Building A Successful Social Venture--A Social Entrepreneur's Guide

BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL SOCIAL VENTURE This paper describes the nine-element business planning framework that co-evolved over more than a decade through a process that combined the in-depth mentoring of 179 ventures from 36 developing countries with iterative refinements to an integrated online and in-residence curriculum. This framework has now been field tested with more than 800 ventures. It encompasses factors related to completeness of vision as well as execution, entrepreneurial adaptation, and access to financing. As a an integrated approach to business planning in resource constrained environments it provides important insights into the value equation innovations needed in business models for serving the poor. This framework will be documented in a soon to be released book.