Over the past week I’ve been able to finally push out a first taster of the Model Business project. I’d like just to share some of the thoughts on moving forward in the post.
One big challenge in thinking about businesses that benefit society and the natural environment is a comparable understanding of how well they are working, this is impact measurement. The other side is a challenge around making that benefit not only financially sustainable, but financially attractive. I do believe there are a plethora of ways we can do business well and do humanity well, and as a start I’ve listed a number examples where this is the case. You can find a more detailed list at Model Business.
These examples are just a start. I believe that if a number of different examples are outlined, a possible rubric or metric can emerge. This wouldn’t be a quantitative measure for impact, as I think that is quite a subjective (and rightly so) phenomenon. Instead I see a possible framework for understanding what impact is possible given certain business practices. In many cases this is simply abiding by the law and providing a proper service. In some wonderful cases however, there is a possibility to use a very profitable product or service for the benefit of the marginalize or future generations. This is where cellphones become tools for farmers, or yogourt becomes a high nutrition supplement.
A number of frameworks exist to analyze business decisions from the standard 5 Forces to the newer Business Model Canvas. This project seeks to build on these existing frameworks, and just outline a number of useful examples of how business can align with social or environmental interests while also increasing profitability or mitigating risk.
The next step in this project is to get some larger companies on board and start from the user-centered perspective of the corporation. Ideally what will happen is that large business interests see their interests aligned with social entrepreneurs and together they reach both scale and quality.
Tags: frameworks, model business, project