Do you know what it takes to be a social successful entrepreneur? Do you want to be the social entrepreneur and achieve success in your respective field?
There is no single blueprint for all entrepreneurs to start their venture and enjoy overnight success. Entrepreneurs come from the different geographic location with different income brackets, upbringings, experiences and social classes as well as different qualification. There is no foolproof map which guides anyone to achieve entrepreneurial greatness. Even the different types of entrepreneurship demand different skills and different types of people. Before digging deeper to understand some significant quintessential of social entrepreneurs let’s have a quick review of social entrepreneurship and its substantial implications in our society.
Social entrepreneurship is the force that drives innovation and transformation in various fields. Social entrepreneur pursues the goal of poverty alleviation with the entrepreneurial seal, business methods. They have the courage to innovate and overcome the traditional practices of doing business. They play the significant role in building strong and sustainable organizations.
It is exciting to know that anyone can start his social entrepreneurial venture which can create the solution to pressing problems in society and have some significant positive implications.
You can find social entrepreneurship around you almost in every industry. Here is the synthesis of some traits critical to the success and development of social entrepreneurial venture.
1. Creative and Innovative
Out of the box, creative thinking is natural in social entrepreneurs. They are always in search of making things work perfectly. The ability to think differently and to find innovative solutions is a gigantic quality of social entrepreneurs.
Social entrepreneurs knock out with a truly new idea to bring transformational innovation in the society. They are creative both in vision/goals setting and problem-solving. They approach opportunities and obstacles differently and come up with truly original solutions.
These individuals are not fueled by a drive to become famous or to build the fortune. They have an innate desire to resort justice in society and address social problems innovatively.
Social entrepreneurs see opportunity in every problem because they look and comprehend the given situation differently. They exploit these opportunities and come up with a product and service with an approach to overcome such problem. In other words, social entrepreneurship is the byproduct of creativity and innovation.
2. Community Driven
Every business enterprise addresses specific needs for profit but this is something not true in case of social entrepreneurial ventures. Topmost priority of social entrepreneurs is to fulfill basic community needs even subliminal one. Sometimes social entrepreneurs work for profit and sometimes not for profit. In both cases, they build their startup to meet the needs of society keeping the global platform in mind.
It is generally accepted that social entrepreneurs come up with solutions to solve community problems and to get them involved in the venture for ultimate success. They have an in-depth understanding of the local community and markets. Social entrepreneurs considered to be the passionate leader of change. They have the desire to improve the lives of their peers. The community is a broad term which includes your district city or country. Due to the emergence of technology, today the whole world can be considered to be a community. Therefore social entrepreneurs are responsible for introducing community-driven solutions which are not used in one part of the society but these are beneficial for the whole society at large.
3. Business Savvy
Like other entrepreneurs, In this coveted and often glorified world, social entrepreneurs are motivated to enter the marketplace with a hope of creating quick win venture. They bring to zeal, passion, and innovation in their venture with a goal of sustaining meaningful footprints that will endure for a extended period of time. Social entrepreneurs by nature tackle continually evolving issues and they measure their success with the impact they are creating.
Social entrepreneurs start the company with a burning heart to bring change in society. Social problems left the incredible mark on their psyches and motivate them to spent time and seek a solution. Therefore behind every social enterprise, there is an emotional urge behind.
Social entrepreneurs are considered to be business savvy individuals. Although these characteristics of social entrepreneurs are less exciting it is the important one. They not only come up with an innovative creative and truly transformational idea but they also have sound business skills and knowledge to turn an idea into a reality. They consider and analyze market demand and research, resources, and limits of the budget to exploit an opportunity. They are also well aware of the business rules and regulations and the restrictions and opportunities in society available for them. They also know the significance of data. They collect information necessary for the implementation of their idea and constantly monitor and evaluate their impact on the improvement of a society by collecting feedback.
Why social entrepreneurs get up early in the morning? Why they take the risk for the betterment of the whole society? Why thy value well being of a society over profits? Are they committed to a cause?
Social entrepreneurs leverage business techniques to ensure operational efficiency of their venture. But overriding driving force has passion for societal focus. Some situations demand thinking like a typical business person and as an entrepreneur, they understand the problem with a vision to solve it. They discover new avenues and new challenges.
Social entrepreneurs have a cause that inspires them. They are fully committed and believe in what they are doing. They have boundless energy that keeps them working on. They are exceptionally passionate individuals committed to making the difference in society.
Social entrepreneurs have deep desire to move the needle on some significant social issues and they are committed to taking smart risks. They face failure as a result of taking the risk but they understand how failure is critical to success. Rather than giving up, they learn from their mistakes through critical analysis of the failed project or business. They are open to critics and accept feedback to bring change. Either it is bureaucracy, lack of capital or the absence of community support they pave their ways with right intentions.
Social entrepreneurship is not a fleeting feeling that possessed for a short period of time it is an itch to solve problems. Social entrepreneurs stew in their feeling, understand the problem that need out of the solution and work for the success and development of their venture.
6. Social Entrepreneurship Needs Confidence Courage and Conviction
Entrepreneurs have to be unreasonable to dismiss the status quo and create novel solutions. An irrational lack of reasonableness can sabotage efforts of an entrepreneur. Social entrepreneurs need confidence, courage, and conviction. Entrepreneurs with no basis for the confidence are doom to failure. Self-aware entrepreneurs base their confidence on their experiences. After the establishment of the foundation of confidence, the next step for an entrepreneur is to develop an appropriate level of courage. Sometimes social entrepreneur disrupts the conventional norms or the betterment of a society. Therefore they have to be self-confident and self-aware to bring change and to make others convinced.
Entrepreneurship takes guts and confidence to succeed. Self confidence allows people to follow their intuition and create solutions. Social entrepreneurship is the process of an impulse change, so self-confidence is must have characteristics to ensure the feasibility of the project when others are in doubt.
7. Team Spirit/Solidarity
There is a need of a single driver to get the motor running and to hit the road, but if the organization wants to grow in scale and size it will definitely require more hands on the deck performing different roles for a single cause. Individuals with an ability to infect others with the importance of their cause and team spirit can grow their company easily. Collaboration with other people inside and outside the organization is a must have quality for social entrepreneurs for the success of his venture. Social entrepreneurs collaborate and integrate different ideas in order to come up with a single best solution suiting the needs of the stakeholders as well as society.
8. Long-Term Planning
Substantial change takes time. Therefore there must be a balance between having impact and planning for long term. This is something especially true in case of resource allocation, particularly for a nonprofit organization. It is important for your brand to resonate today with significant staying power on the business level. Avoid the temptation to overinvest time, resources and money in every opportunity to garner immediate results. It is important for social entrepreneurs to grow by ensuring the longevity.
Social entrepreneurs allocate resources to foster the effectiveness today while paving the pathway for future growth and development. Being social entrepreneurs you must have to think about the legacy that your social entrepreneurship will bring revolution in future. So work every day to make sure that you are on a right track.
9. Resilience and Agility
Throughout the journey, entrepreneurs dole out constant challenges some of them are considerable but many of them are not. These challenges are more than capitalizing on opportunities and obstacles. Social entrepreneurs have to face the complex financial crisis, they are required to make decisions, they have to make sudden changes and make the prediction that egregiously fails. All these challenges are the natural part of being entrepreneurs. Success in social entrepreneurship is a matter of facing challenges and matter of how you face those challenges. Triumphant entrepreneurs with the elevated stage of resilience face the constant slew of challenges without weakening their resolve.
Innovation and creativity are the critical weapons that distinguish social entrepreneurs from the larger better-established counterpart. Entrepreneurs are nimble; they are leaders of their startups. Agile entrepreneurs treat every problem quickly and adeptly. The agility keeps entrepreneurs proactive and vigilant. Agility is a characteristic which allows them to change constantly and improve their businesses.
10. Aware of the Pitfalls of Mission Drift
When the rose-tinted glass get the scratch and the fire in the belly start flickering most of the founders go for a shortcut. Same is true in case of social entrepreneurship. Once the venture is established entrepreneurs don’t have to start taking money from the wrong set of investors and veering away from their original target segment. Exiting to a mainstream and diversifying to the new set of products and services is a classic mission drift. It happens slowly but it erodes the original cause and sometimes it happens overnight. A social entrepreneur has to be knowledgeable to understand the mission drift.
Other than the above mentioned quintessential of social entrepreneur they share an unwavering belief in the innate capacity of people to contribute in social and economic development. Their practical yet innovative stance to social problems allows them to break away from constraints imposed by the ideology or field of discipline. They have the zeal to measure and monitor their impact on society. In short social entrepreneurs are not one of those who sits back and waits for change to happen because they are change drivers.