Social entrepreneurship is frustrating! Need to fine some paperwork in an office? Get ready to fight, there is no queue, but a race! If some potential partner looks enthusiastic for months, signs all the paperwork…don’t really expect things to go smoothly, paperwork signed in certain parts of the world does not mean much.
When you wake, is a wonderful day…to start fighting! Because read more…
Not only social entrepreneurship is not glamorous, but it is also confusing! Most of the solution you think obvious are not. Take the case of Bihar, an Indian state with very low GDP per capita, very large rural population, thousands of unelectrified villages and a lot of rice.
We know we can produce electricity from agricultural waste, like from rice, and it would seem obvious to focus on that direction to electrify Bihar (right side of the picture). However, many other less efficient solution have dominated the energy discourse in Bihar until Husk Power Systems (HPS) made it clear that using rice husk, and other agriculture wastes and feedstock, is a more appropriate solution. Why are there not a hundred companies like HPS all over India?
Considering customer behavior may confuse you further. If you look at the read more…
There are a few things you don’t get to read on the New York Times, when they talk about social entrepreneurship.
There are a few things you don’t find in any list on Forbes.
There are a few things you may overhear walking in the corridors of SOCAP, in a couple of week from now read more…
Different countries have different ways to address the people you just met and you don’t really know yet.
In Bihar, India where I worked last year, it was “Sir”, in Italy they will use “Signore” it could be “Mr” in Anglosaxon culture. But I was really surprised when going to Cambodia for a brief field visit with Wedu, the organization I co-founded. There the girls we met would call me read more…
Some days are just hard. You wake after a weird dream or a nightmare, you start the morning not having slept properly or enough, or maybe you received a bad email. Sometimes all these things happen at the same time.
You feel like you should go running, but you said every morning for the past…years and you never did wake the thirty minutes earlier it takes and today, well today really doesn’t look like the good day to start anything, let alone go running.
These are the days no one is really looking for, but these are the days when the cream get separated from the rest, in these days you are either saying to yourself “let’s wait for tomorrow, it may be a better day” or “come on, let’s make today a better day”.
Today was one of those days for me and I decided today it is the right day to start running, and it was hard, but it was done and it was great!
It doesn’t have to be Monday, read more…
I want to go in space and if I really cannot in my lifetime, well I would love to send a Lego in space. But this is not a tale of ambition alone, not only of a dream to fly, not of arrogance, not of two high tech geeks.
It is a small story of young entrepreneurial. Two high school kids, sent a lego man in space with a methodological balloon. They set themselves to do it and did not take the easy route but tried to make as much as possible from scratch and, just did it. They were juggling with classes, probably friends, maybe girls and a small dream. Don’t get me wrong the two kids in the video did not save the world, did not support the achievement of any Millennium Development Goal and in a way they copied what they have seen other people do. They have just sent a Lego man in space. Others have sent a shuttle. And neither endeavor is particularly environmentally friendly so please do not start stuff in space!
What I want to celebrate here is the culture of dreaming and make it happen with your own hands. Some less lucky kid may dream peace in their countries or to go to school, it is a privilege to be able to dream to send a lego in space, but never never never curb a dream culture. There are no first class and second class dreams, there are just dreams and people that make them happen.
