Social Entrepreneurship Examples and Social Venture Case Studies
Social Entrepreneurial Examples and Social Venture Case Studies
I’ve created this as a guide and resource to finding social entrepreneurship examples and case studies. You will find that several examples repeat throughout the literature:
• Design for the Other 90 Percent Cooper Hewitt Exhibit and Design for the Other 90 Percent book
• Next 4 Billion: Market Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid from the World Resources Institute. Features 20+ case studies on markets and innovative social business ventures.
• Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid by Prahalad. (Book Summary)
• “What Works” Social Enterprise Case Studies from the World Resources Insitute
• Fast Company Social Capitalist Awards
• Social entrepreneurship case studies from Case at Duke.
Specific Social Business Venture Examples
• Cemex (Cemex Business Model)
• International Development Enterprises
• Trans Fair USA (Fair Trade Certified)
• Grameen Foundation
• Kickstart International
• Vision Spring (formerly Scojo Foundation) – Vision Spring Business Model
• Vodacom Community Services (Vodacom Business Model)
Other Social Entrepreneurship Resources
• Mobile for International Health Care
• Mobile Health Care (m Health) Examples from the UN report on mHealth
• Introduction to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
• Scaling Social Impact from Case at Duke.
• The folks at Ashoka and Unitus support very scalable social enterprise.
If you liked this post, please check out my post on “Trends in Social Entrepreneurship 2009 to 2010″
http://compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/top-trends-in-social-entrepreneurship-in-2009-and-2010/
Or you can click my best posts about social business ventures:
http://compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/best-social-business-venture-posts-of-2009/
Thanks!!!!
This is a fantastic resource! I work for a global corp and I am going to forward this to the sustainability office. They are working on new business models, open innovation, etc. Thanks.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed those resources Rhonda.
Hope they help.
If you are looking in the area of education this What Works Clearinghouse may be helpful:
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/
I’ve picked up two interesting books which I’ve provided summaries for on Compassion in Politics one is “Leaving Microsoft to Change the World” by John Wood and the other is “Mission Inc” (the two authors escape me) but its distributed by the Social Venture Network and you can purchase it on Amazon as well. The former was inspirational and contained about 20 insights on fundraising. The later was helpful because it provided more business planning expertise. It also focused on the issue of creating and maintaining a lean organization (it recommended 3 resources in this area). Lean not only focuses on impact, but also is a method of waste reduction.
I believe you can also get a free business planning template from REDF (I grabbed one at the Social Enterprise conference I attended in San Fran, CA).
Finally, the issue of both mapping the territory (finding out who is out there) and getting government on board–say through its procurement processes (ie factoring in Social Return on Investment into purchasing decision)
For more examples of social ventures:
1) the B-corporation (both a directory & online magazine/blog)
2) Next Billion.net
3) Next Billion.net has a directory (the IU app)
4) Social edge has a social enterprise locator (although this may not focus on high impact examples)
5) Check out social entrepreneurship organizations
6) http://changents.com/
B-corporation is probably best for US based examples
Next Billion.net is probably best for base of the pyramid examples
Changents has more one to one and social change examples
This recent post here is an attempt to map the space of social innovation (i’ve divided it into about 12 different areas).
http://compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/areas-of-social-entrepreneurship-mapping-the-social-enterprise-space/
Also on this post, you will find various revenue models.
Both of these posts are in their infancy, but are an attempt to begin to conceptually map and model what the social innovation space looks like. Hopefully this will help both current and future practitioners in social enterprise businesses (as well as other forms of social innovation and change).
Here is a fantastic list of health care case studies in social entreprise:
http://globalhealthideas.org/case-studiespublications/
I think it odd though that this doesn’t include the case studies in mobile from the website Mobile Active.