The Social Enterprise Mindset

The Mental Model of the Social Innovator

Our program is based in a school of international service, not in a business or public policy school. We take a global perspective on the issues we address, and we address them with a different mindset than more tradition-bound fields use. Here are some of the evolving hallmarks of how we approach things, our “mental model” of what doing social enterprise means. Taken as a whole, you could read these as a statement of our Program’s underlying values. How well do they resonate with yours?

  • STARTING POINTS

    Love your problems more than your solutions

    Understand the situation from your potential beneficiary’s point of view

    Focus on questions more than answers

    Listening over talking

  • COLLABORATION

    Collaboration over competition

    Collaborative endeavors over solo heroics

    Avoid silos, innovate by partnering across sectors

  • CO-CREATION

    You can only help when you are asked

    Co-creation over doing for someone

    The best answers are not always in your head

  • TAKING ACTION

    Bottom-up over top-down: slower, but more sustainable

    Small wins over master plans

    Crude, fast prototypes over polished final products

    Learn by trying something instead of just thinking about it

    Let what’s working drive out what isn’t; focus more on what’s right than wrong

    Passion drives impact; impact requires skills

    Scale impact more than size

  • WINNING SUPPORT

    Stories over pitches and bullets

    Show me over tell me

    Sell your idea by engendering confidence in you

    Becoming “more good” motivates better than “less bad”

  • INTEGRATIVE THINKING

    Moral imagination overcomes integrity trade-offs

    Combine opposite ideas into something new rather than trading-off between them

    You can never change just one thing; systems thinking exposes unintended consequences

  • MARKETS

    Use, don’t idealize, market forces

    Let market failures provide clues about new opportunities

    Competition drives forward movement best when it operates in a context of shared goals and outcomes developed by all relevant stakeholders