Core Practices:

• Integrate traditional social stakeholders into mainstream markets by engaging them as employees and consumers.
• Integrate traditional market stakeholders into the social sector, engaging them in changing market behaviors toward solving a social problem.
• Increase interaction and dependence among all stakeholder groups by engaging them through integrated market mechanisms.
• Influence market player behaviors by developing socially responsible markets (making it possible for others to do well by doing good) or hindering socially damaging markets (making it more difficult for others to do well by behaving badly).

Synergies:

• Leverage market channels to change perceptions about who the stakeholders are (not just the social clients, but also market players as stakeholders), as well as their roles and responsibilities in solving the targeted social problem, thus reducing the dichotomy between donor and recipient.
• Engage mainstream market channels to blur the lines between stakeholder groups, changing a culture of "us=mainstream" versus "them=fringe" into a culture of "all of us in it together."
• Use social marketing techniques to counter damaging marketing messages that exploit either socially disadvantaged consumers or socially conscious consumers.

Tensions:

• Be wary of excessive use of business jargon as it might alienate your core stakeholders

Synergies:

• Promote resource mobilization strategies that inherently increase stakeholder engagement (e.g. volunteerism instead of financial donation; or charging a fee-for-service to increase commitment and value perception).
• Seek resources that facilitate or enhance stakeholder engagement (e.g. access to communication infrastructure, prime retail location).
• Become part of the mainstream consumer, business and investment community in order to engage them in becoming stakeholders in your social problem.

Tensions:

• Divest or stay away from resources that risk hindering stakeholder engagement (e.g. sponsorship from some corporations might alienate social stakeholders; some public funding might unduly restrict interacting with market stakeholders).
• Be wary of a one-size-fits-all resource mobilization strategy (e.g. charging a fee-for-service across the board) as it might prevent poorer clients from being served.

Synergies:

• Employ market research to deepen our understanding of social clients' needs and wants as well as mainstream market players' roles and responsibilities in perpetuating and solving the social problem.
• Leverage R&D activities to develop appropriate technology that better fits social clients' abilities, needs and wants (e.g. development of specialized equipment).
• Leverage R&D activities to develop mainstream processes that support the use of mission-strengthening resources (use of eco-renewable resources, social clients as workforce, etc.).

Tensions:

• Be wary of one-size-fits-all streamlined technology solutions as they might prevent harder-to-reach clients from being served.
• Be vigilant not to fall for the innovation smokescreen (“new is better”) while failing to take your core stakeholders along with you.

Core Practices:

• Use market mechanisms to retain market wealth-creation at the source and use it to solve social problems caused by market failures.
• Use market mechanisms to turn social challenges into wealth-creation opportunities.
• Use market mechanisms to make resources more scalable and renewable in solving social problems.

Synergies:

• Use market research methodology to better understand where resources are, how to access them, who controls them, and how valuable they are to others.
• Research and develop appropriate technology to manage available resources (whether physical, human, relational or financial) in a more renewable manner.
• Instead of competing for the most obvious resources, research the potential of less obvious resources (e.g. intellectual property) or readily-available resources traditionally considered less practical (e.g. an efficient way to use volunteers on a larger scale).

Tensions:

• Be wary of over promising and under delivering! Make sure to invest in building knowledge and capacity to fully leverage new resources coming your way and keep up with the unusual (to you) expectations of new resource providers.
• Be mindful of the fact that research and innovation does require upfront investments, and thus always carries some risk of financial loss.

Synergies:

• Reach stakeholder groups through market mechanism and capture some of their spending power.
• Engage social sector donors and social investors in a longer-term market investment approach.
• Use your stakeholders to diversify your pool of human resources (social clients might have marketable skills, board members might have business relations, etc.).

Tensions:

• Be mindful that integrating stakeholders along the socio-economic spectrum, although beneficial in reducing social exclusion, also means forfeiting traditional fundraising practices that require marked socio-economic barriers to remain in place (e.g. traditional charity requires a reinforced sense of exclusion).
• Be mindful that engaging stakeholders through market mechanisms also means less time for traditional fundraising, which can be particularly difficult when transitioning from pure nonprofit to social enterprise.

Synergies:

• Put your social clients to work to promote a culture of self-worth so that they become aware that they can be a resource, not just a burden.
• Be honest about your successes and failures in promoting a risk-taking mindset in which it is acceptable to invest resources toward a potential for sustainable impact instead of distributing resources for risk-free but limited and unsustainable relief.

Tensions:

• Be aware that a business culture might be seen as inappropriate by some, causing the loss of valuable resources in the form of experienced staff and board members.

Core Practices:

• Implement R&D efforts to increase productivity and reduce costs through development of appropriate technology.
• Use and expand market research methods to conduct a down-market needs analysis.
• Employ market research and business planning activities to develop more efficient supply chain models.

Synergies:

• Mobilize resources that directly support knowledge development (e.g. access to R&D facilities, intellectual property rights, skilled professionals).
• Use and expand business valuation practices better to take into account the hidden costs of resources (e.g. "free" resources might be inefficient because expensive to maintain, etc.).

Tensions:

• Be wary of resource providers who want to pay for implementing solutions without bearing the development cost; they might be fine to support scaling of existing well-tested activities, not development of new innovative ones.

Synergies:

• Promote work ethic among social clients and internal stakeholders.
• Promote a mindset in support of knowledge sharing.

Tensions:

• Be mindful of the fact that promoting a more competitive business attitude might impede efforts to promote knowledge sharing.

Synergies:

• Leverage stakeholders’ knowledge and skills by promoting the concept of “user-led innovation,” that is giving stakeholders the right and ability to innovate at the grassroots level in order to benefit from your stakeholders’ unique mix of skills and knowledge.

Tensions:

• Be mindful than promoting greater stakeholder engagement might require limiting top-bottom interventions in process development, at times taking a more circuitous route involving stakeholder-driven trial and error processes.

Core Practices:

• Encourage a more competitive organizational environment to increase watchfulness and reduce resistance to change, especially when change creates opportunities for increased performance and impact in line with a changing environment.
• Implement results-oriented, decentralized management practices to support creativity and initiative.

Synergies:

• Engage stakeholders in devising a coherent value system that works for all and reduces exclusion.
• Use stakeholder choice as an adaptability mechanism, similar to how consumer choice plays an important role in setting market trends.
• Instead of a top-down approach to addressing a social problem, use a distributed approach that seeks to provide products and services that support additional grassroots innovation (e.g. providing modular solutions that can be customized at the local level).

Tensions:

• Be mindful not to engage some stakeholders while overlooking others, creating a culture in which the social enterprise activity is seen as “the place to be” while traditional social work is seen as a dead-end, undermining social staff morale.

Synergies:

• Conduct ongoing market research to inform responses to emerging trends and opportunities.
• Use business performance monitoring and information management practices to improve risk analysis and implementation strategies.

Tensions:

• Be aware that temporary setbacks and risks inherent to the “trial and error” process central to research and innovation will trigger pressure to come back to a low-risk, more predicable charity mindset.

Synergies:

• Devise a resource mobilization strategy that takes into consideration the inherently restricted nature of particular resources (e.g. restrictions from grant funding vs. earned income).
• Leverage your reduced focus on traditional fundraising to increase your focus on client needs instead of funder needs.

Tensions:

• Be aware that increased requirements for financial returns might have a counter-effect on building a more flexible culture; replacing one set of inflexible requirements (expected changes in social indicators) by another one (expected changes in financial criteria ) will do nothing to solve flexibility problems.