Socio-Tech Innovation

According to a 2016 report by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, there are an increasing number of new ventures founded globally have a social orientation, seeking to make the world a better place somehow, someway. Within this mix are several ventures utilizing technological innovations (broadly defined) in significant ways to serve the poor and marginalized or to improve society overall across the globe in areas including but not limited to healthcare, financial inclusion, food security, farm-tech, energy, and education (Gharib 2016).

Incorporated in 2015, MBISSA Energy Systems works to build a renewable and sustainable power source in Western Africa. MBISSA Energy Systems’ first prototype in rural West Africa explored the option of exploring wind energy for residential use. However, Caleb soon found out that wind energy is not a reliable or efficient source of energy in his chosen context of study. He then realigned his focus on capturing solar energy via panels mounted on housetops and storing the power in batteries for small-scale residential use. This case highlights bricolage, bottom of pyramid innovation, and also provides a context to study an innovation ecosystem comprising customers, suppliers, and complementors in the context of social entrepreneurship.

This case centers on Grameen America and its rollout of an iPad-based cloud banking system, which not only increased organizational efficiency and efficacy, it further provided greater transparency to a largely Latina population of loan officers and their borrowers. The case study touches on the following points:

The world sees itself on the threshold of an impending crisis—the one that would be triggered by an acute shortage of fresh water. The urgency of the situation inspired Clensta International Private Limited; a biotechnology-based Indian start-up, to devise innovative healthcare solutions that make hygiene accessible even with the shortage of water. Founded by Puneet Gupta in the year 2016, Clensta International has its headquarters in New Delhi, India and an additional office in The Hague, the Netherlands. To kick-start operations, the start-up was initially bootstrapped by its founder, Puneet. It was then incubated at IIT Delhi and eventually received financial support from the Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology in India. Team Clensta, with its focus on research and development, engages a team of seasoned professionals, research scholars, subject matter experts and young graduates to address sustainable development through innovative offerings. With a bevy of new products in the pipeline, this two-year young start-up targets the armed forces, hospitals, travelers and adventure enthusiasts and proposes to address many other market segments. The case illustrates the challenges faced by the organization in engaging the target audience and making it aware of the benefits of its offerings. It discusses how Clensta International synergized the diverse talents of its stakeholders to propose a unique solution to the issue of inaccessibility and wastage of water without compromising on personal hygiene.

We recount in this essay the decade-long story of Gram Vaani, a social enterprise with a vision to build appropriate ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) for participatory media in rural and low-income settings, to bring about social development and community empowerment. Other social enterprises will relate to the learning gained and the strategic pivots that Gram Vaani had to undertake to survive and deliver on its mission, while searching for a robust financial sustainability model. While we believe the ideal model remains elusive, we conclude this essay with an open question about the reason to differentiate between different kinds of enterprises—commercial or social, for-profit or not-for-profit—and argue that all enterprises should have an ethical underpinning to their work.

This case was developed based upon information provided by the founders of Napify as well as publicly available information. This case study details the struggles of a venture to discover a scalable business model that sustains its social mission, which considers digital technologies as key innovations that not only help resolve the originally addressed social problem (value creation), but also achieve a much higher value proposition in the market (value capture). Social innovation students will obtain a better understanding of how social entrepreneurship ideas fulfill their purpose through the identification of a market opportunity, where a value created can also be captured, beyond simply pursuing a means to a social end.

Key research questions include: How can a social innovation mission merge with a for-profit market-oriented mindset to make them suitable for a viable business model? What is the role of the entrepreneurial team’s experience and social motivation in reaching a functional value proposition? What changes would be deemed necessary to adapt and capture the value that has been created when the context is rapidly evolving?

Technology has the potential to transcend geographical boundaries and provide opportunities for economic development. However, along with global opportunities, there are also global challenges. This case looks at the experience of a visionary team in rural India and their effort to balance the opportunities and challenges emerging from implementing a technology-based social development project in a small rural town.

The TempWatch is a path-breaking innovation that successfully maps a simple alarm technology to monitor the complex unpredictable fluctuations in body temperatures which are crucial for the survival of newborns. This case is a classic example of articulating and identifying the core problem and suggesting a technological solution taking all the external and internal environmental factors into consideration. The case highlights how to identify the root cause of the problem, how founder’s education and experience shape their orientation, nature of innovation and level of complexity involved in the launch of a technology-based product, and the impact of external ecosystem like funding houses on the positioning of the social enterprise.

The problems being faced by farmers in terms of achieving desired profit for the crop yield is fully dependent on the market price they get for the season. In the current scenario, the farmers do not have access to the right market information and forecast for their produce. Agri app will provide on time access and forecast of the market price for various crops. This will help the farmers in getting the right price and will prevent the intermediaries taking advantage over the farmers. Agri app contributes in educating farmers, acquainting them with modern practices in agriculture and using technology to have access to the right market information at the right time so that they get the best price for their produce. The long-term goal is to improve the economic status of the farmers that will help in the overall growth and development of the Nation. The learner will be able to understand the importance of integrating technology with agriculture for social change and impact.

This case features Samagra, an Indian social enterprise which was formed with the goal to tackle the wicked problem of open defecation in India by providing dignified toilet access to millions living in urban slums. In 2017, two equally passionate members, a gifted engineer, Rahul Nayak, and an educator, Iti Mathur, joined their team. Samagra’s original business model focused on building and maintaining toilets for the urban poor. However, by 2017, having gone through multiple business model iterations, they had revised their business to use state-of-the-art technology and reduce the operating expenses of school, public, and community toilets in urban slums of Pune. By 2017, Samagra had developed memorandums of understandings (MOUs) with 6 municipalities across the country to build & maintain public and community toilets.

Using technology as an enabler to empower farmers in seeking and receiving right guidance and information for improving their product yield and price realizations for their produce. Technology acts as an enabler and a bridge between the user (farmer) and the expert (from whom they seek inputs). This case fits well with the socio-tech innovation framework as it enhances the inclusion of various stakeholders in many ways. This case highlights how the penetration of technology can influence the participation of the users at the bottom of pyramid where the reach of mobiles as technology is an emergent phenomenon. In the given context the case brings in focus the issues and challenges faced during idea generation, execution, and adoption as process.

GoCoop (www.​gocoop.​com) is India’s first online and mobile-based two-sided platform that connects the highly fragmented rural handloom weavers and artisans, who typically function within cooperatives, to urban markets in India and abroad. GoCoop’s mission is to enable sustainable livelihoods for the rural artisans, thus helping to preserve craft traditions in the country, and at the same time ensure the supply of high-quality, authentic handlooms, and handicrafts to customers. The case highlights the innovation at the bottom of the pyramid by which the poor become producers and how technology can be leveraged to achieve social impact at scale. The case offers many lessons for social ventures including development of supply chain and capabilities of beneficiaries and their absorptive capacities, B2B versus B2C business models related to funding and market maturity and the need for a team approach in building new ventures.

Women entrepreneurs are an underserved segment of society and in many ways face significantly greater challenges in many cases than male entrepreneurs. Female entrepreneurs face a great challenge is gaining external financing, and often suffer from a lack of an appropriate work space that limits women entrepreneurs accessing external resources—marketing and promotion. Also, most office space leave women feeling overworked and with reduced well-being by the end of the day. Finally, women’s business tends to be “smaller and slower” in terms of growth. For social entrepreneurs to succeed in addressing the social needs there must be reformation of strategies and revolution of the institutions (Zahra et al. 2009). As a B-certified corporation Hera Heb provides the platform for validating the women entrepreneurs. Hera Hub reduces the negative impact of gender stereotypes by providing women friendly co-work environment and resources necessary for launching and running successful ventures.

In 2015, the Gorkha Earthquake struck Nepal, killing more than 8000 people and displacing an additional two million in one of the worst natural disasters of the decade. The world responded by sending billions of dollars in aid to an already underdeveloped nation, along with thousands of relief workers and volunteers. One of those volunteers would be the Co-Founder of Thrive Projects. Fast-forward one year and Thrive Project founders returned to Nepal with a mission to bring power to communities still struggling to rebuild using their product Solar-Powered Auxiliary Relief Kiosks. They would come to realize that for many communities, power and supplies were not enough to address the root cause of the lagging development in Nepal. The firm continued to evolve with the vision to address this cause. By the end of 2016, Thrive had implemented numerous projects within the state of Kathmandu, and achieved rapid growth in its labor force. Although the socio-tech venture was achieving its vision, Thrive Founders strived to make the venture financially self-sustaining. This case examines how these factors, and market conditions, influenced their business and speculation on the future as they embark upon their second year in business.

CropIn is a SaaS-based agriculture-technology company that started in 2010 in India. This case study is the story of CropIn as told by its founder and CEO Krishna Kumar. CropIn provides SaaS-based services to agribusinesses in India and other developing nations; enabling clients to analyze and interpret data to derive real-time actionable insights on standing crop and projects spanning geographies. The company brings in cutting-edge technology like Big Data analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Geo-tagging, and Satellite monitoring to interconnect all the stakeholders at different levels of the agriculture ecosystem. The case can offer interesting insights on technology adaptation to suit the needs of small farmers and the impact of digitization on farm productivity. This case is particularly useful as an example of how technology can intervene to prevent the agrarian crisis from worsening and as a way out of the indebtedness for rural and small farmers.

Social enterprises, a new organizational form that pursues social goals along with profit goals (as opposed to the traditional organizations that primarily seek profits), are widely celebrated as the private sector’s response to the grave socio-economic-environmental issues facing humanity (Ebrahim in Research in Organizational Behavior 34: 81–100, 2014; Pache and Santos in Academy of Management Review 35(3): 455–476).