My dear colleagues Jim Thompson and Ian MacMillan have just published a fascinating description of their work on social entrepreneurship, entitled "Making Social Ventures Work". It's a neat usage of discovery driven planning in an entrepreneurial setting. Here's how it starts:
In recent years, we’ve all experienced considerable volatility—financial breakdowns, natural disasters, wars, and other disruptions. It’s clear we need new approaches to the world’s toughest economic challenges and social problems. Entrepreneurs can play a central role in finding the solutions, driving economic growth (building infrastructure, developing local talent, infusing struggling regions with investment capital) and helping hundreds of millions of people worldwide. If successful, socially minded entrepreneurial efforts create a virtuous cycle: The greater the profits these ventures make, the greater the incentives for them to grow their businesses. And the more societal problems they help alleviate, the more people who can join the mainstream of global consumers.
The failure rates for new companies and markets, however, are high. That is true anywhere in the world, including emerging economies. The management challenges associated with producing and marketing goods and services at the base of the economic pyramid include imperfect markets, uncertain prices and costs, nonexistent or unreliable infrastructure, weak or totally absent formal governance, untested applications of technology, and unpredictable competitive responses. Given this daunting uncertainty, entrepreneurs need a framework for “unfolding” success from a perceived or an emergent opportunity.