Social entrepreneurship: When Go-Negosyo Went Flat
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
FOR THOSE of you who?ve retired from employment, and plan to start a business and at the same time ensure handsome points in the pearly gates of heaven, I have two words for you?”social entrepreneurship.” Basically, it means the application of entrepreneurship principles to create, manage, and operate a business directed at solving a social problem, like poverty for instance.
Unlike traditional businesses, the key result area of social entrepreneurship is not profitability, but its greater impact on the society as a whole. One good illustration is in the case of Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank.
The idea of social entrepreneurship is nothing new. It was credited to Rosabeth Moss Canter and Bill Drayton, sometime in the 1980s. But it was Michael Young who became a leading promoter of social enterprise for creating over 60 organizations worldwide, including the School for Social Entrepreneurs in the UK.
In this country, there?s one more good reason why we should have the courage to fall in line at the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) so that we could register a business name. But no, DTI to its credit has used the power of online registration of business names so that you and I could bypass the daily grind in its Makati bureau.
In general, you don?t have to worry about developing a business, but there are things you need to know, which is why I am presenting it here, through a Q&A format to answer the concerns of one loyal reader:
Q: Starting a business is very confusing. How, exactly, does a business ensure the success of its services or products?
A: Many factors are involved. For one, you should develop the habit of meeting your appointment on time, unlike Joey Concepcion III, Presidential Consultant for Entrepreneurship and proponent of Go Negosyo who came in one hour late as a keynote speaker in the 19th National Quality Forum of Philippine Society for Quality (PSQ) on October 11.
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