Greetings, everybody. Welcome to our course: Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship. My name is Jim Thompson and I'm joined by my colleague, Professor Ian MacMillan. Professor MacMillan prefers to go by the name of Mac, is the Ambani Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Mac is also the director of the Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center. He's a leader in his field, having studied innovation, entrepreneurship, and social entrepreneurship for over 40 years. We've worked closely together since 2001 and this has been a focal point of much of our research. So without further ado, I'll hand over to Mac and we'll continue with our introduction. OK, it's my turn, and I went to introduce Jim Thompson. Jim is the cofounder and the director of the Wharton Social Entrepreneurship Program. He's my partner in a web-based series on social entrepreneurship, and he's been working with me on that topic for over 10 years. In fact, he started working on this topic before the term social entrepreneurship had even been widely used. He's responsible for most of the field research that is the major focus of the Wharton Entrepreneurial Research Center. He carried out a compelling dissertation on this topic. And in the course of the time that I worked together with him, he's demonstrated a deep and pragmatic commitment to advancing our knowledge of this challenging, noble phenomenon called social entrepreneurship. So for all of you out of there, in terms of preparing you for the four weeks ahead, here are some things to think about and then a breakdown of what we'll do week by week. This is an introductory course. More advanced courses will follow. We've deliberately kept the introductory principles for this four-week program so that those of you who are new to this space or naive to the the world of social entrepreneurship or social impact can begin your journey without worrying too much about deep detail of implementation and scale-up. With respect to the outline of the course, in week one, we're going to cover starting a social enterprise. In other words, what does it take to think of a problem, conceive of a solution, and then prepare to launch the enterprise? In week two, we're gonna think about assessing the solutions so how does one design it? How does one assess and begin to plan for the deployment of the solution? In week three, we'll cover more detail with respect to the operations realities of the enterprise. In other words, what deliverables will need to be put into place on the ground? What capabilities will the enterprise have to deliver? What capabilities will the beneficiaries need? And then what kinds of costs can you expect to have to take care of once the enterprise begins on the ground? In week four, we're going to look at testing the plausibility of a concept as early as possible, preferably as cheap as possible too. And then we're gonna consider stakeholders. How do you think of stakeholders, their issues, their agendas? How do you analyze those to make sure that you have stakeholder alignment with your enterprise? And then, of course, the inevitable sociopolitics which emerges when there are multiple stakeholders, perhaps with different issues. How do you plan to navigate those sociopolitics such that you maintain the support of the stakeholders that you need? I'm gonna hand over to Mac. He's gonna share with you some of our thoughts on who should take this course or who could benefit from this course. We reckon there are about four different groups of people that would benefit from the course. First, the individuals who are trying to address a social problem by starting a business that helps people and alleviates poverty and suffering in a sustainable way. Secondly, agencies and charities and other charitable organizations attempting to reduce poverty and suffering. Third would be foundations and non-government organizations like NGOs who having difficulties in continuing to fund the organizations that are dependent on them for funding, while they themselves are facing increasing problems with garnering their own resources. And then, finally, established firms that are looking for meaningful and impactful ways of executing their corporate social responsibility. Let's take a look very briefly at one example of what will be covered or developed with you through this course. What you see in front of you is a representation of a social enterprise that was built and deployed in Zambia, Southern Africa. The social entrepreneur was concerned about malnutrition. The principal problem, after some analysis of malnutrition, that she identified was that there was insufficient levels of protein available. In other words, protein was not available in sufficient volume, at acceptable price in this region, and it was adversely affecting many of the folks that lived in that part of the world. She wanted to tackle that problem. The idea she had in mind was to enable as many farmers as possible to rear their own chickens such that they could consume chickens, increase poultry levels for them and their family, but also make money or produce income for them and their families while they were doing this. In order for that to happen, she would need to build the ability to produce high-quality but lower-cost feed for poultry, so feed types for the chicken. To do that, she'd need to get all the raw materials to a place where she could mix them – think about it as a feed-mixing plant – then she'd have to bag and then distribute the bags of feed either via truck or another means to distribution centers. That would have to be made available to farmers who could then rear these chickens using the feed, in turn, take their reared chickens to a market where they would get paid when they sold the chickens to willing buyers. The outcomes of this enterprise meant that the family would get income for themselves by virtue of the sale of poultry, but they would also consume some of the chickens, increasing the quality of their diet. So if you think about that, all of those steps need to be considered, planned for, and then supported in order for the solution to work. We're going to wish you good luck. We look forward to the next four weeks. We look forward to engaging with you and observing your engagement with one another on the forums. Welcome to the Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship. See you in, over the next four weeks.
