Large-Scale Social Business Entrepreneurship

Last night, the Rags2Riches Board had a getting-to-know-you session with people from LGT Venture Philantropy.  We currently have an ongoing conversation with them on a potential partnership and probable investment.

Over dinner, I was talking to Dev Appanah – investment manager of LGTVP – about the convergence of social change and business. This is a topic he’s very well-versed in, especially through his work experience in LGTVP, ChangeFusion, and YSEI (his book on Social Entrepreneurship is a very informative read).

During our conversation, I actually chanced upon a thought, a question – on the possibilities of large-scale social business enterprises (SBEs).

You see – my knowledge, exposure, and mindshare have mostly been with a start-up, entrepreneurial lens : Start small, bootstrap, prototype, get partners, refine the model, then go through the scale-up trajectory. This essentially is the story of my life now, with Hapinoy, Rags2Riches, and Inovent.

But on the other end of the spectrum, could it be that there are also social business entrepreneurs who – from the very get-go – already attack social problems and opportunities from a massive scale? (now, mind you — i’m not referring to large companies venturing into CSR; I’m referring to entrepreneurs who will build something from scratch).

This question brought back to mind an inspiring TED talk by Shai Agassi, founder of Better Place, a company which will hopefully end our dependence on oil with electric cars :

Agassi’s vision for his “start-up” is absolutely compelling;

And absolutely, rightfully so, mainly because the problems he is tackling head-on — clean energy and the environment — are massive, literally change-the-world, in scope.

Whereas most social enterprises I know start with a few thousand pesos, the seed capital he raised was a mind-boggling $200 million dollars.

Whereas I’m more comfortable piloting at a community-level, Agassi has to roll-out his ambitious plan one country — yes, one country — at a time.

Whereas we had to talk to Presidents and CEOs of big companies and institutions, Agassi had to deal with heads of state.

So, large-scale social business entrepreneurship – as Agassi’s example suggests – is possible to start. It can happen.

Now of course, there are also inherent risks on this Better Place’s large-scale model, “the bigger they are, the harder they fall” cliches’ abound. But for now, that still remains to be seen.

What I’m enamored with though, is the thought that when Better Place succeeds, they’ll succeed big.

And when they do, it will hopefully pave the way for more large-scale socal business enterprises to follow.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 25th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under A Better World, Entrepreneurship, Social Business Enterprise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.