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Opportunity to Co-Author a Book Chapter on Leadership & Social Enterprise

I am working on a chapter for a book coming out this December on leadership and social enterprise. The book has been signed on by a major national publisher and will be in all major book stores in 2013. The target market is recent graduates and young entrepreneurs starting in leadership positions. The particular chapter in question is entitled "Revitalizing Organizations," i.e. turnarounds. Much of the content has been collected and written already; it just needs select additions and has to be edited to have a more formal voice.  

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1. What does social enterprise mean to you?

I view a social enterprise as any organization or project whose primary goal is to create positive social impact. This includes both traditional non-profit organizations and "social ventures" where the organization aims to both create social value and make money. The activities of many traditional businesses also lead to positive social externalities, but I don't classify them as Social Enterprise unless they view this is their primary goal. 

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On February 9, 15 HBS students piled into cars in the HBS parking lot to set off on the Education Interest Group’s career trek. We had an ambitious plan to visit three very different education organizations across Boston. Just as varied as the organizations we were visiting were the students on the trip – first-year and second-year students, former teachers and former consultants, and students from different parts of the world. All, however, were interested in learning more about careers in education.

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Innovations come in all shapes and sizes. Some are small and incremental while others change the incumbent way of doing things in radical ways. Incremental innovations help narrow the chasm along the adoption curve for more radical innovations, but radical innovations may be able to jump over the chasms on their own. But, are there scenarios where one ‘level’ of innovation is more appropriate than another? Are there industries whose structure and characteristic at a given period of time explicitly favor one over the other?

In the education technology industry, a plethora of solutions from digital content to education specific computing hardware have emerged over the past few decades, yet most of these solutions have gotten trapped into specialized computer labs. In order for a technology based solution to be successful in the classroom (specifically K-12) it must be able to replace paper and ink while being as seamless and easy to use as paper and ink. Neither students nor teachers should have to invest time thinking about the technology or getting it to work properly; their energies should be focused on the classroom lesson.

The industry, thus, seems ripe for a radical innovation in the form of an Apple-like well thought through solution that addresses the above. However, such a solution may face significant barriers and be deemed a failure in the short term by the industry. Indeed, Apple managed to be successful with its arguably radical innovations (iPod, iTunes, iPhone), but Apple’s customers weren’t institutions but rather individuals. In the case of a McGraw-Hill or Pearson, who traditionally sell textbooks to schools, would such a radical foray into digital content be lucrative or career-ending disaster for a budding executive?

Indeed, the behavioral, infrastructure and even technological barriers to adoption of innovations in this industry are arguably high: Behavioral . There is a high degree of behavioral change required from teachers (and students) that will be using technology for education. This barrier is compounded by a general technophobia amongst teachers, stemming from fears of a new way of doing things and of technology breaking down at inopportune times, among others. Infrastructure . Mainstream adoption in the US requires adoption by public schools where any investment is an investment of public resources and thus subject to public scrutiny. Given that efficacy of technology in classrooms still needs to be proven, school administrators will find it difficult to justify large-scale investments in ed tech, particularly around replacing the primary  source of content (textbooks).

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There is a fortune at the base of our economic pyramid where the needs of 4 billion poor people are largely unmet. Companies around the world have been trying to transform these poor people into consumers for decades now, but their efforts have yielded very little success. This is largely due to a lack of innovation in how base of the pyramid consumers are approached.

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Several years ago, I saw a presentation by Yale School of Management Economics Professor Mushfiq Mobarak about encouraging poor populations in Bangladesh to adopt clean stoves. Traditional stoves pollute air inside the home, causing respiratory illnesses and increasing cancer risk. However, households refused to adopt the stoves. Dr. Mobarak suggested several reasons households may choose against using a product that is good for them: perhaps the male household head makes all purchasing decisions, but he is least affected by polluted air and thus miscalculates the benefits of the purchase. Perhaps the health returns of the clean stoves appear too far into the future for households to value the product at its price today. Or perhaps the taste of food from the clean stoves was different – worse – than the taste of food cooked on traditional stoves.

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Why did you decide to start Mobile Medics after undergrad?

A friend approached me with an idea to take doctors and paramedics on set routes to villages in India. 70% of India’s population is rural and has limited access to affordable high quality healthcare services and drugs. I was very excited by the social impact and business potential that the idea presented. If the idea could sustain financially, there seemed to be a huge opportunity to scale. We named the idea Mobile Medics, built a team and started to participate in business plan competitions in India and abroad. Very early in the process we built a global board of advisors with mentors who were passionate about the idea and were willing to invest time in helping us develop it. We won most of the competitions we participated in and started building confidence as well as a substantial pool of prize money. In 2006, we won the Global Social Venture Fund Competition. The social enterprise scene had just started developing globally and this placed us in a very favourable environment. We had amassed close to $30,000 prize money and were rated as one of the most popular social enterprise businesses plans globally.

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Tell us about your journey with TFA and what you learned about the challenges/opportunities in improving US education. 

Growing up in the rural South and having gone to a low-performing public school, I understood a small part of the challenge but had no idea about the immense scope of the problem in our country. Teaching in an urban area, the issues looked a bit different from what I experienced growing up, but the main challenges – limited resources, complacency, low expectations – were the same. I learned that there is no silver-bullet answer to solving this massive problem but that what must happen is for leaders across sectors to recognize they can and should be part of the ongoing solution process.

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Pam Sud is currently a Harvard Kennedy School / Harvard Business School joint MPP-MBA degree candidate.  She is born and raised in Reston, Virginia, and studied Economics and Spanish at Stanford University.  Prior to graduate school she worked at the World Bank as a Junior Professional Associate in the Latin America & Caribbean region’s energy group.  Pam just returned from Central America, where she spent the summer as an intern at Root Capital. The Social Enterprise Club sat down to talk with Pam about her experiences...

What did you do last summer?

I spent my summer in Central America working for Root Capital, financing “the missing middle,” which are small & medium enterprises too large for microfinance loans and too small for traditional private bank loans. As part of the “Strategy, Knowledge, & Innovation” team, I evaluated interest amongst our agricultural cooperative clients for enterprise-level productive technology investments in drip irrigation, solar technologies, small-scale hydropower, and production-improving coffee technologies. I met with over 40 current and prospective Root Capital clients in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico, and also worked with third-party groups interested in collaborating as co-investors, technical assistance providers, or carbon finance players. I achieved fluency in Spanish, learned how to taste-test coffee, how honey harvesting works, wore my first bee suit, and worked with an inspirational group of colleagues.

More broadly, what does Root Capital do?

Root Capital is a nonprofit social investment fund that seeks to grow rural prosperity by investing in agricultural businesses in Africa and Latin America. It provides capital, delivers financial education, and strengthens market connections for small and growing businesses that build sustainable livelihoods and transform rural communities in poor, environmentally vulnerable places. Since its launch in 1999, Root Capital has provided $365 million in credit to 367 small and growing businesses in 30 countries, maintaining a 98% repayment rate from its borrowers and a 100% repayment rate to its investors. 

Root Capital lends to grassroots businesses that are locked out of the local banking system and have few alternatives for affordable credit. It provides financing for both short-term working capital loans and longer-term investments. For many of Root Capital’s loans, it uses future sales contracts from companies like Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Marks & Spencer, Starbucks, and Whole Foods as a form of collateral. When natural products are shipped, the buyer pays Root Capital directly for interest and principal payments. By moving beyond traditional approaches to collateral, Root Capital is proving the business case for lending to the rural “unbankable."

What was your specific role within Root Capital?

I worked with Root Capital’s “Strategy, Knowledge & Innovation” team to help define and brainstorm potential directions for their productive technology investments. My specific tasks included researching clean and appropriate technologies relevant to Root Capital's client base, with a particular focus on enterprise-level productive technologies such as centralized coffee washing stations, drip irrigationsystems, solar panels, solar driers, small-scale hydropower, biogas plants, and bioethanol. I identified a pipeline of interest among Root Capital clients for investments in clean and appropr

iate technologies as well as third-party interest in collaborating as co-investors or technical assistance providers. Finally, I also constructed interactive financial models calculating the payback period, ROI, savings/year, NPV of investment, and breakeven point for 6 different clean technology products.

Why did you decide to work in the social enterp rise sector?

I decided to take an internship in the Social Enterprise sector so that I could throw myself into a brand new environment slightly outside my comfort zone, and learn and grow from the experience. 

The purpose of Harvard Business School is to stretch yourself to think beyond your comfort zone realm of possibilities, explore new interest areas, and new work environments. To me, social enterprise is the perfect amalgamation of the components I am looking for in my ideal job. I enjoy working and traveling in emerging markets, I thrive in settings where I can think creatively and independently, and I need a social dimension to my work in order to feel long-term fulfillment. 

What were your major takeaways/learnings from your experience?

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Tell us a bit about each of your backgrounds, your interest in social enterprise and why you decided to get involved with SECON?

Jocelyn : I attended SECON 2010 as an HBS admit, and was blown away. I met interesting people who were passionate about solving social problems, heard skeptical voices and cautionary tales, and learned about innovative business models around the globe. My finance background is fairly traditional for HBS and very unconventional for HKS. I love SECON because it bridges both sides of the river. An added side benefit has been getting to know our amazing leadership team – since we all have similar interests, three of us were interning in East Africa this summer and managed to travel together!

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This post originally appeared on the Social Enterprise Conference at Harvard's Blog. To learn more about one of the world's largest and most recognized social enterprise conferences, which is happening on Feb 25-26 at Harvard Kennedy School & Business School, please visit: http://socialenterpriseconference.org/

Prior to business school, I had always thought of performing arts organizations as slow-moving, traditional, and reliant on fundraising. However, after spending a summer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, I saw first-hand how many performing arts organizations are rapidly adopting digital technology and innovating their business models to not only survive financially, but also better fulfill their missions. 

While some performing arts organizations may have seen digital technology as a threat to their ticket sales, others have embraced it as an opportunity for growth. The Met Opera has done particularly well in adapting its content to digital technology by broadcasting select performances Live in HD to thousands of movie theaters around the country. While early skeptics argued that Live in HD would cannibalize sales and diminish the quality of the opera, the opposite has been true as live and broadcast viewership have both increased. First of all, Live in HD has allowed The Met to reach thousands of people who normally would not go to an opera due to geographic or financial constraints and has also energized current fans. Second, the broadcasts have not adversely affected artistic quality or intensified competition. Drawing an analogy to sporting events, broadcasts offer a much different experience than live performances, allowing The Met to maintain its prestige and luxury appeal. Finally, the broadcasts have been a financial success for The Met bringing in over $50 million in annual revenue. Other performing arts organizations have also embraced digital technology by offering their content on iTunes (New York Philharmonic) or by online subscription (Berlin Philharmonic), allowing them to earn incremental revenue and reach new audiences.

In addition to adapting quickly to technology, performing arts organizations are also finding ways to expand their reach and increase financial sustainability through new business models. For example, Lincoln Center recently took on a consulting project in Tianjin, China, serving as an advisor to the municipal government on building a new performing arts complex. Lincoln Center’s move into consulting is meant to help the organization expand its presence globally while allowing it to depend less on fundraising and ticket sales. While some critics have argued that consulting is not Lincoln Center’s core competency, Lincoln Center officials believe that taking an advisor role is a natural fit for the world’s largest performing arts complex. Lincoln Center’s move into consulting differs from the strategies of the Guggenheim and Louvre museums in expanding abroad because it hopes to generate arts centers that will operate independently of Lincoln Center. Regardless of the outcome, Lincoln Center’s new venture exemplifies the entrepreneurial zeal of many performing arts organizations.

I am looking forward to learning more about how performing arts organizations are incorporating entrepreneurial business practices during the Creative Enterprises: Innovative Business Models in the Arts Panel of the Social Enterprise Conference on Feb 25-26, 2012. The panel will include speakers from Lincoln Center, Alvin Ailey Dance Center, and the Opera’s Singer Initiative. Buy your tickets here to explore this topic as well as many others at the Social Enterprise Conference!

Tony Muljadi is a second year student at Harvard Business School. This summer he interned in the Strategy and Business Development group of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York. Prior to HBS, Tony spent a summer in Bangladesh working in the microfinance division of BRAC, the largest non-profit development organization in the world. He also spent time as a management consultant with PwC in New York. Tony received a BS in Business Administration with Highest Honors from the University of Colorado at Boulder. 

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This January, I traveled to Mumbai, India with a group of Harvard Business School students to work with Mahindra Rural Housing Finance (MRHFL). MRHFL, a subsidiary business of Mahindra & Mahindra (a large Indian conglomerate) provides home loans to rural farmers, and we were helping evaluate the company’s model for business development and credit appraisal. The experience, part of HBS’s new FIELD curriculum, was an eye-opening introduction to the challenges of doing business in emerging markets and the social impact these efforts can have.

Rural Indian farmers can rarely afford to build new homes all at once, and the quality of construction is usually limited. Mahindra's loans allow farmers to finance larger renovations and improvements, in addition to building new homes from scratch. This is a major potential market: over 60% of India’s population works in farming, yet the small size of relevant loans and the difficulty of reaching customers in rural areas has largely kept other lenders from entering the space.

On the second day of our trip, we visited several villages and talked with Mahindra customers about how the application and appraisal process has worked for them. Generally, for those with sufficient income to demonstrate credit-worthiness, it has been a positive experience. We saw both old homes and new ones built with Mahindra financing; the new buildings were spacious and well-equipped, with basic plumbing and other amenities that the farmers' previous dwellings lacked. 

We also learned about the difficulty of growing the loan business, due to the dispersion of the customer base across the rural landscape, low technological access in the rural areas, and the difficulty of acquiring the documentation to verify land ownership. Mahindra’s customer managers must set off by motorbike everyday to collect documents from local government offices, collect payments directly from customers (due to generally low levels of banking) and verify the progress of construction.

 Mahindra is committed to keeping interest rates low and focusing on the low-income rural segment, so their challenge is to reduce costs through internal efficiencies. In addition, to reduce paperwork, the business team has developed joint-liability loans given to groups of farmers. When individuals are jointly liable for each others’ payments, social expectations compel good borrower behavior, reducing the need for credit documentation. 

All things considered, it appeared to us that the business is having a positive impact and I appreciated the challenges Mahindra faces trying to build it. Many of these issues spring from poor infrastructure in the form of roads, utilities, or Internet access. By the same token, though, it is precisely the difficulties involved in reaching the rural population that create a unique opportunity for Mahindra, which has a history of selling and financing agricultural equipment to these very farmers, yielding customer understanding that other companies lack. 

I was left wondering about this infrastructure question, and whether there is any reward for businesses that try to build it directly, in the relative absence of government provision. Apart from the difficulty of financing what is usually a public good, however, there may be a negative incentive to create structures that rival companies can benefit from in developing their markets. Government, it would appear, is better positioned to create and level the playing field. As a joint degree student with the Kennedy School, maybe it's unsurprising that the trip left me thinking about the relationship between business and government, and how each really does need the other. 

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The table has been set for second semester, with a prix-fixe menu of new courses and the now-familiar diet of cases twice to three times a day. One that at first glance resembled a mere amuse-bouche, about investment-banker brothers creating an exotic liqueur, turned out to be a quite substantial entrée - into topics of social responsibility that I hope we can digest further in Leadership & Corporate Accountability.

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1) You did a range of different types of work in social enterprise before HBS, tell us a bit about your path and what you learned about social change and business along the way.

Prior to HBS, I worked in education, government, and microfinance. Along the way, I realized that new business models were a great way to make immense social change and that a person starting their career in social enterprise could have an immediate impact as an entrepreneur. In education, I worked at a charter school foundation, Beginning with Children. I learned about the charter school movement and how competition sometimes leads to innovative practices.  While in New York City government, I worked on projects related to supporting entrepreneurs. I was inspired by young, energetic individuals who were using new technologies to improve people’s lives. Finally, as a fellow at Kiva.org, a non-profit website that facilitates microlending, I was exposed to many entrepreneurs – micro-entrepreneurs in rural Mexico as well as the founders of Kiva. I was inspired by their impact on their communities and families, and I realized “if they can do it, so can I!”

2) Why did you decide to go to business school?

Although inspired by my past experience, I recognized that I was still short of hard skills. I was not a computer programmer, and I knew nothing about starting a business. I had never even worked at a for-profit company! I also had some vague ideas about the business I’d like to start, but I knew I needed help thinking through the business model.  Basically, I was looking for an incubator plus a degree. I wanted to learn marketing, finance, and accounting while at the same time building my business. And as an entrepreneur told me during my first year at HBS, “business school is the best insurance policy an entrepreneur can buy.” I chose HBS over other business schools because I knew its faculty, staff, and programs would support my international social enterprise. HBS has one of the best social enterprise programs and amongst the best financial aid packages for entrepreneurs and for non-profit work. I also was interested in starting my business in New York, and the HBS brand and network are both very strong there, as well as abroad.

3) Has business school changed the way you think about social enterprise, entrepreneurship and your career? 

Absolutely! I have learned the basics of business – what a P&L is, how you know a business has enough cash to survive, and what PE firms like Bain Capital actually do. I learned what Venture Capitalists look for in a new investment and how to present information in a way they can appreciate.  In my Social Entrepreneurship classes, Business at the Base of the Pyramid with Professor Rangan and Social Entrepreneurship in the Business Sector with Professor Marquis, I learned about innovative business models that blend the efficiency and scale of business with the impact of the social sector. During my HBS-organized IXP to San Francisco and my summer internship at an internet company, I learned about the tech sector and entrepreneurship in general. But in a more fundamental way, HBS has broadened my perspective – I came in thinking that a “big” organization had $10M in revenue, but my classmates quickly corrected me. I realized that I could dream big! 

4) Tell us a bit about your venture you have been working on and what resources at HBSyou have used as you work on your start-up? 

I am working on a business idea for Fair Trade cotton apparel. When I first came to HBS, I was already interested in the growing space for Fair Trade, but it took me some time to get to this idea. If it weren’t for HBS – for my classes and mentors - I might never have seen this opportunity. I took the first iteration of my idea through HBS’s Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and Business Plan Competitions (BPC) and made it through far enough to receive tons of feedback. This feedback, as well as feedback from my independent project advisor, Janet Kraus, my classmates, and the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship’s Entrepreneurs in Residence, helped me move on to a second iteration of my idea. I will take this new version through the MVP and BPC this year because I found the feedback so valuable last time. As I take this idea towards implementation, I have also been relying heavily on the HBS brand and network for resources. I’ve spoken with many alumni in my field and I have even identified potential sourcing partners through my sectionmates. I feel extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to build my business here at HBS and I am sure that even if this venture is not successful, I will be able to accomplish exciting things thanks to my MBA.

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The Malaysia IXP was a refreshing way to apply some of the management skills developed during my MBA career in a more practical, field-based manner. Having learned to analyze cases, it was invaluable to approach the very complex challenges that Malaysia faces through an experiential learning model. We tackled some broad challenges (e.g. New Economic Model, Entrepreneurship, Education, Brain Drain, Investments, etc…) and some very specific ones (Shrimp, Electronics, Tourism) within our sub-teams. There was incredible access to various stakeholders / interest-groups as we tried to gather knowledge on-ground (in Malaysia) to complement the preliminary research and interviews done before-hand (in Boston). The various cultural activities also provided insight into the Malaysian culture and we were able to gain deeper understanding through informal interactions with the locals.

The presentation to the Prime Minister proved to be the highlight of the IXP as it capped off our hard work. Many of us were impressed with his receptiveness to our actionable recommendations and his interest in our analysis. As Malaysia seeks to successfully implement its New Economic Model, we hope we have been able to provide a framework and suggestions to help them succeed and escape being “stuck in the middle”. 

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5 years ago, when I was ~2 years into a career of management consulting followed by private equity, I realized that I won’t die of hunger for this life. This simple realization got me seriously re-thinking my life purpose.

The soul-search of that purpose was painful and took a while, but it could be now summarized in a phrase – “to reinvent lives.” This is a very personal statement: I can clearly tell those moments in my life that I have struggled, stumbled and reinvented my life over and over again. Born in a small rural town in China, my personal development was never linear, but instead, composed of a series of reinventions followed by exponential and transformational growth. The question is, how I should further reinvent my life, and in that process, best leverage my skills and passion to help others experience the transformational reinvention process?

My first instinct on how to fuel reinvention was through microfinance. Finance and social impact – it comes to me naturally. I have spent substantial time before and during business school in experiencing different models in Asia, India and Latin America, and working with Enterprise Solutions for Poverty (ESP) to explore opportunities and partnerships in China. I further spent a summer with Credit Ease, a leading innovative inclusive finance company in China, to help scale its rural microfinance operations.

However, I gradually realized that a financial product itself is insufficient for self-reinventions. Or to put it more broadly, any base-of-pyramid product alone is insufficient. Effectively distributing these products to the hands of the needed in a sustainable and scalable way is what matters in the end. We shouldn’t focus only on the product. We should also focus on the delivery organizational model (the logistics, the supply chains, and services, the talent program and the cost structure), which is severely lacking. I also think that we should somewhat change the product-focused mentality, as in many situations, delivering one product alone down to the BoP doesn’t generate sufficient volume to be cost-effective. Without a distribution platform of sound economics, resources get wasted and nothing gets done.

So that comes to my new purpose – to build a for-profit, base-of-the-pyramid retail and distribution platform. To be cost-effective, it has to be cross-product category. I will start with consumer products, because the demand there is more obvious and stable. The immediate problems to solve in consumer products are, (1) they are 15-50% more expensive than their urban equivalents; (2) they have as high as 30-50% fake and non-safe ratio. And we will provide low-cost but authentic products from secure channels by accumulating volume and cut through middle-layers. Rural mom-and-pop shops are our direct customers. As our model sticks, we can then expand to bring in other great BoP initiatives, such as energy savings, water purification, nutrient enhancement, medicines, financing, as well as insurance directly. We are also testing a retailing model for products that are not currently covered by rural mom-and-pop stores.

Together with Yixin and Gary, my HBS classmates, as well as a group of >10 extremely talented and passionate college grads from rural China (special thanks to Bang, Dongdong, Zhiguo, Shibo, Tingting, Yijie, Jianglin, Yanran, Fan, Zhiyi, Xiaolu, and Wentao), I spent a month in >35 rural villages across Hunan, Hubei and Anhui provinces in China this winter. I became more humble as I know so little about rural way of lives, and I think I should simply spend more time with them learning what they think and how they live. I also become more passionate about building rural distribution channels to enable reinventions, not because it is an easy thing to do (it is actually much more challenging than I initially thought), but because there are many like-minded people, who want to push this vision to the next level. I am not alone.

Next step: prepare my business plan during this semester, and execute the plan into reality after graduation. Hopefully get some financing from sponsors sharing our visions. 

This is not that I am still young and want to chase my dreams for a few years. No. This is a solid decision on a great long-term cause, and the opportunity is real, and I want to make it happen.

Though a very local, down-to-the-earth initiative, if you are interested in helping us grow this movement of reinvention, we should talk. My email is ychen@mba2012.hbs.edu.

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This post originally appeared on H innovates, a new forum to discuss and highlight innovation at Harvard University. To learn more about H innovates, please visit www.hinnovates.org. 

Today’s economic climate creates a challenging environment for non-profits who have traditionally been funded by independent contributors or community foundations. Therefore, non-profits have had to find alternate ways to fund their missions. Corporate partnerships and coalitions are increasingly the answer. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) funding actually went up 10.6% in 2010 despite the economic climate. In fact, 55% of corporations engaged in one or more social impact campaigns. After identifying a cause, more than 90% of firms identified specific business-related goals with their philanthropic event signifying that corporations are taking these programs seriously. (The Giving Institute)

Competition for funding has become fierce, forcing non-profits to distinguish themselves by showing quantifiable results. Business minds rejoice, as it’s a well-known fact we all love metrics. However, it presents a significant challenge for public health non-profits to demonstrate results in a short timeframe. Public health is the science of protecting and improving the health of communities through education, promotion of healthy lifestyles, and research for disease and injury prevention. These initiatives can take over 5 years to demonstrate results.

Our research indicated that because of the long timeframe to see measurable results, it is in public health focused non-profits best interest to partner with healthcare companies who share a similar mission and whose executives understand the challenges of public health. Other possible partners are companies with a community focus. For example, H-E-B, a Texas food store chain, views the health of their communities as vital to their success as a business. As a result, they started offering diabetes monitoring services, in-store nutrition education and healthy private label food choices.

Public health non-profits may also find fruitful partnerships with firms whose products are used in public health. For example, Canyon Ranch Institute (CRI), a public health focused non-profit, developed a mutually beneficial partnership with Clorox. Clorox, who has traditionally entered new markets through M&A, has entered Peru through a public health campaign in conjunction with CRI. CRI was able to use an arts-based intervention that combines artistic disciplines, such as theater, music, dance, puppetry, and storytelling, in order to advance health literacy and improve hygiene-related behaviors. This creative approach provides a win-win situation for Clorox, CRI, and the people of Peru.

While there are many benefits of CSR partnerships, the process of matching non-profits with corporations is inefficient. Through our interviews with over ten well-known, large corporations with CSR programs, we uncovered a variety of ways that non-profit partners are identified, selected and managed. While some firms relied on their PR or ad agencies, others sourced potential partners through employee suggestions or even a Google search. Furthermore, ownership for CSR can reside in many different parts of the organization. For example, some programs were located in a separate foundation, others within Marketing, while some were led directly by the CEO. This variability presents a huge challenge for non-profits to scale CSR partnerships. Other challenges include matching cultures and long-term goals.

Partnerships with a common public health mission are only growing in size and will be important for HBS students to understand and prioritize as leaders.

Editor’s Note: Stephanie Bartz and Emily Kloeblen are second-year students at Harvard Business School.

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This post originally appeared on H innovates, a new forum to discuss and highlight innovation at Harvard University. To learn more about H innovates, please visit www.hinnovates.org. 

 

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What does it take to launch a social enterprise? And who are the key enablers in that effort? These were some of the questions explored on Tuesday’s panel event at the Harvard i-lab.

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This post originally appeared on H innovates, a new forum to discuss and highlight innovation at Harvard University. To learn more about H innovates, please visit www.hinnovates.org.

Welcome back from the long weekend everyone! This is going to be a big week for social enterprise innovation on-campus, with several events hosted by the Social Enterprise Club including a start-up panel, Business Plan Competition (BPC) Social Venture Track teambuilding mixer, and Ideabomb.

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On Monday November 21st, the Social Enterprise Club at HBS hosted a career panel focused on social finance. We had a terrific line-up of practitioners, including Deborah Drake, from ACCION; Christine Phillpotts, from Grassroots Business Fund; Alex Bashian, from Invested Development; and Rishi Shukla, from Next Street. They provided students with insights about trends, career opportunities, and challenges in the social finance industry.

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Thi s is a guest post by Rawia Abdel Samad . Rawia is an MBA student at Harvard Business School. She is currently doing an internship at Social Finance in Boston. Prior to her MBA, she was a senior consultant with Booz & Company in the Middle East for 3 years where she worked on a range of projects with governments, regulators and private sector players in addition to several pro-bono projects with nonprofits .

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This is a guest post by Tony Muljadi . He is an MBA student at HBS with the Class of 2012. He grew up in Colorado and loves travel, skiing, and exercise. He studied Accounting and Finance at the University of Colorado at Boulder and moved to New York City after school where he was a consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers for three years. He spent the summer before business school in Bangladesh as a microfinance intern with BRAC. At HBS, He is co-chair of the Social Enterprise Conference, co-president of the Global Immersion Experience Program, and a former cast member of the HBS Show.

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This is a guest post by Jocelyn Cheng . Jocelyn is a joint-degree student at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to school, she worked in investment banking and private equity in the US and Latin America. She graduated from the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a proud Canadian and a co-chair of the 2012 Social Enterprise Conference.

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Matt Noble (HBS 2012)

Executive Director at Revolution Prep

Hometown: East Greenwich, RI

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Dana Hork (HBS 2012)

Founder and CEO of Change for Change