Ever try to do something new and get the "not invented here" response. That response, and the frustration that goes with it - is what drives a ot of entrepreneurs - out of organizations and into creating something new. Any stories out there about the innovation -frustrtion- entrepreneur cycle?

Hi Patrick,

We have been trying to help innovating organizations overcome this frustration. Our experience shows that many of the innovating organizations have capacities that are different from those required for going to scale and also for operating at scale. We facilitate innovations go to scale. It is a challenging and a painstakingly slow process.

I agree that the response "not invented here" is a challenge to any innovation. Then, it is just one of the many challenges. We have seen innovations also have challenges due to poor documentation, lack of legitimacy and among other factors, resources - financial and technical - to operate at scale.

Most of our work in scaling up either been replication or grafting into existing large scale systems. Our experience in India has been wide ranging - from very frustrating ones to very encouraging.

If you are keen, I can send you more information. You may send me your contact id at kg.venkat@youtele.com

Patrick, I'll see if I can't help you get this discussion going. When I started the Tutor/Mentor Connection in the fall of 1992 and in 1993 I was ignored by many, which meant I had no funding and few partners. I went to work building our strategy based on who would help, my own time and experience, and my belief that what I was creating was needed.

I also believed that as I demonstrated what I was talking about others would come on board to support future growth. This is where I've been most frustrated. While I have had hundreds of endorsements from people benefitting from the T/MC, I've still had to struggle every year to find investors.

I still find that if the idea is not owned by the big donors, or corporate leaders or university professors, it's like pulling dinosauers through mud toget any of them to support us.

Thanks to the Internet I've been able to expand my network of partners to people beyond Chicago and thanks to the power of volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring I've been able to find volunteers who would help me continue to grow the T/MC.

Though from a different perspective, I second that sense of being off radar with the profit for purpose paradigm we've been trying to get across for the last decade. Perhaps worse in some ways, if it doesn't come from a recognised source, it has to be fraud.

Strange but true, using one's own funds or business profits for social purpose is regarded with more suspicion than appealing for funds from others, to do the same things.

Usually, I find that NPOs are very poor at marketing, but T/MC is an exception. I run into your marketing in a number of places. But I think there are a couple of deeper points here: - NPOs frequently see marketing as an afterthought and a waste of money. they don't realize what the private sector learned long ago, that that good marketing beats a good product most of the time. NPOs see competition as at best a necessary evil, and marketing as not their job because what they do has a public constituency that should flock to it.

• you are right about donors not buying in; they never will. It is not their job to become part of your organization, although many donors, particularily United Ways, do support some NPOs for years. But in the long run, they are there for a different purpopse than you are and there is no guarantee of support. Only your own revenue stream can do that.

I think this is one of the messages of SE and of Boschee: we should all think about moving from dependency to at least sustainability.

I know what you mean..."if you are not in it for the money, why ar you doing this?" does arise often. My answer, "some people are just not motivated by money" which opens up the conversationa bout what does motivate them.

Here's a link to the video that we just put on line for our May 2007 conference. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vv_khWZSf4

This was created by a volunteer, who does not get paid to do this.

What motivates people is a cause they believe in, and an opportunity to make a creative and meaningful contribution.

It doesn't take all of the people in the world to change the world. It only takes a few who are willing to share their time and talent, and a few who will provide some money. The Internet creates an entirely new way to support people who are on the ground level doing social benefit work. It enables us to build web libraries and program locator databases that we can host at places like http://www.tutormentorconnection.org

Anyone who cares about helping kids living in poverty can point their friends toward such a library and teach them to shop for where and how they want to be involved. We're already seeing the first part of this happen as celebrities are raising money through cause marketing, or creating charities to share their own wealth.

The next stage will come when they use these web databases, maps, and other decision support tools to determine where they distribute their money and celebrity support. While it's frustrating that few people are yet lining up to say "let me help" the positive feedback that we receive from those who we do help is what motivates us to keep trying.

A great way of getting a message across Daniel, very adaptable too. I've used YouTube videos embedded in DotnetNuke for collaborative campaigning efforts, it shows results.

Watching your video prompted another thought about about conferences as today someone asked me if I was attending the Skoll forum. My answer as it was for a similar conference in February was no, I can't afford to, though it's practically on my doorstep.

I'm rather taken aback at the way social enterprise advocacy is being delivered in the UK generally. I'm doing someting quite unusual perhaps, running an IT business that's also a human rights advocacy but there are difficulties. It's sustainable but could be doing better if the outstanding invoices were paid. The particular irony for me, is that many professional advocates attending these conferences are also organisations who delay paying their bills, if at all. I found another planned later this year where the sponsor was also one of my late payers. So I know how it's funded - by me among others!

Recently, having discovered a local seminar which would have cost next to nothing to attend, I had to explain to the organisers, that a working social businessman couldn't just drop everything to sit in a classroom for 5 days. Most advocates don't respond unless chased.

I can't help feeling that in spite of the funding that social enterprise now attracts in the UK, although there may be many who gain inspiration from the promotion, many advocacies are somewhat out of touch with those they aim to serve.

Jeff, I face the same issue. There are dozens of conferences throughout the year, in the US and abroad that I'd like to participate in and where I probably could serve as a speaker and stimulate some creative thinking. However, I don't have the dollars to go to these. I also don't have the time.

The video on YouTube was created by a volunteer. My main web site was created by a team of volunteers at a university in another state. While many people think of volunteerism as planting trees, feeding the hungry, or mentoring kids, I seek to release the talent of volunteers who can build web sites, create videos and do marketing, or who can connect the people in face to face conferences with each other, and with people who can't get to those conferences, by creating and hosting internet platforms that provide a social networking and on-going learning and collaboration support of the conference strategy.

I see a conference as a pep ralley and an opportunity to showcase new ideas. It's also an opportunity to meet face to face. However, when there are more than 100 people at an event, you really don't meet more than a few, and if there are multiple workshops, you don't get to attend more than one at a time. Furthermore, if there are more than 20 people in a workshop, you really don't get to interact with the speaker beyond one or two short questions.

Thus, setting up an internet platform that enables participants to search the conference list to see who else is planning to attend, and make arrangements to meet, before even going to the event, would be a value. So would having the speakers on-line for Q&A after the event.

As you watch http://www.tutormentorconference.org and http://www.tutormentorconnection.org grow, you'll see that I'm trying to build this concept into our web sites. To do this effectively I'll need to recruit people who can facilitate on-line discussions, and people who can develop technology that turns chats into meetings where ideas are turned into actions.

In this context, each succeding conference could begin to have an update on what resulted from the previous event, and conferences hosted by different people in different places and at different times of the year, could be connected to each other through these internet platforms. Thus they would begin to connect more of the people who care about an issue with each other, and serve as energizers to keep people working toward solving the problems the conference was created to address.

In the end, that's the goal of our getting together and learning from each other. This needs to result in actions that spread the ideas of the conference around the world to all of the places where ideas, manpower, dollars and technology need to be deployed like troops in the front lines of fighting the battle of any social or environmental issue.

Is what you've just given me, Daniel.

Disappointed with local inertia and the funded schemes which haven't moved too far, I decided to do my own bit of local inspiring, aside from the overseas efforts. Your website and video offered the opportunity to illustrate a global view of collaboration.

I've been attempting to catalyse local efforts, illustrating what some are doing and finding out what others might want to do with my own community site, which the Tutor/Mentor video now features on:

http://forest-of-dean.org/

I have to say that I find the assumptions inherent in the six points above from Mr Boschee a bit odd. I consider myself something of a social entrepreneur, although I certainly don't like the term, being involved as I have been with co-operative enterprise for the last 20 years or so. The co-operative, self-help, self-reliant approach essentially starts from the point that any activity has to be economically sustainable - trade not aid, if you will. Within that context, of what I consider to be true social enterprise, the entire notion of dependency on grants support is anathema. For me, the process begins with the creation of a sound business model, and goes from there. If you have strong business ideas that have a chance of sustaining themselves ni the marketplace, then support and investment can be found.

Though as I note, like me, you come from the UK, you'll probably be aware that the predominant participation here is nonprofit, or what we would know as charitable. Cooperative structures do exist in the US, but they seem to be in the minority, whereas it's a long established tradition in the UK, so well established that perhaps it becomes invisible by virtue of being so well established.

I've been a long term enthusiast, even attempting to create one of the producer variety at one time which didn't come to be, though more recently I've been inspired by a different approach, that of the for profit, non mutual model. Jerr, I believe is describing the transition from nonprofit to this.

There's a natural alignment between cooperatives and the alleviation of poverty that we know in the UK going back to the Rochdale Pioneers, I suspect in the US this is not so much the case.

My own reason for now moving away from the cooperative model, is one that is traditionally regarded as a strength, the concept of mutuality. For an organisation reaching outwards towards alleviation of poverty for large numbers of people without easily being able to conscript them as members, is for me an obstacle, hence a pro-poor business approach.

I'd be interested to know your impressions of what we know tag the Third Sector, which to me seems to be an attempt to create movement comprising nonprofit, cooperative and social business under a single banner for a political statement. To me, it's an ever more complex muddle, especially now the cooperative movement has recently introduced the community interest company variant which is approximately where we tried to start (I think!)

My own take on any social enterprise that does not place the beneficiaries at the heart of the business is that it is inherently less stable and less sustainable than the co-operative model, which has proven itself over the long term.

I have no problem with philanthropy, if a wealthy person wants to give their money away then good luck to them, but I don't see that approach changing the world by and large. They may alleviate or mitigate some of the damge that would have been caused through the creation of that wealth, but in gernal it seems a bit of a sticking plaster approach.

My own experience in co-operatives tells me that they are enormously empowering, and can enable ordinary people to step forward, take responsibility, innovate and succeed. Of course they are but one tool for social change - albeit a very powerful one.

Conscripting members does sound difficult, especially as the first principle is that membership is both open and voluntary. Of course you also need to make sure it is relevant and attractive. No-one ever said it was easy to create a co-operative business, but having done it myself, it is clearly worth the effort.

In my view the whole social enterprise/third sector thing in the UK is nothing more than some sort of weak branding exercise, engineered largely by government, to push together various groups and sectors that in practive have little in common. In terms of their core principles, charities are diametrically opposite to co-operatives, although they are increasingly modernising their approach to become more about being agents of empowerment rather than providers of last resort.

It's a good thing that the concept of socially responsible business is higher on the agenda, perhaps partly as a result of the branding of social enterprise - in the UK at least - but let us be careful to ensure that the new social businesses that we create are sustainable. The private sector has always been very poor at business start-up, with very high rates of failure. And yet it seems that the social enterprise sector is looking to the private sector approach as the model to follow in this regard. The capitalist approach is both destructive and innovative in equal measure, perhaps we can develop fresh approaches that are more human-friendly.

The Community Interest Company (CIC) was created partly in recognition that a for profit non mutual social enterprise was potentially weak in that it was reliant on its social entrepreneur elite to keep it rolling and not become diverted from its social purpose into a standard for profit business. Of course many of the provisions of the CIC were there anyway in the Industrial and Provident Society, but the work had not been doen to fully modernise that legistation (this is now underway).

Co-operatives are increasingly characterised by the term more-than-profit and focus on the triple bottom line approach to doing business. Good ones (and like anything else there are good and bad) have the notion of social responsibility as a core business driver rather than a bolt-on,and to my mind offer a hugely under-understood approach with enormous potential to deliver lasting, large-scale change to many of the major social, economic and environmental challenges the world faces.

In terms of innovation - getting back closer to the nub of this thread, I think we also need to be wary of thinking that innovation is available only to these elite social entrepreneurs. History tells us that this is not the case, and the co-operative approach to enterprise enables everyone to participate in the process of innovation and creativity.

I have the greatest respect for the Cooperative movement in principle. Always have had.Mutualism is in my bones.

I also respect the people who work in it.

But the most dedicated resistance I have experienced to the new ideas and concepts I am putting forward comes from organisations like yours, Graham.

About four years ago, I wrote this

http://www.opencapital.net/papers/cooperativecapitalism.htm

and submitted it to the Journal of Cooperative Studies - to be told it had been vetoed by a lawyer referee whom I will not name.

I have been pointing out for some time now that the uniquely and radically simple new UK corporate form - the confusingly named (because it is NOT legally a partnership) Limited Liability Partnership ("LLP") - permits simple new risk and revenue-sharing mechanisms and a perhaps optimal "enterprise model" consisting of a cooperative of service providers linked to a cooperative of service users.

Why try and update the IPS legislation when anyone who wishes to can draft a rock solid, simple, constitution as an LLP that can do anything an IPS can do and a whole lot more?

You won't hear about it from your lawyers, who I have come to suspect think I am the anti-Christ. Nor form any other professionals or consultants paid by the hour.

The reason is that the simple, consensual solutions enabled by this "open" corporate form are not in the interests of anyone paid by the hour, rather than the outcome, and who therefore profit from conflicts and complexity.

Sorry to "vent" on you, but the Cooperative movement will always fail to drive home their "Cooperative advantage" - the freedom from paying returns to rentier financial investors - until they do take a truly partnership approach and shake off the Victorian vintage "genetically modified Company" - legal entities their lawyers are (I wonder why?) so keen on.

I just wanted to chime in my support for Graham's opinion that economic sustainability is at the core of what a social enterprise must be to merit the term.

I've been at the Skoll World Forum all week, an absolutely inspirational event full of individuals doing the most amazing things.

Yet while so many of these great people can rightfully be described as social entrepreneurs, the number of genuinely economically sustainable models they've created seems to me to be very low.

We all admire Yunus because he has managed to one such a model so spectacularly.

When the wider world of social entrepreneurs finally gets serious about economic sustainability, there'll be far less talk on the scarcity of funding, and thousands more Yunuses to celebrate!

Jeff, I just posted your link in a set of collaboration links at http://www.tutormentorconnection.org/TMLearningNetwork/LinksLibrary/tabid/560/rrcid/13/rrscid/26/rrpid/1/rrepp/20/Default.aspx

Earlier today, a person I met in January on the Omidyar.net forum posted an interview he did with me. It's at http://www.blauexchange.org

None of us were paid for posting links to each other, yet, we each provided advertising value, by helping draw visitors to each other's sites.

I'm not sure I describe myself as a social entrepreneur by doing this. I do think we are innovating ways to use the internet and our networks for social benefit.

"if you are not in it for the money, why are you doing this?" My answer, "some people are just not motivated by money" ... This is what I am trying to "seed" in Indian youth in Central India; motivating them to volunteer on ICT for Economic Development of Rural India. It was in 2004 on world bank workshop at IIM Ahmedabad; one of leading lights of Indian software industry was skeptical on me; using a term "Non Profit" to describe my organization. He said you are either for Profit or you are a charitable organization a "Non-Govermental Organization" which relies on doles/Charities/grants & in most cases work only for grants.(well that is the scenarios in most part of India; giving bad name to NGOs)

I was tempted to do a reality check on Patrick O'Heffernan's six points; hence the following responses:

Are you ready to exit dependency? (www.force3-india.org & www.vama-it.com)

I made my way thru with my own funds on my vision of a social enterprise; since 2000 (formally since 2002) & have been relying on profits generated by ICT enabled services complimented with my savings/earning elsewhere to keep the enterprise going. ( I was dependent on no one; to continue small scale operation but for scaling up; I was dreaming of getting grant support/angel investment/venture capital support & till date I have not succeeded in scaling it up on my expectations.

Responses to Patrick O'Heffernan recommended six steps:( Submitted for feedback)

1. Articulate to yourself an idea that stirs your passions I believe ICT can make a difference to Economic Development of Rural India, by creating IT enabled new job opportunities, direct business opportunities & getting access / benefits of all government schemes right at the doorsteps of citizens. For a resource starved nation which allocates resources for ICT projects by ignoring conflicting resource claims from priority sectors such as health, education, rural infrastructure social welfare; it is important that such budget allocation goes few extra miles. By giving big budget contracts to big IT companies which pays fat salaries to their employees(Pegged to US $ salary being earned by their counterparts) govt budget allocation gets wasted in funding the high cost of operation of big budget companies. We have talent pool of youth which are waiting to get there first career break. They are not 100% job-market ready due to mismatch in industry requirement/ university curriculum & ever changing software technology. These youth can be motivated to volunteer. some of their seniors can be motivated to mentor. Some of the socially responsible IT companies can be motivated to use this volunteer force, mentor them & create value for deploying on massive scale on low price points to take the benefits to larger numbers. Thereby giving shape to a sustainable enterprise on such value created consistently over years.
2. Do a reality check (Flaws/lack of understanding pl comment) I told state government on 28th March'2003 that 3000 jobs can get created on my ideas in rural info-kiosks. Today Indian government wants to create 100000 such kiosks & in my region instead of 3000 they feel it is possible to create 9000 such info-kiosks. In 2003 I could succeed in creating 60 jobs without any government support or any grant support. with my own money & earnings. In 2004, I wanted to work with 300 village bodies & sought funding from UNDP. They ignored my claims gave money to others to redo what was done in India in 1999 (& failed on economic sustainability). In 2005 I was dreaming of $100000 plus project & I gave shape to that project on 20th March'2006. More than 115 youths came forward to work in 3 shifts to utilize my 42 seat software development facility. I am close to getting some order which will be 5 year BOOT project; which will give additional jobs to minimum 30 youths & repay my existing & future invstments in the said project in next two years. I dream today of a MNC company in special economic zone to give shape in next two years time spread over 45000 sq.ft. (4500 sq.mtr)of land employing few hundred youths serving the needs of Under developed/developing countries in South Asia, Africa, Middle east/far east.
3. Estimate the resources you will need - both time and money - then quadruple it I could hardly allocate resources for marketing. Whatever I had went in survival.... Resource requirement is massive but that is not the constraint. Challange was (& is) to get the government convinced about giving jobs.(Got only one person to support in 2002-2003 which started the project with 60 jobs. Thereafter it is a struggle to gain acceptance.(I am now having little aceptability because of $100000 worth of project investment behind me & few years of persistent knocking without any response.
4. Set up metrics and monitor your income and outcomes daily To be honest I am at a loss to keep daily accounts. I think I wouldn't have survived had I kept daily account. I think I lived thru each day on a optimistic note of a better tomorrow. Else harsh reality of uncertain tomorrow would have made me bow out / commit sucide (I don't have such tendencies).
5. Don't be afraid to change No plan is perfect, no product is perfect, and every process can be made more efficient. I believed in this & adopted newer ways in this period since 2000-2007
6. Know when to fold'em To be honest, I don't know the answer when to fold'em. I believe I am working on a dream & can gladly die chasing this drem of making a difference to Economic development of rural India thru ICT.

Doing something new can be frustrating but ultimately succeeding in it can be more rewarding, more satisfying. With this hope I continue with my resolve.

This discussion has now become. First, thanks Daniel for the info and the collaboration.

Graham, I agree that the weak branding of the Third Sector may end up being a disadvantage to all. I endorse the values of mutuality, though my response to Avi below may indicate why in our case, it's an obstruction. In fact, it was the original concept of a community interest business that propelled our efforts from 1996 when delivered in a whitepaper to the Clinton reelection commitee. http://www.p-ced.com

Last Avi, this is excellent. I'm now in the position of being a one-man software business, using it's revenue to fund human rights advocacy in Eastern Europe, where we've recently delivered a strategy plan to do the same kind of thing on a very large scale, complemented by a microcredit program to yield profit for a social purpose, the plight of children in institutional care. Proposed as a 5 year full cost recovery project, it's aimed at empowering several million to break the cycle of poverty and corruption that makes slaves out of the impoverished and renders the raw material for trafficking. It can only be achieved by replication in such a short period, building new legal constructs and propagation of concept through education in a faculty for social enterprise.

NPOs can solve the one-person shop problem in marketing by using creatiavity to market on the internet, taking a leaf from the FP sector. Besides things like Google ads, viral video can be a great tool. A friend of mine who runs a major FP employment site produced a spoof of the Paris Hilton Burger King ad and posted it. He got 10's of millions of hits and new visitors to his site, plus appearancs on TV - all for very little money. He also posted a job applicaiton for a Supreme Court Justice on his site and forwarded the thousands of applicants to the Senate Committee holding hearings on a nominee to the empty seat. Again, almost no cost, very high PR value and recognition. Innovation at its best.

I am not sure whether economically sustainable model is the way to go..in the developing and under-developed world, the challenge is attaining equity in access. Take example of India, despite all economic growth that my country has shown in the last decade, a large majority of population live below poverty line (which is less than "a-dollar-a-day"), almost 60% of child birth happen by money taken on loan, 90% of all health expenses are out-of-pocket. There are several other economic challenges. In such circumstances, the priority should be ensure that services are accessed by all. Social, economic and knowledge barriers are overcome. Economically sustainable models (if we look outside Government support systems) discriminate against those who do not have money or do not have capacity to access it.

In many countries across the globe, the days for economically sustainable model has not yet come.

The thrid point is key; Estimate the resources you will need - both time and money - then quadruple it. It takes the same amount of effort to ask for $1 million as it does to ask for $10,000. Although it is much mire difficult to succeed in rasing $1 Million.

Swing for the fences