When the Grameen Bank founder and Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus labelled his breed of social entrepreneurs as 70% crazy, he was mouthing a popular perception. Now John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan have endorsed it with interesting case studies in their new book, The Power of Unreasonable People.
Both of them are authorities on the subject. Elkington is the founder of global consultancy SustainAbility. He also came up with the idea of triple bottomline way back in 1994. Hartigan is the managing director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.
The book looks beyond accidental Lee Scotts and committed Anita Roddicks. Its about radical entrepreneurs, who are pursuing what they are passionate about with a can do attitude. In the process they are coming up with tomorrows solutions to todays problems. They are also generating wealth for themselves and their stakeholders, but later than sooner. They are ushering in a new vision, out of the box thinking and a different way of running businesses. They don’t adjust to the status quo. They tweak the system to make it work the way they think it should. The book covers a wide expanse, ranging from brainstorming on social entrepreneurship in Davos to actual case studies of such entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. They are turned on by achieving the deal, not doing the deal, stress the authors.
Such entrepreneurs are disrupting conventional business models and creating markets around an estimated four billion consumers at the base of the pyramid, who offer a market opportunity worth $5 trillion. They offer goods and services that nobody has thought of before. Kickstarts MoneyMaker foot operated micro- irrigation pump is changing the life of Kenyans. Triodos, based in the Netherlands, uses venture capital funds to invest in social and environmental businesses like clean technology, fair trade and organic foods. The book quotes quite a few examples from India, too. For example, Tamil Nadu-based Aurolab leverages economies of scale to sell five million cataract curing intraocular lenses at $2-$4 in more than 109 countries. Others sell them at $150 in the developed world.
Many times these entrepreneurs work on the periphery of dysfunctional business models. Spaniard Christopher Colon, a psychiatrist, worked with mentally ill patients, who were undergoing work therapy and making knick knacks, which found no buyers. Disgruntled, Colon set up a dairy business with mentally ill people as his staff. Today La Fageda, with an annual turnover of $10 million, has the third largest market share of yogurt in Cataluna, Spain.
They also give an insight into untapped markets and serve as successful market laboratories for global businesses for assessing risks and opportunities accompanying the launch of new products and services. Today, GEs Ecoimagination project is not only helping it reduce its carbon emissions, but also make big profits.
Some of these initiatives are charitable and get kickstarted with donations and grants, but achieve sustainable results. The founder of Barefoot College, Bunker Roy, has realised Gandhi’s vision of a self-reliant village in Tilonia, Rajasthan, with a little help from donors. The community has done it all by itself and without the help of parachuting experts, even solar electrifying the village.
Many initiatives are commercial, though. Ibrahim Abouleish founded Sekem outside Cairo in early eighties. A pioneer of biodynamic farming in the country, he reinvests the profits in his socio-economic business model.
A few of the businesses are hybrid models and charge differential rates for their products and service from different sections of the society. The aim is to cater to all. For example, Madurai-headquartered Aravind Eye Care Systems offers services to two million patients a year. Two-thirds of the patients are offered free or highly subsidised treatment. Put simply, the rich subsidise the poor and sustain the business.
The book is written in a reader-friendly style, but does not maintain the high standards it sets in its rather long introduction. In fact, there are too many unwritten books within the book. But the book is a sequel to Elkington’s Cannibals with Forks, and The Chrysalis Economy and a must read for students of social entrepreneurship or business innovations. Even if some of the examples quoted are too well known or about nonprofits and dont exactly add to the body of the work. We could do without some.
In fact, we could do better with the stories of failures next. For every celebrated success, there are hundreds or may be thousands of unmourned failures. We know what to do now. It would help to know what not to do to make to the future editions of the book.
Source: The Financial Express
Published on 27 March 2008