Thoughts on Social Enterprise sector

Working in Business –to – Consumer areas, I have often thought that the only difference I make at the end of the day is to myself.

The mechanism is unchanged in so many years of working – Sell more products for my clients , and it will result in more fee / remuneration for myself.

To quote Benjamin Disraeli, I am not using my “Moral Steam” to create lasting, enduring & meaningful value to the society.

What can be a man’s memo to himself ?

Probably it could be, that I want to leave this world a better place than what I found it as, when I was born.

How do I stand & reflect on that appraisal ? Not very tall!

Therefore, in the last four days, I had been reading about the Social Enterprise sector.

Why are they not as able as B2C players in Capital acquisition, resource management and asset creation?

What Financial engineering can be done to “understand & account” better their results, contribution and capital expenses?

Why Social Enterprise is always looked at from the filter of charity and why they can’t tap into the deep pools of capital from the stock markets?

Microfinance for instance is a 65 billion USD industry. It is innovating a lot in these directions. What can other social enterprise spaces learn from that?

I came across these two articles.

One by Antony Bugg-Levine,Bruce Kogut and Nalin Kulatilaka in Jan - Feb 2012 and the other by Robert Kaplan and Allen Grossman in November 2010, issues of HBR.

Do read them and they shall inspire fresh insights.

Because Human Intelligence is much more than what can be measured by so - called "IQ"...

Ralph Gerard, the neuroscientist, was reminded of a story. A stranger is at a party of people who know one another well.

One says, “72,” and everyone laughs. Another says, “29,” and the party roars. The stranger asks what is going on ?

His neighbor said, “We have many jokes and we have told them so often that now we just use a number.”

The guest thought he’d try it, and after a few words said, “63.” The response was feeble. “What’s the matter, isn’t this a joke?”

“Oh, yes, that is one of our very best jokes, but you did not tell it well.”

My point is - there can be “individual contexts” and “shared contexts” with whole societies participating in.

A lot of people have told me, as to how they define “Intelligence” in their respective field-of-work and as a matter of their umwelt.

Sitting as I do, at the intersection of changing cultures and markets – it astounds me how societies & disciplines re -model themselves, by changing “contexts”.

If your realize “context” is a powerful driver of attitudinal / behavioural change in humans / societies.

Technology changes “the context” of how we live our lives. Great Art (& Music etc.) changes “the context” of how we view life. And Marketing changes “the context” of what people think they need / desire.

On that note, I am attaching a book that you can download - http://wtrns.fr/7cg17Mfs6IDPz0

It goes on to expound in what ways “the context” of how human understanding of “Intelligence” is changing.

This is a provocative read, especially for all those Nerds who believe that IQ is the be all and end all of all intelligence measurements.

For those of my friends in India – this writer is presently in New Delhi.

As always, would welcome your comments.

Thoughts on Facebook IPO - A missed opportunity for the Communication Networks?

I have been reading about the impending Facebook IPO since February 1^st now.

While the hype & hysteria is totally on, with everybody talking about the “vital stats” of the company – breathlessly… There is something that in my view , needs to be reminded to my friends in Advertising.

And it’s not a pleasant reminder. It is a reminder about a “missed opportunity”, a glaring failing of the Industry.

The following is the revenue / net income break up of Facebook, as they revealed in their SEC filings.

It is extremely clear from this that Facebook (just like Google) is nothing but an “Advertising Platform” driven by Advertising.

Google still had a distinct product to offer, in the form of search to begin with.

It was only much later that they came around monetizing search and the entire Google product architecture around Advertising.

In that sense “Apple” can be called as the only “real technology company” making wares not entirely dependent on advertising revenues.

Facebook, in that sense looks like just another online “app” – something that became “extremely macro” with the process of time and whose singular biz model is audience aggregation.

Now the question that should keep most Ad executives awake at night is, what stopped the Advertising Networks – the WPPs, the Omnicoms, the IPGs, the Publicis of the world , to leverage their scale, clout and consumer understanding to use the Internet, pre-empt Facebook and launch such a platform way back when the Internet was still a toddler. (in early 2000s)

To my mind the reason is, that most Ad Networks have a mentality of building campaigns that begin, operate and terminate like a project.

They are simply not designed to construct something that can be a viable “platform” the whole industry can benefit from. That mindset is simply not there.

Just imagine, if today Facebook was a joint property, created by the Ad Industry Networks( in collaboration or singly)….what a superb revenue amplifier it could have been for the industry!!! What a discontinuity it would have been…..