Alliances Increase the Effectiveness of Social Enterprise

Why is it that despite trillions of dollars invested to fix significant social ills such as poverty, illiteracy, and crime, these social ills still exist?

In a recent interview with this reporter, Harvard Business School professor Jane Wei-Skillern suggests that what social enterprise efforts need is what all businesses can profit from: a hard dose of entrepreneurialism. The fact that social profit rather than fiscal profit is the goal is not the point.

Take the power of network building, for example. Great entrepreneurs have built into their DNA an instruction set on how to build effective relationships, which is one way they can command resources that aren't under their control. Likewise, social enterprise projects almost inevitably come up against resource constraints, but many leaders of these efforts lack the knack for drawing together a support group of other causes, groups, and organizations.

In a social enterprise setting, she continues, successful networks "depend upon a willingness among all participants to invest significant resources (not just financial), relinquish control, and share recognition with their partners to advance the mission, not their organizations."

If you manage a social enterprise venture, whether it be nonprofit, NGO or government-sponsored endeavor, this interview might help you think about how alliance building can improve the effectiveness of the work you do.