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Chris Miller
Most Americans have by now realized that not all businesses are created equally. Toms shoes, Newman’s Own, Patagonia, Hershey and even Google, with its former corporate motto of “don’t be evil,” have differentiated themselves from competitors by tying their business practices to social or environmental impacts.
Just as not all businesses are equal, the levels of social or environmental impact that companies create vary significantly. While any steps a company takes in the direction of corporate social responsibility should be commended, entrepreneurs and consumers who really want to make a difference increasingly need to understand the spectrum of social responsibility.
Despite an ongoing debate among academics about exact definitions of this type of social business, there seems to be a common understanding of the most basic constituent parts that must be present for a company to attain the pure social enterprise status that has emerged.
To be considered a true social enterprise, a business must have been:
At the same time, it will become increasingly important for entrepreneurs to understand where they are on the social responsibility spectrum — it will be a defining characteristic of their business.
Here are some questions entrepreneurs need to ask in order to evaluate their places on the spectrum:
To be clear, it is completely fine for a social entrepreneur to profit off her own hard work — that just can’t be the primary objective of the business. Undoubtedly, the marketplace will become only more confusing in the short term as more systemic approaches to the triple bottom lines become widely adopted. In the meantime, the ability to critically evaluate the claims of companies across the entire spectrum of socially responsible businesses is required of any entrepreneur who wants to do as much as he can to advance a more sustainable capitalism.
Image credit: Pixabay
Chris Miller is the founder and CEO of internationally renowned social entrepreneurship incubator and accelerator The Mission Center L3C. He is the co-founder of the Washington University Startup Training Lab and a senior lecturer of entrepreneurship at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
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