What does "corporate good" mean in today's world? A partnership between GE healthymagination and Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship points the way toward a new approach to everything from corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the improvement of poor people's lives to the development of new markets and new corporate leaders.
The traditional development paradigm--governments giving money to other governments or to multilateral aid organizations to help developing countries--has too often failed to deliver hoped-for economic development. And the Base-of-Pyramid model for corporate engagement in fighting poverty has not materialized as a transformative force to the extent imagined.
The GE healthymagination Mother & Child program in sub-Saharan Africa represents a new approach. This program is using social entrepreneurship as the catalytic ingredient for tackling a pressing global problem while simultaneously building new market opportunities for GE.
Blending Miller Center's Silicon Valley entrepreneurial acumen with GE's innovative healthcare solutions, the healthymagination Mother & Child program will train and mentor social entrepreneurs who are working to improve maternal and child health in sub-Saharan Africa.
What's Different About This Model of Corporate Action
Here are three ways in which this GE and Miller Center partnership around social entrepreneurship is significant:
- It reframes corporate goals and enables new market-sensing, market-building, and market-shaping activities. Partnering with Miller Center to train social entrepreneurs exposes local entrepreneurs and their customers in Africa--an already populous region that is adding population faster than any other global area--to GE products and business. These people become potential GE customers. At the same time, the entrepreneurs learn business skills that not only help their social enterprises succeed, but also create a pool of skilled human resources that GE and other corporations can hire. And market-shaping, which is market-building with particular intentions, can help fulfill an important intention of both our organizations: to empower women through entrepreneurial opportunities.