How to do social business and convince people not to travel with a salmon?
First of all, let me make clear that the title is a question and this post will give no answer.
Second, if somebody has the answer, be my guest, will give you my credentials to edit.
Third, the salmon can be both a gift (as in the semiotics of Umberto Eco) and lethal stinky arm-extension (as in Asterix)
Fourth, let’s get serious.
Social enterpreneurship is one of the new buzzwords in business innovation. Buzzwords are obviously made up to speak situations that exist but with a lot of entropy until somebody names the fear away. And can also give you a scolarship to top-notch business schools, so your 5min of attention please.
To save you some brain cells from suranalysis I’ll give you three pictures of social enterpreneuship fields :
- Economies in “turbulent times”
- Recently patchworked societies
- Niche populations in balanced societies
(sound too familar? need something more exotic? … please refer to expert-experts.)
Lately, I have the privilege to live in an environment that has 2,5 of the above.
Thus its quite fascinating that few people around me, move on the great dynamics of this 83,3% (2,5/3) fluidity. The blocker is violence.
Violence such as 
- rioting half the population against the other half waving salmons
- dangerous life-hacking (d-driving, d-careering, d-tax-paying, d-pressing your children and d-attending your lifemate)
- self-asphyxiation in a team
- tv
so what would you see happening first? closing the tv? feeling good? doing good? putting down the fish?
My two pennies on ………………………………………. putting down the fish, for many reasons of mass-psychology only Philip-Morris knew (but now we all do).
so, dear Greeks, enough with rioting, put down the fish, or better , put them in a plate.
Georgia
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Hey G! Long time no see!
As usual, you pick an interesting topic as a conversation starter, and I'm also glad to see a revival of Tech IT Easy's thought leaders.
On the topic at hand, social entrepreneurship. Having been part of a few such (starting of) ventures in emerging economies, I think there are always at least two forces at play. One is that the existing chaos leads people to see many opportunities and interested to start businesses around it. These people do not always have social objectives however.
The second is what I think you're writing about, that local conditions (and sometimes mentality) are not compatible with transparent and dependable business practices. Take Africa or the middle east, where it's easier to provide arms to kill people, rather than feed them. Weapons will lead to more concentrated power and a return of an investment. A highly centralised power means that more ethical products, e.g. medicine, food, or funding for improving infrastructure, will usually end up at the top only, because they are the most powerful (and have the most weapons).
I'm generally in favour of stability first and then entrepreneurship and long term growth, but where ever there's a pain, there will always be entrepreneurs who try to solve it. C'est un viscous cycle.
It's a complex topic, I'm glad you didn't try to answer it.
Hey Vince ! indeed answering the topic is like describing a wave from a surfer's standpoint. What was really worth mentioning is that in this change wave, opportunity lies also in communitarian (extending to social) activities. Africa is a really tough exemple, because of it's never-tell-but-its-like-that political status. But when you see stuff like this out of your door + the sense of community on a mature level (the internet effect tmho) it's time of thinking business for pleasure/cause beyond business for business. Even in traditional well stabilised (?) societies such as the Belgian or British one : have you spotted films lately like "La meditude des choses" or "Fishtank" ? these are some of the latest mirrors of the urgency to do stuff on a local level.
Mom, I'd really want to buy you a System Center Configuration Manager for Christmas but it doesn't work for life-patching.