SoCap Day Two

Yesterday I spent the day thinking about investors and structure and deals.

Today, I thought about social enterprise.  I went to four sessions today and they coalesced in my head in a very odd way.

Media

Two of the sessions got me thinking about media and technology as social investment.  The first session I attended was on Information and communication Technology for the Developing World.  The conversation moved back and forth between the devices that were used (computers and mobile phones) and the content or what information was transmitted.  I also attended a pitch session where four new ventures pitched participatory media ideas.  My career started as a high school educator and when I first moved in to philanthropy I worked in youth media so I was very interested in this session. Without going too deep in to the content of this session, a central issue was how to pitch a radically new understanding of an existing market.  I immediately was reminded of some of the slogans of this field, "Content is king" and "The medium is the message" and the interplay between them.  In both developing world ICT infrastructure AND participatory media, there is a fantastic opportunity to create a totally different paradigm, one for which the medium and the content are sympatico, one that is not as centralized, one that conceptualizes the audience as a participant.  This would require a radically different understanding of networking infrastructure and a radically different understanding of media and information and truth and perspective.  Given that Nokia and Cisco and others will/do pour large amounts of money in to this space to ensure their position at the center, I do not have great hope that we will not need to make the same mistakes at least a few more times while we wait for the just the right disruptive solution.  My thinking is not crystal here but the central thought is how do we not miss game changing ideas because we are stuck on traditional models.

Intermediaries and Scale

The other two sessions were Fair Trade products and a panel that I sat on, the Aspen Network for Development Entrepreneurs.  The central issue for me, for both of these panels was the need for a vibrant B to B or intermediary layer to catalyze scale. 

As some one obsessed with data and how it moves, Fair Trade fascinates me. A Fair Trade banana is easy.  Coffee is harder because it involves roasting and sometimes mixing.  Chocolate is a lot harder because not everything ingredient always Fair Trade.  Clothing is really hard.  The Fair Trade data problem is not just ingredient sourcing but also working conditions.  My main question for the field is, given that Fair Trade can only be considered successful with massive scale, on the order of 2 billion farmers, how do you scale the certification especially given that the problem does not get easier with scale. Essentially, the core difficulty is not Fair Trade products, but it is convincing the market that the products are Fair Trade (whatever Fair Trade means), that the certification is meaningful.  This is the work of an intermediary, a certifying body. Maybe a lot of certifying bodies???

In the ANDE panel that I sat on, I held the flag for the intermediaries.  ANDE is a collaboration of several funders who are trying to define the market and reach an economy of scale for the investing in Small and Growing Businesses.  Like Fair Trade, scale is the critical component to success because the goal is to rationalize economies in the developing world and a whole like of successful new entrepreneurs is the vehical to get there.  So, I posit, the critical piece will be a build out of a professional B to B layer that can 1) effectively and efficiently move capital by vetting entrepreneurs and sell investors and, 2) build the capacity of these new businesses in these difficult economies.

Today was a good day...

Comments

[Michael Cayley]

You are on to it ...

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Cheers,
mc