable solutions for environmental issues or nature conservation and does this within a social-economic framework. For example, the recycling of the in Indian slumps collected plastic waste into trendy products for the European Market, is directly contributing to solving a local waste problem and at the same time generates jobs, income and opportunities for social change as the local entrepreneurs gain experience and skills.

The second group of sustainable entrepreneurs departs from a social-economic (people) issue (e.g. reducing the gap between informal and formal entrepreneurship in medium or low income countries) and thoroughly integrate the environmental pillar within this process. For example, the facilitation of entrepreneurship within community based tourism programmes in general has a focus on the social pillar of sustainable development: social and economic inclusion of local stakeholders in regional development. I believe that by introducing an environmental friendly “mind style” and technical applications (renewable energies, waste and water management) are used within the local businesses can lower the impact of the pursued economic development on the local environment. Also considered within this category are the existing main stream companies that accomplish social goals in an environmental friendly way. Think of “Bottom of the Pyramid” business development.

Specific characteristics of sustainable entrepreneurs are:

-          Vision and leadership;
-          Contributing to a solution for an environmental or social issue;
-          Innovation as tool to come to solutions;
-          Doing it in a business and professional way;
-          Practice is leading.

Sustainable or social entrepreneurship often are concepts with different connations. Perhaps my definition of sustainable entrepreneurship should be called "issue-driven entrepreneurship!" Issue-driven has a positive vibe and covers the essence of what I mean!

Q&A

Important questions to get a little bit further on the topic might be:

1. who is the sustainable entrepreneur? (characteristics, values etc.)
2. what drives him/her?
3. what is he/she doing to make it profitable?
4. what activities is he/she taking forward?

I invite you to join the discussion! Cheers.

just some brainwaves

Yesterday, I had a meeting with some very interesting people from all over the place (Buthan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, France and The Netherlands). What really triggered me was the fact that we were like minded (critical, reflective and daring to ask uncomfortable questions) but coming from very different cultures and backgrounds. Thoughts about learning organizations, looking at development by looking at people and their competences/talents instead of geographic location, GDP or wealth position. These thoughts are, if you ask me, important for sustainable entrepreneurs.

Having a strong believe that every person has a talent, I believe that the secret to social and environmental development starts by revealing and triggering peoples talents. Finding and facilitate the enhancement of peoples strengths and capacities might be an important aspect for sustainable entrepreneurs to discover. Fons van der Velden of Context, international cooperation is my big hero and by listening to his vision of life I learned a lot about capacity enhancement and power of facilitation.

What about sustainable or social entrepreneurship?

Yesterday, during a drink with some friends I was confronted with the fact that the terms sustainable and social entrepreneurship are quite fuzzy and not well known.

After a few more drinks we made a first conclusion. For us sustainable entrepreneurship is about having a valid business case for a solution for an environmental or social problem (eg. plastic/glass waste in cities, water/energy problems in rural areas). So, innovative and sustainable approaches to benefit society at large (with an emphasis on those who are marginalized and poor) and our planet. We think that we are at the beginning of a new era where entrepreneurs will start defining profit not only as the hard money, but also as social and environmental value creation (here it is again: the people, profit and planet). Entrepreneurs like:
www.ragbag.nl
www.ciudadsaludable.org
www.onsustain.com
are pioneers that already work in this way.

I think it is a great challenge to further explore my view and perception of sustainable entrepreneurship, feel free to join us.