Stanford University Social Entrepreneurship Start-up

I found the example from the lecture and thought it would make sense to read it and share it with you guys (the business plan for LED technology implementation in developing countries) – Standfort University Social Entrepreneurship Start-up Report.

http://ses-1.stanford.edu/reports/global.pdf

The business plan is, in my opinion, only the structure of a real business plan that can support all this social impact of bringing more efficient lighting solutions to the developing world with numbers, measurable goals and timing. Standfort University is actually saying in this report that 3 individual, stand alone business plans for China, India and Mexico were developed (found China which is much more complete and detailed). The main concern in this report is the social impact of such a product but it lacks all the economic part, some detailed paths in order to achieve the goals and the time issue is totally ignored. Everything is explained in general, some parts built just on common sense and with too little probability of success (3 employees with too daring objectives worldwide). I didn’t get their enthusiasm for franchising, a step in my opinion too early to be taken into consideration, as well as the whole fundraising issue which seems too positive and without a concrete sustainable part. In the part where partners should be taken into consideration, there is no criterion of selection (to be in line with the values or to have proven success??).

For a more detailed business plan, take a look at China pilot case:
http://ses-1.stanford.edu/reports/china.pdf

Business planning for social entrepreneurs - Episode 1

Admittedly, this is a pretty grim part of the course: the place where our dreams of changing the world by innovation and goodwill have to come to terms with the "business" in social business – and some of them will come down in flames. It was all about rigour, data, and hard economic logic. Students took it in stride: well done!

Let me remind us of the rules of engagement for this part of the course.

1. we are going to be completely honest and trasparent about our business case. Remember, business planning is a troubleshooting exercise: if you try to camouflage your errors they may not show up – until it's too late, and you are committed to running a crippled business. 
2. we are going to be very upfront with our feedback about each other's business planning. Be generous when praising, merciless when criticizing. No ego massaging or bleeding hearts allowed :-)
3. we are not going to take offense when somebody else exposes our mistakes. This is not personal: criticism is, actually, a very precious gift.

All clear?

Numbers

Tiago has done most of the job by showing how different elements can enhance the visibility and tracking of the blog, so I thought to just stick with…numbers and why we need measuring methods in improving our blog?

I will talk briefly about Google Analytics and how it can give precious insights to us. The best part is that it gives very basic reports that anybody can understand, as well as more sofisticated ones. Analyzing all traffic data means looking at graphs and charts that will show how many visitors the blog has, their evolution as a function, average of pages, time, content, ecc. Just by looking attentively one can understand the strengths and weaknesses of a blog or site, because like in everything we do, we need solid ground and numbers to understand quality and preference. This will generate the need of rethinking maybe the content, the design part or maybe just focus on the details. In my opinion the content has top level importance together with the “blog personality”, generating readers that hopefully will continue to return and spend more time with “us”. It doesn’t take rocket science to figure that one out.

For us it’s so useful to understand the specific tools that can generate high volume traffic and how we can meet the expectation of the reader in order to build a successful story. In my opinion, one step at the time will do the trick, because learning by doing is the best way.