Social business: Start by starting

Start with watering cans. Photo by Spookygonk

Do something.

This was the message left with participants of the Social Entrepreneurship Summit by Rod Schwartz, a former investment banker and now CEO of Catalyst Fund. And it got me to thinking about watering cans.

Let me explain…

Rod introduced us to the term “social business trips”: he travels the world with a keen sense of adventure to explore other social businesses and learn from their models. He uses these learnings to make his own offering better. He observed one such model at Ben & Jerry’s where they source their tiny ice-cream destined brownies from another social enterprise that has their own double bottom line.

Phaneesh Murthy, CEO of iGATE Global Solutions described another such model last night. Like many of his peers, he created a business park to house his rapidly growing enterprise and within the compound he had a number of green spaces built in. He was presented with an inexpensive automatic sprinkler system, but refused to install it and instead chose to hire 65 women from the area who would otherwise be unemployed to use watering cans and perform the task manually as needed. Now the women have a sense of pride in their contribution and iGATE saves money by controlling the water used (something that also benefits his water-stretched nation).

What models will you learn from today? I will continue to explore some of the key themes that resonated among the summit participants in order to begin a dialogue, but more importantly to incite action: do something.

Further Social Entrepreneurship Summit reading:

• Scaling social entrepreneurship: The discussion begins today
• The discussion has begun: How can we scale social enterprise
• MaRS names community advocate to lead new social innovation initiative