{"id":5457,"date":"2016-03-09T08:17:50","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T08:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/babele.co\/?p=5457"},"modified":"2021-09-14T09:00:01","modified_gmt":"2021-09-14T09:00:01","slug":"reinventing-social-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/babele.co\/de\/reinventing-social-innovation\/","title":{"rendered":"Reinventing social innovation contests for the better"},"content":{"rendered":"

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px||6px|||”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default” min_height=”14456.2px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Nunito Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”17px” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n

I am a social entrepreneur: e.g. I manage an organization with the big dream to solve the world\u2019s biggest challenges. If your ambition is to solve problems such as\u00a0eradicate poverty, promote good health and well being, gender equality or quality education<\/em>, then you need the money to validate your solution, scale it internationally and measure your impact.<\/p>\n

Unless your dad is Rupert Mardoch, you are constantly after funding.<\/p>\n

You usually do not want Venture\u00a0<\/span>Capital money, to avoid crazy mission drifts. You may dream of Impact Investing (but this is the object of another post), so you usually go for bootstrapping, grant chasing or\u00a0social innovation competitions<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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African social enterprises pave the way for solar power<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Competitive grants consist in lengthy written applications where the winner is selected by a jury which \u2018objectively\u2019 scores the applicants on a rubric.<\/p>\n

The problem with contests is that juries tend to favor academic and technically detailed answers. However, social contexts are always complex and non-linear in nature, and what sounds good on paper almost never works out that way.<\/p>\n

Certain social enterprise competitions involve\u00a0online-voting<\/strong>\u00a0that try to measure a\u00a0venture\u2019s community engagement<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

For social enterprises, fortune favors the networked. With the right community support (fans, friends, advisory board, beneficiaries, investors, etc.), you can take your project really far. If you can encourage your community to take ownership and co-develop the solution with you, then you can overcome barriers such as the need for cash or for hiring experts.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the\u00a0community engagement<\/em>\u00a0is a key criterion that should always be taken into account in all competitions, in addition to the business model.<\/p>\n

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The business model\u00a0<\/strong>gives you a clear view of the team\u2019s business acumen, their understanding of the market and the strategy to conquer their very first niche.<\/p>\n

The engagement of the community\u00a0<\/strong>that supports the project gives you a clear idea on whether the team is capable of involving key stakeholders to participate to the venture success.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

However, on-line voting rewards people with large established online social networks; but a\u00a0shallow level of interaction\u00a0<\/strong>with the project doesn\u2019t lead to better outcomes.<\/p>\n

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I have recently participated to a voting competition where even my grand-mother voted, and this is not representative of my venture\u2019s potential to achieve a larger impact.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The ultimate demonstration of the inefficiency of\u00a0online-voting<\/strong>\u00a0as a way to measure a venture\u2019s community engagement, is the growing market to buy online votes. \u201cBuy votes for any type of contest . Facebook votes , twitter votes , email votes , ip votes , wavo votes , woobox votes , IMDb Votes at best prices<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

You can check\u00a0buycontestvotes.com,<\/strong>\u00a0voteszone.com\u00a0<\/strong>or\u00a0buyvotescheap.com<\/strong>,\u00a0<\/strong>just to mention a few.<\/p>\n

The last major problem of social innovation contests is that they are\u00a0black and white<\/strong>. When contestants submit their responses to an online contest, they usually get a\u00a0yes\u00a0<\/strong>or\u00a0no\u00a0<\/strong>answer as to whether they won or not, and\u00a0sometimes<\/em>\u00a0they get some feedback. So unless a social innovator is among the few happy winners, the contest is just a waste of time and energy and it did not make him advance.<\/p>\n

Is there a solution?<\/h1>\n

If the\u00a0community engagement\u00a0<\/strong>is key to help juries assessing a project\u2019s potential beyond what\u2019s written on paper, then\u00a0how can we track community engagement in a more effective way than through online voting?<\/strong><\/p>\n

With my team, I have spent the last 3 years building\u00a0BABELE.CO<\/a>: a crowd-accelerator where\u00a0everyone can participate to the on-going co-development of sustainable projects and impact ventures<\/strong>. Social innovation clusters (such as universities, incubators and foundations) create open and closed mentoring networks, enabling social entrepreneurs to refine their business strategy and tackle key challenges by tapping into the collective knowledge of mentors, peer-entrepreneurs and involved citizens.<\/p>\n

We have tried to do something that resembles\u00a0grass roots community organizing<\/strong>, transforming the Social Enterprise competition into a dynamic process that structures the business model and opens it up for comment.<\/p>\n

In this way, the submission is never really closed. If the jury has a question, they can post it directly on the site and the applicant has the ability to respond or get input from other community members to validate their assumptions.<\/p>\n