The Marriage of the Market and Social Entrepreneurship

Director of Global Social Benefit Incubator (GSBI) Jim Koch's presentation was very interesting and I thought represented the business perspective of social entrepreneurship well. The two questions/comments I came away with (reflecting on our readings and his lecture) were

(1) How, if at all, does the two-week bootcamp take into account the socio-cultural-political context of where the entrepreneurs come from?

(2) Jim's statement regarding how entrepreneurs can solve the problem of a 'lack of a market' or 'non-consumerism' that is typical of the populations that comprise the bottome of the pyramid through education struck me as an interesting point that conflicted the take-away message from one of our readings that argued supplier-induced demand was a mistake that many entrepreneurs made. In many ways it reminded me of the LINCOS experience in Costa Rica when foreigners decided what the Costa Ricans needed without evaluating their needs and the appropriateness of their intervention into this rural society. At the same time, I can appreciate the value of the example given by Jim regarding the necessary education of a certain village to replace the current more expensive method of producing potable water when an entrepreneur has found a way to produce potable water at a much cheaper price. Nevertheless, I question in what instances education is appropriate to eliminate non-consumerism.