such as improving the lives of the world's poor. As solutions are submitted to this Web site, we invite you to collaborate with other community members to review and refine them, to vote for the best entries, and to eventually help implement a solution if you wish.
This online community tackles a pressing global social problem in each new edition of Changemakers.net. Last November, we began exploring creative ways to raise money and other resources for citizen sector organizations (CSOs) from a citizen base. In March we launched a competition to find the best solutions to human trafficking. Since June, the Changemakers Innovation Award Competition has focused on finding ways to build a more ethics-driven society.
For each issue, including the competition for market-based strategies to serve the poor, Changemakers includes the following elements: a mosaic of solutions, a framework for understanding the problem and its solutions, an innovation awards competition that surfaces and identifies the best innovation solutions, and opportunities for online discussion and collaboration.
This competition is hosted by Changemakers.net in partnership with Ashoka's Full Economic Citizenship™ Initiative.
The Full Economic Citizenship Mosaic—A Useful Tool
The mosaic of solutions is good place to start in this edition because it provides an overarching framework for understanding the issue of developing innovative market-based strategies that improve the lives of low-income individuals around the world, including three primary obstacles to developing these strategies; three fundamental innovative principles that have emerged from the work of social and business entrepreneurs; and nine examples of solutions that have the potential to become a new generation of best practices, redefining the strategies of both business and CSOs. They are placed on each of the squares of the mosaic according to the principle they use and the factor they are addressing.
The mosaic is a tool that demonstrates how the collective impact of these innovative solutions is greater than the sum of their individual parts. As a member of the Changemakers community, you can now refine and expand the mosaic by submitting solutions to the innovation awards competition and through online discussion. Together, we can use the mosaic to make connections, create synergies, identify emerging trends and patterns, and find and fill gaps in the field.
Framework for Understanding Innovative Market-Based Strategies that Benefit the World's Poor
Our introductory essay acknowledges that an increasing number of CSOs and businesses are developing creative approaches that combine profit potential and positive social impact, yet learning to serve the poor through market-based approaches involves an acute learning curve. It requires inventing a new form of doing business for companies, or of redefining one's social strategy for social organizations, and an unprecedented level of business-social congruence. It advocates advancing decisively toward a new type of business/social model that Ashoka calls the "hybrid value chains." These are long-term commercial collaborations that are centered on leveraging the core competencies of both sectors and designed to transform the economies and living conditions of low-income communities. We believe that market approaches based on social innovations represent a tremendous potential for large-scale social impact and new wealth creation, offering opportunities to low-income communities, citizen sector organizations, and businesses.
News Features: Tracking the Trends
Our media partners for this competition, Red Herring (a magazine that offers award-winning coverage of innovation, technology, financing and entrepreneurial activity) and AmericaEconomia (a leading source of in-depth global and business news and analysis for business leaders in Latin America that contributes to the Spanish-language edition of this issue), provide stories about where the leading innovators are heading—how businesses and social entrepreneurs are learning valuable lessons as they develop market-based solutions to serve the poor.
Red Herring reports about social entrepreneurs who are starting private, for-profit ventures and going to capital markets for funding. AmericaEconomia provides a Latin American perspective on the critical importance of these innovations in a region where private enterprise is struggling to stem the tide of poverty.
Changemakers Innovation Award Competition
The current Changemakers Innovation Award Competition provides an opportunity for organizations to submit their innovative market-based strategies for improving the lives of low-income individuals. As a member of the Changemakers online community (which includes representatives of funding organizations), you can review and rate the competition entries. Through online voting that begins on October 4, 2005, you can vote for the winners of the awards competition from a slate of finalists chosen by a panel of judges. Four winners will be selected: two for organizations whose primary mission is social and two for businesses whose primary mission is economic value creation for shareholders.
Online Discussion and Collaboration
As competition entries appear on this site, you can participate in an online discussion that helps organizations to refine their proposed solutions and advance thinking about how to create market-based strategies that address low-income consumers.
Investor Advisory
Changemakers offers an Investor Advisory (available by subscription) that is a product of the entire competition process and is based on the best insights contributed by discussion participants regarding how investment in the sector can be most effectively targeted.
Key Resources
We have culled some valuable resources on this topic for you, including a business-social glossary to help bridge the language gap between the citizen and business sectors, and more readings about current trends at the intersection of the business and social sectors. Looking for practical information? The Partnering Toolbook provides instruction for how to make a cross-sectoral partnership work. As always, Changemakers Library provides a wealth of the very best resources available through the Internet.
Kris Herbst, Web Editor
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