Role of Entrepreneurship in Social Development

Mukti is involved in pioneering work on social development in the Sunderbans and other parts of India. However, there is always a gap between the need and availability of resources (particularly human and financial ones) for such work and many NGOs are working hard to gain access to these resources. There are strong limitations in traditional ways of generating such resources and hence Entrepreneurship plays a very important role as capable individuals can achieve the development objectives with minimal resources through innovation.  Much of this innovation is through newer technology solutions, such as smartphone apps, artificial intelligence, machine learning, biosensors etc. Fortunately, many young people are enthusiastic to become entrepreneurs though the failure rate is nearly 90%. This editorial discusses some challenges and evolving solutions on harnessing entrepreneurship for social development as reported in a recently published book.

 

This book¹ attempts to provide an overview of Technology Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development (TESD) in different social sectors, such as education, health, environment and disaster management. This is a multi-disciplinary book involving more than 38 authors from 10 countries in 5 continents. The book has been organized into two sections, each with eight chapters:

• Education and Wellbeing
• Climate, Environment and Disaster Management

Here is a brief summary of each chapter.

1. Education and Well-Being

It is difficult to teach entrepreneurship in a classroom as it involves iterative, failure-prone development requiring practical insights and entrepreneurial mindset. It requires a solid knowledge of the domain of the application, its technology and the business environment as discussed in chapters 2-5. Young people can now look after their well-being though evolving tools like smart watches. There is enormous potential to use newer apps with appropriate sensors, for people to look after their wellbeing at low cost. This also opens up new entrepreneurial opportunities through e-business as discussed in case Studies of TESD in education, health and e-business as discussed in chapters 6-9.  Here is a summary of each chapter.

Chapter 2 introduces the concept of Business Model Canvas, a model for entrepreneurship taught in many institutions in the world. The contributors examine the Social Business Model Canvas as a case study, to describe how trends in technology and demand for entrepreneurship education, constrained by mobility, can be adapted to meet emerging demands. This chapter may help Mukti employees to understand how to conceptualise their entrepreneurial projects.

Chapter 3 draws upon the experience of Pradeep Ray and his team in shaping entrepreneurship education for engineering students. Entrepreneurship education requires a multi-disciplinary approach with a strong practicum component, involving industry partners as discussed in this chapter. This chapter evaluated and compared the entrepreneurship education components at major institutions in the world. This may be valuable in Mukti developing partnership with institutions (India and overseas) in offering practical social entrepreneurship experience to students.

Chapter 4 discusses real case studies on the real business applications (in Asia) of Business Model Canvas (BMC), introduced in Chapter 2. Business Model Canvas (BMC) helps validate a start-up business idea. However, this powerful tool was developed and tested in the context of western world businesses, primarily in USA and Europe.

Chapter 5 discusses the important aspect of how entrepreneurship and innovation are being promoted through evolving ecosystems in different countries, particularly in China so that development can take place more efficiently, cost-effectively to the satisfaction of the growing number of technology and engineering graduates. Mukti may be able to use such incubator models to promote social entrepreneurship in collaboration with the government and large businesses.

Chapter 6 focuses on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) education, using information technology (e.g., robots and toys) for educating school children in the concepts of STEAM, especially for the children with special needs (e.g., autistic children). This may be useful in Mukti’s education services in view of the growing number of children with special needs (neuro diversity in education).

Chapter 7 (written by Sankar Halder and Padmanava Sen of Mukti) presents a fascinating example of social entrepreneurship for holistic, sustainable development of a large UN heritage listed natural reserve called Sundarbans in the difficult, cyclone/flood prone region near the ferocious Bay of Bengal, spanning two countries (India and Bangladesh) through the hands on, pioneering work of the major NGO called Mukti.

 Chapter 8 illustrates how digital technology can help with the efficient deployment of social businesses based on corporate donations. The purpose of this study is to develop a B2B social e-Business model and subsequent implementation of a digital platform to facilitate donations from donors to eligible recipients all over the world. This may be useful to Mukti in efficiently distributing donated items to donor-specified target groups.

Chapter 9 (written by Koel Ghorai and Pradeep Ray of Mukti) presents an example of how mobile apps technologies are revolutionizing well-being through the  monitoring of exercises, diet compliance with supermarket products, health conditions and healthy life practices (e.g., smoking cessation). Mobile technologies (symbolized by the ubiquitous mobile phone) offer many opportunities for entrepreneurship as evidenced from thousands of apps made available through the app stores.

2. Climate, Environment and Disaster Management

This section discusses social innovation and technologies to address challenges in disaster risk reduction and climate change. In this section, chapters focus on experiences of technology entrepreneurship in SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), DRR (disaster risk reduction), water issues, citizen science, multi-stakeholder collaboration, and wildfire.

Chapter 10 addresses the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and focuses on co-benefits. Recognising non-climate-related benefits of climate action and purposefully considering them in the policy process can address the two issues together and simultaneously deliver climate change mitigation and sustainable development goals.

Chapter 11 reviews the social entrepreneurship and social innovation in disaster risk reduction in India. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-30 has stressed on public and private investments for empowering the social, economic and cultural resilience of the communities, and suggests that these investments could be the driver of innovation, growth, and job creation.

Chapter 12 (written by Pradeep Ray and his colleagues) describes innovative ways to map water salinity in coastal areas in Bangladesh. One particular vulnerability of climate change is the intrusion of sea water into coastal aquifers. The resulting salinity of groundwater and surface water resources exposes coastal communities to multiple hazards, including health risks associated with elevated salt intake through drinking water from these resources. This chapter discusses two technology development projects that spanned China and Bangladesh to measure and to map out the salinity of underground water, which is the dominant source of drinking water in coastal Bangladesh.

Chapter 13 focuses on role of citizen science in addressing urban and environmental issues in Nepal. The chapter showcases how volunteered geographic information is being used in solving critical urban issues, particularly disaster risk reduction and environmental management.

Citing example from Sweden, Chapter 14 shows the importance of social resilience and multi stakeholder cooperation. The chapter engages in exploring possibilities of innovation and use of future technology arising from multi stakeholder collaboration in essential societal functions such as public services, critical infrastructure systems and public policy arena.

Chapter 15 focuses on California wildfire experiences.  This chapter examines the development, applications, and future scope of technology entrepreneurship in wildfire risk management.

Chapter 16 explains sustainable water supply business models in Tanzania. This study discussed the impact and the sustainability of the water supply service in rural areas of Bagamoyo, Tanzania, using the affordable water flocculants and recruited the plant staff from the local community.

Chapter 17 explains the experiences of World Vision in using emerging technologies in Nepal. Following the 2015 Nepal’s Earthquake Response, World Vision International Nepal (WVI Nepal) has ideated, prototyped, and scaled-up community-focused innovative solutions like Sikka, KITAB Bazar, and Participatory Disaster Risk Assessment (PDRA) tools integrated in its development and humanitarian initiatives.

 

This book has only provided some emerging models, techniques and examples of illustrative cases of technology entrepreneurship in social sectors in developing countries.