A few thoughts about living in the social-business ecosystem
Posted by conall
(1) We neither cooperate nor compete.
I was recently introduced to this idea by Bill Carter of Ashoka. There are a lot of social enterprises in the world, yet most of us working in the space do not use partnerships and alliances to our advantage. Sure, we do work together from time to time, but it is not frequently seen as a critical tool for creating a business advantage. Can we learn from looking at how purely commercial enterprises cooperate to create competitive advantage?
On the flip side of the coin, in the social enterprise world we also tend to avoid direct competition with other social enterprises. While we all know that competition is good and drives us to be better, there is stigma attached to competing with other companies that are also trying to “do good”. What we don’t consider however is whether this lack of competition is actually helping the other social enterprise (or our own) to succeed?
(2) What is the life-blood of the social-enterprise ecosystem?
When evaluating the commercial enterprise ecosystem (also called the “business world”) it is evident that money is the life-blood that connects all the pieces of the system, facilitates transactions, drives movement and allows the system to self-regulate. When looking at the social enterprise ecosystem I have been unable to find anything which fills the same role. Is it the warm fuzzy feeling one gets when “doing good”? Is it the physical health of the society members? Can a real “ecosystem” exist around social enterprise if there isn’t a life-blood connecting all the parts of the system?