Developing a Social Entrepreneurial Idea

from concept to social impact

Select activities which best meet your needs and take a look at the Resources page for tools which might help.

Preparation

Revise the preceding modules in this social entrepreneurship curriculum. Have you learned anything that could inform idea generation (the process and the ideas themselves)?

Look ahead in the syllabus to see where we will be going with the ideas. For example, look ahead to the sections on resourcing projects (and the Resources section of this module) and see what types of initiatives are being funded already. Would any of those types of projects be ideal for implementation in any of the communities with which you are associated?

Check out the ideas list(s) and improve it if you can.

Do you already have an idea? Working with the community in eliciting and developing ideas is important, and here we point to some approaches which may help.

Learn about:

Facilitation
Dialogue mapping
- Appreciative Inquiry
- Positive Deviance
- PIPPA
- World Cafe

Self Assessment

Who in your team is best for which roles?

etc.

Practice:

Individually or in a small group, discuss what questions need to be asked in order to generate ideas？
What written, web or other media sources might point to ideas for social entrepreneurship?
Are there any methods or techniques of eliciting needs, ideas, etc.?
- Try some of them out in small groups - simulating what might happen in a real workshop with community members (do some role playing).
Developing the idea(s) ... bouncing it/them off others (fellow students, potential stakeholders, ...), ... refining the idea ... share ... consolidate ....

Experiential Learning

This is your next step in the community engagement process. Activities here will be extended in future modules/units and build on activities in the previous.

The pattern will generally be:

Preparation and planning ... field work/ quest ... learn ... come back and share ... create links under Community ....

In collaboration with the relevant community members:

Plan the Interactions

Draw up an agenda for the next meeting with a longer term plan in mind (this will evolve).

Meet with the Community

Meet repeatedly to develop the rapport.

Successive meetings should drive progress towards agreed goals.

Generate Ideas

Actively engage with the community, facilitating dialogue to co-generate a range of ideas ...

Document all the ideas for future reference (some may be taken up by other teams).

Goal Setting

Focus on one idea: prioritise the ideas and choose one that is of importance to the community on account of its potential social impact and which is feasible.

Outputs

By the end of these interactions you should have an idea which has been collaboratively generated, selected and agreed upon.

What Next?

Sharing Ideas or some other part of the Curriculum (e.g. for revision or a wider perspective).