This story originally appeared in our July 14th, 2011 e-magazine. Click here to download the pdf e-magazine.

Among the many challenges that social enterprises face, a key one is finding and keeping the right people to run the business. What does it mean to be a manager in the social enterprise workspace, and who are the right people, from the bottom to the top of the ladder?

By Nisha Kumar Kulkarni

Social enterprises face challenges similar to other businesses, but where they diverge is in scale and vision.  However, the problems of actually running a business remain the same, whether it is in processes, or technology. But perhaps one of the key challenges that social enterprises face, more than regular businesses, is the people challenge.

Given that socents often already have more severe funding issues, they are less likely to attract the same amount or level of talent that any other for-profit business might. As Professor Madhukar Shukla  of XLRI says in an interview to Beyond Profit in this issue, prefixing the word ‘social’ to a business conjures images of lowly-paid not-for-profits. » Continue reading “The People Problem”

This story originally appeared in our July 14th, 2011 e-magazine. Click here to download the pdf e-magazine.

While professional management is critical for social enterprises as they scale up, one must take care not to lose sight of the entrepreneur’s social vision, says Professor Madhukar Shukla of XLRI. In a phone interview to Tanmaya Nanda, he speaks at length about the management issues that typically social enterprises face and the best ways to overcome them.

In your opinion, why is professional management important for social enterprises?

I wouldn’t confine this only to social enterprises, but to all entrepreneurial ventures. As we were discussing, all ventures start with a passion about an idea. That is what entrepreneurship is all about, and it is also critical for the venture to take off.

However, as long as the venture remains small, operations are easy to manage by jugaad, trial and error, or through help from friends and volunteers who pitch in. But once it starts scaling up, managing operations becomes an issue. Scaling up is not just about increase in the size of operations, but more about increase in complexity of operations, in the variety of issues one has to address. The variety of demands on the enterprise increase, and the entrepreneur may not have the professional expertise – or time – to deal with all of them. So his passion would need to be supplemented with professional management skills; he has to bring in people who have expertise in those areas. » Continue reading “‘Vision is sacrosanct’”

This story originally appeared in our July 14th, 2011 e-magazine. Click here to download the pdf e-magazine.

While evaluating a start-up socent, what investors are really looking for is the ability of the entrepreneur to make the transition from founder to manager.

By Noshir Colah

As a member of a leading venture capital management company that focuses on early stage companies, I have the pleasure of reviewing business plans and meeting with entrepreneurs and promoters.  By definition, since our investments are “early stage”, there is usually little or no track record by which to evaluate the proposals.

The available tools are often restricted to an idea, the manner in which the idea is proposed to be converted to a viable and scalable business, perhaps a limited demonstration of the feasibility of realizing the objectives, and an evaluation of the entrepreneur. » Continue reading “Smooth Transitions”