All problems that have unknown elements are entrepreneurial problems which means they require entrepreneurial management. However, although we often think of startups as being entrepreneurial, many social problems have elements that are unknown, which means they are entrepreneurial problems. Unfortunately, often people don’t recognize social problems as entrepreneurship problems. Instead they believe that because a solution works in one context, it will work when applied in another context. However a different context introduces “unknown” into the equation and transforms it from a traditional problem into an entrepreneurial problem.
Why Many Social Solutions Fail
Let me use an example to illustrate why many of our solutions to social problems fail because we overlook that we are facing an entrepreneurial problem. Infant mortality represents a persistent problem in developing economies. In these regions, often infants die for the simplest of reasons, including, not being able to keep pre-mature infants warm. In developed economies this is a known problem with a known solution: we use incubators to warm premature infants until they are self-sufficient. Given what we already know, the natural solution seemed to be to provide incubators to developing economies and so a group of generous philanthropists and physicians donated millions in incubators. What most people overlooked was that despite seeming like a known solution, the geographic, economic, and cultural distance introduced a significant number of unknowns into the equation. Specifically, in practice, in developing economies these incubators were often far from where they were needed or broke down beyond repair without the service network we take for granted in developed economies. Although well intentioned, the incubator program provides a classic reason why large firms, social entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs fail—they overlook the unknown and act on their assumptions.
An Social Entrepreneurship Example: Embrace
In contrast, a team at Stanford University took an entirely different approach to solving a seemingly known problem. The team started by first recognizing the overlooked challenges with delivering healthcare in rural and less-developed settings and then tried to radically rethink the current approach. In the place of an expensive electronic equipment, the team designed a simple device with no moving parts. Shaped like a sleeping bag, the new incubator operates using a simple sack of wax that can be thrown into a pot of boiling water and then, when inserted into the sleeping bag, operates at just the right temperature to keep the baby warm without harm. Best of all the solution created by Embrace can be delivered for only $25.
The key to solving many social problems is to recognize that despite what we may think, there are often unknowns we may not recognize. These unknowns may be introduced by cultural, economic, geographic or other distances that make our “knowns” suddenly “unknowns.” As a result, solving these problems means recognizing that they are entrepreneurial problems and require an entrepreneurial process to solve.
Lessons Learned:
- Many social problems are entrepreneurial problems: an element of “unknown” means that entrepreneurial tactics must be applied
- Social entrepreneurs must be especially aware because it can be tempting to apply a known solution in an unknown context
- Instead social entrepreneurship requires significant creativity and new entrepreneurial tactics to tackle
