Profit + Purpose: How Social Innovation Is Transforming Business for Good

Chapter OneDiscover Through Curiosity

The genesis of creating a successful social enterprise is discovering the right opportunity for you, one that will allow you to tackle a problem effectively, with your particular talents and will create significant impact. This is a process of discovery that involves defining a purpose, targeting a specific problem to tackle, and determining the approach to take.

Defining a clear purpose is essential. Purpose acts as a fuel, driving momentum forward. It's also a compass, keeping an organization moving in the right direction. Purpose is what gets an entrepreneur up at 5:00 a.m. to get to work. It's the reason why a social enterprise will be able to hire and retain high-caliber talent and keep them engaged once they are there. Purpose will attract the right type of funders and it will inspire people to become brand advocates, spreading the word about you and your product or service to their network.

Passion, talent, timing, place, and people must line up for a social entrepreneur to find the idea that is right for him or her. When all of those elements align correctly, a founder has discovered what I call the Purpose Point for an organization: the point where a founder's passions and skills can be used to their optimal capacity for the greatest impact. This is the sweet spot that aspiring entrepreneurs must find for themselves. It is the place of strength from which a social innovator should move into the world.

So how does a social entrepreneur, ...