Richard Bran­son

En­tre­pre­neur­ship isn't about sell­ing things; it's about find­ing in­no­v­a­tive ways to im­prove peo­ple's lives.

Un­til re­cent­ly, most peo­ple in busi­ness fo­cused on prod­ucts and ser­vices that would ap­peal to con­sumers, and this re­sult­ed in the cre­ation of many great com­pa­nies and a lot of jobs. But at­ti­tudes are chang­ing. A new gen­er­a­tion of en­tre­pre­neurs is us­ing ap­proach­es from the com­mer­cial world and em­ploy­ing tech­nol­o­gy to tack­le so­cial and en­vi­ron­men­tal prob­lems - these ar­eas used to be the ex­clu­sive ter­ri­to­ry of gov­ern­ment agen­cies and char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tions.

The British Cab­i­net Of­fice says that there are 70,000 so­cial en­ter­pris­es help­ing peo­ple, com­mu­ni­ties and the en­vi­ron­ment in this coun­try alone. These busi­ness­es and or­gan­i­sa­tions con­tributed more than ##�54.9 bil­lion to the econ­o­my in 2012 and they em­ploy al­most one mil­lion peo­ple, yet we have on­ly scratched the sur­face.

No mat­ter what the struc­ture of the com­pa­ny–whether it is for-prof­it, non­prof­it, or a cre­ative meld­ing of the two–en­tre­pre­neur­ial so­lu­tions are of­fer­ing en­gage­ment, jobs and hope in ar­eas where we had none. The ex­am­ple set by Econet Wire­less, which is led by Strive Masiyi­wa, is one of my favourites.

A cou­ple of years ago, Econet, a tele­com com­pa­ny based in South Africa, start­ed to de­vel­op and dis­trib­ute so­lar charg­ing sta­tions in the re­gion, pro­vid­ing pow­er for cell­phones, lights and oth­er de­vices. These sta­tions are help­ing to trans­form the lives of peo­ple liv­ing in rur­al ar­eas where the sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty is er­rat­ic.

Econet shift­ed its busi­ness mod­el to dri­ve change for peo­ple and the plan­et, and at the same time it cre­at­ed a lu­cra­tive new rev­enue stream. This shift has opened up new av­enues for the com­pa­ny, which is us­ing its charg­ing sta­tions to pow­er re­frig­er­a­tors that store vac­cines for the com­mu­ni­ty.

Busi­ness and gov­ern­ment must en­cour­age es­tab­lished en­tre­pre­neurs and young tal­ent to fo­cus on prob­lem ar­eas like health, ed­u­ca­tion, cli­mate change and so­cial care. How can we speed up this process and make even more of an im­pact? There seem to be three key ob­sta­cles fac­ing en­tre­pre­neurs who want to get so­cial en­ter­pris­es off the ground.

Fund­ing: Where's the mon­ey?

En­tre­pre­neurs of­ten strug­gle to raise seed mon­ey for such ven­tures, as it is far tougher to get fund­ing for so­cial en­ter­pris­es than com­mer­cial coun­ter­parts, de­spite the fact that the fi­nan­cial re­turns can be just as big. If a start­up team is propos­ing to launch a so­cial en­ter­prise with the po­ten­tial to rad­i­cal­ly change the UK's �87 bil­lion so­cial care sec­tor, they de­serve a se­ri­ous lis­ten from peo­ple who can pro­vide sub­stan­tial fund­ing, not just a lit­tle grant mon­ey.

We need to en­cour­age more ini­tia­tives and com­pe­ti­tions such as Google's Glob­al Im­pact Chal­lenge, which set out to find four non­prof­its in the UK that would be award­ed 500,000 pounds each to help them tack­le some of the world's tough­est prob­lems through tech­nol­o­gy. The qual­i­ty of the en­trants was amaz­ing, and the win­ners ranged from CDI Apps for Good, which teach­es chil­dren how to code, to the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of Lon­don, which us­es track­ing de­vices to mon­i­tor and pro­tect en­dan­gered wildlife.

Oth­ers are fol­low­ing. The Founders Fo­rum, a com­mu­ni­ty for en­tre­pre­neurs start­ed by Brent Hober­man and Jon­nie Good­win, has part­nered with the so­cial in­vestor Nominet Trust to put up �1 mil­lion in or­der to en­cour­age the best and bright­est to ap­ply their tech­no­log­i­cal tal­ents to so­cial prob­lems. Called So­cial Tech, So­cial Change, the pro­gram will pro­vide seed fund­ing for star­tups. These sorts of ini­tia­tives will help to shine the light on the so­cial en­ter­prise sec­tor and will en­cour­age more fund­ing and more good ideas to come to life.

Net­work­ing: It's who you know

It is tough for the lead­ers of a so­cial en­ter­prise to know who to speak to with­in tech busi­ness­es and vice ver­sa, so it's im­por­tant for gov­ern­ment and busi­ness to cre­ate links be­tween tech­nol­o­gy en­tre­pre­neurs and those lead­ing so­cial change. It sim­ply makes fi­nan­cial sense to en­cour­age col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween those skilled in tech and those work­ing in the so­cial sec­tor, since it will spark new ideas–every­thing from on­line giv­ing plat­forms to ed­u­ca­tion an­a­lyt­ics busi­ness­es–and re­sult in the cre­ation of jobs.

The so­lu­tions to this prob­lem don't have to be cost­ly or elab­o­rate. On­line fo­rums, net­work­ing events and con­fer­ences would all help to forge ties be­tween the two sec­tors.

Men­tor­ing: Ad­vice from those who've been there

Every start­up team needs a men­tor: some­one to help team mem­bers to un­der­stand and over­come those tricky ear­ly sit­u­a­tions and, lat­er, to coach them through the process of ex­pan­sion. Us­ing busi­ness skills to grow a so­cial en­ter­prise is a fair­ly new idea, and so the teams that found such star­tups need help solv­ing prob­lems and get­ting the job done.

Suc­cess­ful tech en­tre­pre­neurs should be en­cour­aged to men­tor en­tre­pre­neurs who work in the so­cial space. Again, the so­lu­tions can be very sim­ple, and might build on net­work­ing tools.

If you'd like to get in­volved in the so­cial busi­ness sec­tor, take a look at your own busi­ness or the com­pa­ny you work for: Do you and your team have skills and en­er­gy that would be valu­able for help­ing oth­ers? If so, should you find new part­ners and take on a new sec­tor? And do you have spare time to help a young non­prof­it tack­le its tough first few years?

(Richard Bran­son is the founder of the Vir­gin Group and com­pa­nies such as Vir­gin At­lantic, Vir­gin Amer­i­ca, Vir­gin Mo­bile and Vir­gin Ac­tive. He has re­cent­ly pub­lished two books: Screw Busi­ness as Usu­al and Like a Vir­gin. He main­tains a blog at: www.vir­gin.com/richard-bran­son/blog. You can fol­low him on Twit­ter at twit­ter.com/richard­bran­son.)

(Ques­tions from read­ers will be an­swered in fu­ture columns. Please send them to Richard.Bran­son@ny­times.com. Please in­clude your name, coun­try, e-mail ad­dress and the name of the Web site or pub­li­ca­tion where you read the col­umn.)

@2013 Richard Bran­son. (Dis­trib­uted by the New York Times Syn­di­cate)