Tis the season ...

... to begin the countdown! This is the time in the semester when it becomes realistic to think about what stands between me and 1/4 of my MBA. So, in the next two weeks, here's what I have to look forward to:

• one case brief, most likely on Nissan
• one business plan presentation
• one case presentation on McDonald's
• one accounting paper - analyzing the financial statements of a large non-profit
• one accounting final exam
• one Business & the Environment final exam

There you have it - upon completing these six little items, I will be 1/4 of the way done with my master's degree. Crazy, huh?

True costs & social value

We've been talking a few of my classes about how you actually measure social costs and values - for example, how much does it cost when companies pollute the earth or what is the value of the program a nonprofit creates to teach childhood literacy?

There is really no perfect way to measure these things out there yet, but the term being thrown around is SROI (social return on investment). So, much like in traditional business where returns on investments are a measure of success or failure, the hope is to create some standardized measurements that allow society and businesses to see the value or costs associated with choosing to act or not act in a socially responsible way.

One good example of an effort at this is a short film that a local organic farm used to show to all of its work groups at my last job titled "The True Cost of Food." It's put out by the Sierra Club, and its purpose is to show consumers all of the additional social costs (ie pollution, transportation, etc) that go into the production of food purchased at big box stores versus the social value created when purchasing local, organic foods.

Check it out here: http://www.truecostoffood.org/truecostoffood/movie.asp

Social entrepreneurship

We had an awesome speaker come to campus today - Eric Dawson, the founder of Peace Games. He is a young social entrepreneur who started this organization when he was 18 years old as a Harvard student. Peace Games' mission states: "Peace Games empowers students to create their own safe classrooms and communities by forming partnerships with elementary schools, families, and young adult volunteers." They accomplish this through partnering with schools to introduce their curriculum to students, empowering them to become peacemakers.
Check them out here: http://www.peacegames.org/index.html

Eric Dawson is a social entrepreneur. To give a little background on this field, Ashoka.org defines social entrepreneurs as "individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems ... they are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change". They use the principles of traditional business entrepreneurship to implement creative solutions to societal problems. Ashoka is an organization that supports social entrpreneurs, from which Eric Dawson received a fellowship to support his work with Peace Games.
Check Ashoka out here: http://www.ashoka.org/

Eric's presentation was truly inspiring. He started from the bottom - 18 years old with no idea what he was getting into. He just saw violence as a major problem and wanted to fix it. He surrounded himself with intelligent people and made it happen.

Social entrepreneurship is an exciting field - the results that can be acheived with a successful venture are amazing. I am taking a course on it this semester and am loving it. It's incredible to see what can be acheived when people make their ideas for social change into a reality. I see it as a great example of meshing an idea born out of traditional business with the desire to create social change. And generally the people who take on the challenge of founding these organizations are incredibly inspiring, driven and passionate, which makes studying them even more interesting!