All acts of entrepreneurship start with the vision of an attractive opportunity. 1 For social entrepreneurs, an “attractive” opportunity is one that has sufficient potential for positive social impact to justify the investment of time, energy, and money required to pursue it seriously. Despite popular sayings, attractive entrepreneurial opportunities do not come knocking at the door fully formed. Nor are they out there, like lost treasures, simply waiting to be discovered by the lucky or observant. Rather, they have to be conceived, developed, and refined in a dynamic, creative, and thoughtful process. This note provides a framework to guide social entrepreneurs through the process of creating a worthwhile opportunity. It is designed to help increase the chances of success for anyone contemplating the journey of social entrepreneurship, and it may also be helpful for those considering investing in new social ventures. Our model breaks the opportunity creation process into two major steps (see Figure 1). First, a social entrepreneur generates a promising idea. Second, the social entrepreneur attempts to develop that idea into an attractive opportunity. It is natural to think of the generation step as an act of pure creativity and the development step as purely analytic and logical. However, both steps combine inspiration, insight, and imagination with research, logic, and analysis. Innovative ideas can be generated systematically, based on keen observation and reasoning, as well as creativity. 2 At the same time, converting a promising idea into a workable and attractive opportunity requires an on-going creative process working hand-in-hand with focused analysis, experimentation, and sometimes even launching the initial stages of a venture. We depict the development step as a funnel. Social entrepreneurs add the most significant value in this stage of the process, and few promising ideas make it through the development funnel to become opportunities worth pursuing in the long-term.
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