Accelerating the business of social change

‘An organization can either be a baby or a dwarf,’ claimed Manish Sabharwal, co-founder of TeamLease – a baby will grow with the right energy and inputs, whereas a dwarf will always stay the same size. How to ensure your social enterprise is a ‘baby’ was the overall theme of the opening session ‘Lessons Learnt, Fingers Burnt’ of the Khemka Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, held on the 8–9 December at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

Scale remained the prominent topic of the two-day conference, which attracted thought leaders from social enterprises, government, business and the NGO world. This ‘big tent’ of ideas created a platform for sharing best practice, cracking commonly faced problems and fostering collaboration among those with a passion for tackling India’s old social problems with new, market-based solutions.

The conference was designed to tackle four big issues identified by social entrepreneurs, through half-day sessions – these were financial instruments, intellectual and human capital, performance metrics, and partnering with the government. These sessions delved deep, with a panel of experts and passionate discussion among participants.

Dasra designed and facilitated the session on human capital entitled ‘Building Alternative Talent Pools’. In a panel facilitated by Dasra’s managing partner Neera Nundy, Manish Sabharwal, Deep Joshi (co-founder of Pradan) and Prashant Bhaskar (head of PLUG HR) discussed the ways in which social enterprises can attract, retain and build talent. Joshi advised treating each member of staff as a changemaker, while Sabharwal maintained that the role of the employer is not to ‘manufacture employees’. Nundy noted that ‘the energy of the group was clearly a commitment towards action and solving problems rather than getting stuck on what was wrong; we were working towards solutions and how each of us could help one another. We even thought about creating a hotline for social entrepreneurs … action was central.’

At the same time, the forum allowed social entrepreneurs to find the quick wins – short, actionable, takeaways from fellow delegates. Consultancy Clinics were the more unique aspect of this forum and focused on law and social entrepreneurship, effective stakeholder communication, getting investment-ready and new forms of knowledge creation.

Also notable was the presentation by Matthew Nash, managing director of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke University, who showed a way to analyse any social enterprise’s potential to scale. Key ingredients in the Scalers model are staffing, communicating, alliance-building, lobbying, earnings generation, replicating and stimulating market forces. This was applied through mini-case studies on Selco and NIDAN.

By bringing together such a variety of players in the social enterprise world, the Khemka Forum on Social Entrepreneurship has taken a vital first step to ‘accelerate the business of social change’ and will certainly continue to be a major player in the collaboration between social entrepreneurs in India.

Neera Nundy is managing partner of Dasra. Email neera@dasra.org

Event Khemka Forum on Social Entrepreneurship
Date 8-9 December 2009
Venue Hyderabad, India
Organizer Dasra

For more information
http://www.khemkafoundation.org/focus-areas/social-entrepreneurship/khem...