Social Innovation as Smart Business Strategy
Businesses Can Be Good Stewards Of Our Societies
by Idris Mootee
Innovation takes many forms, but social innovation is the least understood form, and today there are pressing needs and urge for the creation, adoption and diffusion of innovations. Innovation's several forms include: technological, organizational, product, service, business model, etc. The term 'social innovation' has come into common parlance in recent years. Some may consider social innovation no more than a passing fad, but many entrepreneurs and social scientists see significant value in the concept of social innovation because it identifies a critical type of innovation.
Social innovations will probably be the most significant innovation type in the next decades. Some distinguish social innovation from business innovation, and identify a subset of social innovations that requires government support, which I totally disagree with. Business innovation should have a socal innovation component when we think about sustainability.
A good business strategy needs to be more than about just maximizing value creation. It is important to make lots of money, but more important to ensure the business is sustainable. Our future is in the hands of a couple thousand top Fortune 500 executives who are already very occupied with the daily crisis, and whom make decisions that impact our future. They need to understand the long-range implications and impacts of their immediate, everyday, urgent actions and decisions in relation to the far-reaching social innovations now taking place (which are management's new and most significant dimension). This is a critical junction of modern management.
Last month, my friend Mehmood Khan (photo above), London based ex-Unilever's global leader of innovation process development, took a public oath in his home village of Nai Nangla in India that he would dedicate the rest of his life to making the world a better place. He is starting from his home village in India. I wish more executives whould do that. Imagine the possibilities if all the smart minds in large corporations started taking a little time off to do this?
He left his job at Unilever to return India to focus on innovation of a different kind. Khan's job is to forge connections between the village of Mewat and big corporations to create employment. A year ago, Aviva, the UK's biggest insurer, was looking to build its rural presence in India. Khan's trust connected the company with 60 local young people and 12 were ultimately recruited. "It's a cycle that generates money... Aviva hired some people whose income went up... This creates a market economy," Khan told Forbes magazine. He has set up a computer center in Nai Nangla. He has also facilitated ICICI Bank to recruit 16 of the 30 villagers trained in the first intake. Khan also engaged charities and NGOs to administer literacy programs. He is full of creative ideas on how corporations can participate in helping.
The question is should companies' role in meeting basic needs be kept distinct from their desire to create more profits? For Khan, the two can work together. I totally believe that is possible and even necessary. The lines between business strategy and social innovation have blurred and converged as the business world attempts to respond to the modern culture's demand that businesses be good stewards of our societies. Hats off to Mehmood and Aviva.
Aviva is a bold and innovative player in the insurance industry (full disclosure: they are a client of ours and this is one of our innovation projects). Most people feel that insurance is just a black box and,you'll never interact with them. For many it becomes very difficult to see the value in insurance. As an expansion to their successful "Change Insurance" communications platform, Aviva has launched "In Your Shoes" which is a site dedicated to viewing the opinions and thoughts of customers about insurance. We started playing with the idea a few months back based on the notion of using storytelling to create customer engagement.
Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.Labels: Idris Mootee, Innovation, Social Innovation, Strategy
posted by Blogging Innovation at 5:00 AM
3 Comments:
Praise God for people like Mehmood. While there will surely be greed and insensitivity for eons to come in big business, it's good to see a trend toward social innovation and community responsibility taking place. People must change before kingdoms will.
Personally: Given a choice, I will always support small business and those larger businesses who care for and support their communities because this philosophy aligns with my own.
Big Picture: I believe that we are seeing a growth phase in the global economy: people around the world are increasingly placing value on community and altruism and it's impacting their buying decisions.
Don F Perkins
http://donfperkins.blogspot.com
I also very much agree with your view on the importance of social innovation--and one that is not just creates value but that is truly sustainable.
I question, however, the efficacy of execs that want to leverage large-outside businesses--to hire locals as a solution. In the end, such approaches do not create a lot of net NEW benefits as opposed to shifting the benefits from one Indian town to another. The small town he is from benefits but only at the cost of another.
I wonder instead if the best social innovations are driven from the INSIDE. The type that enable a net new opportunity/benefit/value that is driven by the unique local community. I have become a big fan of these sorts of grassroots efforts and would love to see more efforts to foster this type of innovation as it is more likely to stick AND more likely to create sustainable value. It also creates a sense of local pride.
Thoughts?
Social innovation is the only way to create stable and sustainable societies where businesses can grow and thrive. Exploiting social innovation to make third world countries an important actor in the international market will increase stability and welfare on a global scale.
I also agree with Kendall, that the best way to create businesses is inside the local community. Then they can expand to larger markets. To do this, innovative frameworks can create an environment that enable the local initiatives to happen in the first place. Microcredit is one of the innovations that has helped people start up their own businesses. We need more innovations like that.
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