New Post: Social Profit or Social Revenue? #socent

Some common sense business thinking thanks to Deborah Meaden on Dragon's Den tonight.  She said something that struck a chord about the distinction between making a profit and generating revenue:  

"There are some people in life that don't know how to make a profit 

and people misunderstand being in business and generating revenue 

with this instinct that true entrepreneurs have to make money.  

I have a horrible feeling that you don't know how to make a profit..."

Succinct and brilliant!  The successful entrepreneur works to make sure that revenue exceeds costs.  This has me thinking about social profit and social revenue and environmental profit and environmental revenue.  

Unless social enterprise managers measure social and environmental impacts and know what break even and surplus look like and how to get there then they might end up being good intentioned and busy but not making real progress.  And no one wants that...

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Follow Dragon's Den on Twitter: @BBCDragonsDen

Next 20 Years Will Be the Age of the Eco-efficient Economy

From the paper "The emergence of the eco-efficient economy" by IBM Institute for Business Value

Executive summary here: ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/gbe03300usen/GBE03300USEN.PDF

Three core conclusions emerged from the collaborative discussion:

• Eco-efficiency is poised to become the biggest economic game-changer for organizations over the next 20 years.

• Direct and collaborative action from a range of stakeholders will be needed to address the challenges and opportunities posed by ecoefficiency.

• There is a strong imperative for stakeholders to advance the ecoefficient economy.

Best practice recommendations

1) Leverage innovation to deliver “green” infrastructures that are highly efficient and overlay the physical infrastructure with digital intelligence

2) Implement sustainable solutions that promote resource efficiency and reduce the environmental and social impact of operations

3) Embrace intelligent systems that use open standards to provide near realtime information for better management of the infrastructure, water quantities, or, even, entire transportation systems.

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My question: What are the opportunities for social entrepreneurs and social enterprises in the eco-efficiency economy?  

Please respond with your ideas...

Is the east end becoming the social enterprise Silicon Valley?

My article in Social Enterprise...

http://www.socialenterpriselive.com/section/comment/people/20100824/the-east-end-becoming-the-social-enterprise-silicon-valley

OpenIDEO.com and the Design Quotient

Thanks to Hugh at Forum for the Future's Gatecrashing the Energy Sector scheme (http://www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/gatecrashing-the-energy-sector), I learned about the OpenIDEO.com platform "Where people design better, together" (http://openideo.com/).  

I just checked it out and encourage you to do the same.  It seems like a good way to create and test ideas.  In particular, I like their Design Quotient of inspiration, concepting, collaboration and evaluation.  Enjoy...

<p>Introduction to OpenIDEO / OpenIDEO.com from IDEO on Vimeo.</p>

URL: 

Cheers!