 Hello and good morning, good afternoon or good evening depending on where you are joining us from. Welcome to Engineering for Change or E4C for short. Today we're very pleased to bring you the latest in our E4C 2014 webinar series. Today's webinar was developed in collaboration with Pamela Rousos who is the Director of Strategic Alliances at the Centre of Science, Technology and Society at Santa Clara University. My name is Paul Scott and I will be moderating today's webinar. When I'm not doing this, I work with ASME and I'm the Program Manager for the ASME Engineering Social Innovation Program. An initiative focused on providing the advice, finance networks needed for social ventures to navigate their engineering journey. I'd like to take a moment now to tell you a little bit about today's webinar, Engineering Trends in the World of Social Entrepreneurship, Social Enterprises Scaling Impact. Social entrepreneurs are instrumental agents in the development and delivery of technology based solutions. So at E4C we're particularly interested in the trends influenced in this community. To aid this effort, we've invited today's presenter, Pamela Rousos who is the Director of Strategic Alliances at Santa Clara University. We thank you for joining us today. Before we get rolling, I'd like to take a moment to recognize the coordinators of the E4C webinar series generally. Janna Aranda of ASME, Holly Schneider-Brown, Victoria Chung, Jackie Halliday and Alex Torres of IEEE who work on developing and delivering the webinar series. Thank you team. If anyone out there has questions about the series or would like to make a recommendation for future topics and speakers, we invite you to connect with us via the email address visible on the slide. Webinars at www.engineeringforchange.org Before we hand things over to our presenter today, we thought it would be good to remind you about Engineering for Change and who we are. E4C is a global community of over 18,000 technically-minded members and more than 60,000 social media followers such as engineers, technologists, representatives from NGOs and social scientists who are working together to solve critical humanitarian challenges faced by underserved communities around the world today, whether in water, energy, health, agriculture, or sanitation. We invite you to join E4C by becoming a member. E4C membership provides cost-free access to a growing inventory of field-tested solutions and related information from all the members of our coalition, including professional societies like ASME, IEEE, ASCE, SWE and ASHRAE, and academic supporters like MIT D-Lab, international development agencies like USAID, Engineering Without Borders, USAID and Practical Action, as well as access to passionate, engaged communities working to make people's lives all over the world. Registration is easy and it's free. Check out our website at www.engineeringforchange.org to learn more and to sign up. The webinar you are participating in today is one installment of Engineering for Change webinar series. This free public available series of online seminars showcase the best practices and thinking of leaders in the field who bring innovative technology and solutions to bear on global humanitarian and development challenges. Information on upcoming installments in the series, as well as archived videos of past presentations, can be found on the E4C webinar webpage, www.engineeringforchange.org. If you're following us on Twitter, I'd also like to invite you to join the conversation with hashtag E4C webinars. E4C's next webinar will be on March, will be in March at 11am EST on topics of advances in household water treatment products and standards. Our speakers will be curated by Ryan Rowe of the renowned University of North Carolina Water Institute, so stay tuned for E4C webinars pages for updates on the presenters and registration details. If you're already an E4C member, we'll be sending you an invitation to the webinar soon. A few housekeeping items before we get started. Let's see where everyone in the world is today. In the chat window, please type your location. So we have some people from New York in the USA. We've got some members from Toronto and Canada, Denver, Colorado. We have anyone from outside the US? I think we have some participants from London, England, and from Canada. Some participants from Barcelona in Spain and colleagues on the line from Holland and the Netherlands. If you have any technical questions or administrative problems during today's webinar, please go into the chat window and feel free to send a private message to Jackie Halliday. You can also use the chat window to type any remarks you may have during the webinar. Please use the question and answer window located below the chat window to type your questions for the presenter. If you are listening to the audio broadcast and you encounter any troubles, try hitting stop and start. If that doesn't work, you can use the calling number for the teleconference. You may also want to try opening WebEx in a different browser. Following the webinar, to request a certificate of completion showing one professional development hour for the session, please follow the instructions on the top of our work page. Now a little bit about today's presenter. Clara Roussos has worked with and for early-stage software companies as a business and marketing strategy leader. She has over 20 years of experience growing teams and delivering products for both large scale and start-up software companies, working at various managerial capacities as business unit manager, vice president of marketing, CEO, and CEO. Pamela has been a mentor for the Global Social Benefit Institute at Santa Clara University for five years. She also serves on the Board of Pact and International NGO that benefits communities by promoting healthy lifestyle, decent livelihoods and sustainable natural resources. Pamela, we're very happy to have you with us today and we look forward to hearing from you. And with that, I'll pass it over to Pamela Roussos. Thanks, Paul. Good day, everyone. I appreciate you being here. So I actually started my professional career as an engineer. And I was a software development engineer, my degrees in computer science. And while I really enjoyed building things, I was really curious about how people made buying decisions. And so I moved over to the dark side and went into onto the business side, as you saw from the bio that Paul was just showing you. And about six years ago, I was having dinner with a friend and was kind of saying, you know, there's got to be more to life than just slinging software, as I said, and, you know, there's got to be meaning. And so my friend introduced me to the Global Social Benefit Institute, the GSBI, and my life has been on a different trajectory. And the reason I bring that up is because I think we're all on a journey and the fact that you are all on this call with us today shows that you're really interested in social justice and social change. So the Global Social Benefit Institute, the GSBI, is an incubator and an accelerator that's run out of San Clara University. We've been around for more than 10 years. We've worked with over 200 social entrepreneurs around the world. So that's really given us a lot of views and being able to see what's going on in some of the trends. And so we'll be talking about those today and what, you know, we see as some of the impediments and some of the barriers that we need to get around in order to continue to scale these social entrepreneurs in order for them to do the good work that they want to be doing in the world. So the GSBI, at the center, we sit in the middle of Silicon Valley, and so like many Silicon Valley companies, we have our BHAG, our big, hairy, audacious goal, which is to positively impact the lives of a billion people by the year 2020. So, you know, there is a lot of need in the world. There's about four billion people today living on less than $3 a day. And you can see the statistics on the slides here. But, you know, we still have major issues around sanitation and water. And I know that you've been having webinars around some of these issues, clean energy, the fact that there's lack of market access for so many of the smallholder farmers around the world. And then, you know, illiteracy, things that we just take for granted are missing from the lives of billions and billions of people. And if you look at projections in the growth, by the year 2020, we're going to be adding two more billion people to this planet. And if we don't do something about poverty and try to eradicate poverty, that would mean that two-thirds of the planet would be living in poverty. And so, this is a call to action for many, for many of us. And so, you look at some of the theories of change that have happened throughout the years. You have what I will call the paternalistic classic development paradigm. And that, you know, clearly hasn't, it hasn't worked. It's just chipping away at things. And then who knows? I mean, there's a lot of arguments about whether or not that's a persistent change, that it's sustainable change. You have those that say that the government should be taking care of this problem, and then others that are saying, well, no, actually, it's the big multinational corporations. That should be because at the bottom of the pyramid, there's just so much. There's so many people. I was just talking about four billion that that's such a huge market opportunity that these big multinationals should be, you know, addressing this. And so, and through time, we've come up and the idea of social entrepreneurship has emerged. And so, when we talk about social entrepreneurs, we're talking about people that are passionate, passionate about solving social issues. They could be running for profits or nonprofits, and they're looking at using market-based approaches in order to solve these problems. So you might have heard of double bottom line and triple bottom line businesses. Those are people. Those are social entrepreneurs. They're not just focused on one single bottom line, which is profit. Like many of the companies, I'm sitting here in New York City now. And if you think about lots of the companies that sit at the bottom of Manhattan of the island, they're all focused on profit, profitability. Whereas social entrepreneurs are also focused on people and or place, so around communities, people, and then or natural resources and the environment. And so, these are people that are agents of change and really wanting, like I said, to make a difference in the world. If you look at the landscape in 2003, when we were just getting formed, there weren't that many organizations around. In fact, actually, the GSBI came out of the tech awards in Silicon Valley. They've been running tech awards for a number of years. And what was happening was these technology people that were coming, solving a social issue, whether it was Queen's Cook stoves or solar lighting or things like that, when we looked at them a year or two years after they had won their awards, they were either not in business or still really struggling and not really making a difference in the world. And what we saw was that what was needed was more than just the technology. And so, we have created this framework at the GSBI. And it's all together that it's a technology that needs to come together. It's a business model that needs to work. And it needs to all come together in the local context. That, you know, if you think about technology as a specific thing like a water filter or a solar light, but also the technology could be in support of a service, so, for instance, a social entrepreneur that is trying to solve cataract issues and be able to remove cataracts, well, first of all, you need technology to be able to identify and the cataracts and detect the cataracts. So, whether an organization, a social enterprise, is focused on delivering technology itself or using technology as a part of the service that it's delivering, these things need to come together. Like I said, they need to come together in a business model. It needs to be able to make sense in terms of be exactly, the be the product that the customer and the consumer needs. It needs to be able to work from the economics point of view. And then, like I said, it all needs to sit in the local context. For instance, if you're putting together a water transportation system and in the communities, it is the women that are fetching the water, then you need to be able to put a system in place that women can either carry or deal with. So, it's really understanding the local context in order to make sure that your solution is long-lived and is sustainable. So, at the GSBI, we've taken these three pillars, if you will, the technology, the business model and the local context. And then, we've also taken a sector focus. And then, what that allows us to do is kind of understand and go deep in some sectors and really understand, like I said, go deep in these. And let me use the energy sector as an example. We've worked with over 60 social enterprises at this point in time and clean energy. And so, we've learned a lot in the clean energy space. For instance, one of our alumni is Husq Power. And what they're doing is solving, you know, off-grid energy problem in India. And in fact, actually, they're just about to expand to Africa. But, you know, so what they've done, so they've kind of come up, sorry, with technology to solve this, but it, from a business model point of view, they've actually done this by, and they've played with this. It took them a while to get to where they're at now, but now they're using a monthly fee and it's based on the levels of energy that are being consumed. And then, it's put in the local context because they are using rice husks. So, you have rice, the rice is being eaten, but the husks weren't nothing, nothing was being done with those. And so, it was just waste. And so, now, what Husq Power has done is taken that, what was considered waste, and making it useful to communities. We've worked with a number of solar lighting companies and, you know, whether they're using solar lighting or solar for microgrids or for lamps, or for mobile chargers, and so, you know, there are different technologies coming together and many of our alumni have kind of struggled with, are we just a technology company or do we need to distribute and how far up and down the value chain do we go? And so, what we've noticed is that we actually have other alumni now that have come in and seen that there are inefficiencies or holes in the supply chain of these kinds of products like solar lighting and clean cook stoves. And so, we have organizations like Solar Sister that basically is working with women in rural areas and they are teaching them how to sell solar lighting solutions and now they're actually just about to add clean cook stoves as well. So, they are taking the distribution piece of the value chain out of the need for the technology companies to be doing this, that they're filling a hole in the value chain and they're able to, again, you know, get close to the communities because these women are in the communities and they can, you know, really relate to their community members. So, we see, like I said, you know, that's kind of an example of some of, you know, how some of these social enterprises are, you know, really technology focused but then others are popping up in different parts of the value chain in order for these products to really get to market. So, Village Capital and Andy, which is the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs did a study recently and they realized, they identified the fact that now in 2003, the GSBI was the only incubator in the landscape but now there are 193 accelerators and incubators around that and what they've seen is that the ones that have been around longer actually have a higher success factor and of course that's not surprising as I mentioned, you know, we've learned a lot over the over 10 years that we've been in business. But also that, you know, the journey of a social entrepreneur is like a journey of any entrepreneur, it goes through stages and another report that was done by Monitor identified these stages as blueprint validate, prepare, and scale and the report identified that a lot of these what are called accelerators are really focused on the early part of the life. The blueprint piece is when you're ideating, you probably are doing a prototype and you're kind of playing with that to make it work. The validate piece is where I, you know, I think about as being where you're doing a pilot project. You've done the prototype, you can have something, now you're going to do a pilot project and figure out, you know, how to make this work in the market and then and as you know, I mean what you need when you're ideating is different than what you need when you're doing a pilot project and certainly is different when you're preparing to scale your business and so making sure that we're supporting, we as incubators and accelerators in the market are supporting social entrepreneurs wherever they are in their life cycle here is an important aspect to what we're doing and making sure like I said that the social enterprises can be successful. So as I mentioned, we're going to be talking about the barriers to scaling and we'll go into each one of these separately but here's the list of them is, you know, making sure that we have the appropriate technology solutions, human capital is an issue as well as the appropriate financial capital measurement and valuation and then scaling strategies. So I understand that Rada Basu did a webinar for all of you about six months ago so you might have, some of you might have seen this diagram. This is from the Frugal Innovation Lab which is at Santa Clara University as well and this really speaks to and when I, when we talk about Frugal, it's not that it's cheap. It has to be appropriate technology so for instance, it needs to fit into the local context so if you're putting something, you know, some say microgrid, solar microgrid in Rajasthan, in India then, you know, it needs to be able to survive, you know, up to 38 or more, 38 degrees C. If you're dealing with an audience that has low to no literacy, it has to be simple. If you, like I mentioned earlier, if you're dealing with women and fetching water, then the solution has to be lightweight. So it's really, really important to be considering all of these design elements when you're putting a technology solution in place and it's considering all of them within the local context and, you know, as you scale that your local context can change and so the question is do you want to continue, do you scale to places that are similar or do you want to, so that you don't have to change your technology or if you're going to scale to a place that is different, then you might have to, you know, go back to your technology and reconsider all of these elements again in order to make sure that it is appropriate. Now, the fact is that because of the audience that as social entrepreneurs that we're dealing with typically is in the bottom of the pyramid, these solutions do need to be inexpensive and so taking advantage of low cost development platforms like mobile makes a lot of sense. And so we see a lot of our social entrepreneurs really delivering mobile solutions and, you know, if you look at the market, there's over 6 billion mobile subscribers today but the thing to remember is that these are people they, I mean, and I was just in Nairobi and Uganda, I was in Nairobi a week ago and in Uganda and Nairobi in December and in India in November, everyone's carrying around mobile phones but they're not smart phones for the most part, they're feature phones so again, you know, keeping the local context in mind is an important aspect but like I said, you know, the leveraging mobile apps is something that we're seeing many of our social enterprises doing. Labor link, for instance, is basically providing transparency of a supply chain in order to prevent human rights abuses and so using a cell phone that a worker, a laborer can, you know, wage can say that they feel like they're being, you know, abuse that they're having to work too many hours or whatever, their conditions are not safe. We have M-Farm which is using mobile devices so that small holder farmers can get the prices of their crops as well as they can report back on the volumes, the yields that they have so that there can be linkages between what they're producing and then the prospective buyers. And then you have worldwide hearing, for instance, is using mobile for monitoring and evaluation being able to keep track of what's happening in the field. So, you know, like I said, you know, thinking about your technology in the context of which where it's going to lead is critical and we see mobile as being a huge component going forward in a variety of different ways in the social enterprise space. As I mentioned, human capital is a big barrier and, you know, you say, well, you know, Pamela, that's even true in Silicon Valley, here in New York City. I mean, it's true around the world but in the social enterprise space there are additional issues and additional barriers that come up. Being able to find the right founders and leaders is tricky but, you know, many of these people are living not, you know, they're living around the world and so that can be a barrier to attracting great talent. I've been working with one of our alumni's livelihoods and they're looking for a development director and they've had two yeses. People have said yes, they would take the job but then they've turned it down after having said yes and, you know, while their livelihood is based in Nairobi and so while, you know, initially there might be kind of an excitement about relocating to Nairobi when it comes down to it and real life steps in then it becomes a challenge. A lot of times, many of our social entrepreneurs are working in rural areas. A lot of people don't want to be working in rural areas, they feel isolated, they want to be working in urban areas. So there's a level, a much bigger level of complexity around getting the right people and the right talent into these organizations and then also making sure that they have board members that are working with them and really understand their business and can be helpful in working with, and being strategic with these social entrepreneurs. You know, as incubators and accelerators, we can do the best job we can in helping these folks figure out their business model and making sure that they've got the appropriate technology but if they don't have the money, they're not going to be able to do the good work that they want to do. And so impact investing is something that is still very much in the early days. It used to be that investors were all they cared about was return and risk. And so now you see, if you will, a new breed of investors coming in and saying, okay, I'm willing to take lower returns and probably higher risk but I want to, because I'm really interested in seeing impact. And so, you know, there's a number of reports that have come out on this but like I said, it's still very, very early days in this field. And, you know, we're taking a deeper look at this. You know, if you think about Silicon Valley and venture back companies, you know, it's a well-known universe. I mean, there's VCs that focus and everyone knows who they are that focus on early stage and those that focus on mid-stage and those that focus on late stage. And they've worked with each other before so they'll easily syndicate on deals. There's a well-understood path to go from a series A to a series B. And most importantly, there's lots of examples of round trips of capital that, you know, money's been put into organizations and then money's come out in terms of IPOs and mergers and acquisitions. And so, like I said, it's kind of a well-understood world. Whereas impact investing, like I said, is still very nascent and it's very, very challenging. Typically, you'll have an impact investor that is based in either North America or in Europe, looking to do a deal, you know, in a country that's probably, you know, thousands and thousands of miles away from them in a local context that they're not familiar with. And so, this, what ends up happening is due diligence takes long, long, long time. And social entrepreneurs, you know, are constantly, you know, any of you who've gone through due diligence, you know, it's a painful process. And then going through that pain for nine months to a year and beyond, it's just, I mean, it's just, it's tedious, it's time consuming and it's getting in the way of really doing what a social entrepreneur wants to do, which is creating impact. These, also, there's not, you know, there's not a well-understood, you know, with people just starting to syndicate now, working together. And we've seen very few exits in this space. And so, until we see more and more round trips of capital, it's going to be a challenge for people to really kind of get that appetite to be, you know, to be really heavy. And the reality is that for most social entrepreneurs, equity is not the right play for them. Many of these social entrepreneurs are doing this because they want to be having an impact in their community. They're not looking to do an exit like any of our, you know, our Silicon Valley organizations are, you know, it's a family-run business oftentimes. So, equity isn't the right play. And so, one of the things that we've been doing at the center, we have an impact capital team that is really looking at this and looking at what other financial instruments can we put in the market so that these social entrepreneurs can get the capital that they need and then, but not have to do it in the form of equity. And so, one of the innovations that we've come up with is what we call the demand dividend. And it's in a pilot project right now. We've got it in Nicaragua and Mali and a couple of other countries. And what this is, it's a debt vehicle that is very social entrepreneurship-friendly. So, what this does is a social entrepreneur can borrow money and they, first of all, they have what we call a honeymoon period so that for whatever is agreed to, you know, 12 months, 18 months, they don't have to pay any of it back. And then, when the honeymoon period is over, then they start paying that back based on free cash flow. So, they're not having to pay, you know, if, you know, period, they're only paying when they're making money. So, if they're making money, then they'll pay back on this debt, on this loan. But they're not just having to pay out of pocket even if they're not making any money. So, like I said, it's very friendly towards social entrepreneurs. And it's a way for investors to, you know, come into an organization, invest in that organization, get their money back. And then, and so, there is that round trip of capital and all of the ownership of the organization stays with the social entrepreneur. So, it's a win-win-win for everyone in, you know, in play there. So, as I mentioned, measurement and metrics is a huge question around the space of social entrepreneurship. And there's been, you know, there's a whole, you know, question about what do we measure, et cetera. And so, IRIS or the Impact Reporting and Investing Standards is an attempt to put some standards on measuring outcomes. And so, and that's what's important is that, you know, rather than measuring outputs, what we need to be measuring as a sector is outcomes. So, it's not good enough just to say that, you know, you've kept children in school for an additional year or two years. Okay. So, they're sitting in school. So, what? Is it making a difference in the economic benefit, are they economically benefiting over it? Are they learning additionally? So, we have to get to the further step. I mean, it's okay to start to count, you know, children in school or, you know, how many water filters we distributed, but is that making a difference? And so, it becomes really, really complicated. And so, like I said, IRIS is an attempt to kind of standardize this. And as you see here, the time of this graphic was 463 organizations that are reporting. And so, as I mentioned, we are alumni, account for over 200, and I assure you there's way, way, way more than 463 social entrepreneurs and enterprises around the world. So, there's still a lot of work to do here in order to bring everyone along. And to be honest with you, I, you know, many of our social entrepreneurs complain about the fact that it's still really, it's really hard to report to IRIS standards and such. So, there's still a lot of work here to do, but it's really important work because if we can't prove our impact, then why are we doing this? I mean, we need to do that to be able to attract the kinds of capital that we need and for these enterprises to grow. This graphic kind of, it will show you that, you know, it's still, there's some geographies that are doing better than others in terms of reporting, reporting their metrics, but it's still, it's still a big challenge for the sector. And finally, the, you know, we're talking about scaling. And so, the question is, you know, what is the right way for these enterprises scale? And the answer is, of course, there's no one way and no right way. There's lots of different ways and ways that we're seeing that are starting to emerge. One is basically, you know, the first one, the multinational, you know, holding companies is what you see oftentimes in just, in corporate America where you have a headquarters maybe based in the U.S., but then you have, you know, social enterprise, say, well, it's just called like vision spring. So vision spring might have its headquarters in the U.S., but then it's got vision spring Kenya, vision spring Tanzania, and vision spring Mexico. And so, and each of these are different kind of different organizations underneath the mother umbrella or mothership of the enterprise. So like I said, that's kind of taking a book from our page, rather, from the book that we see many for-profit companies go down. The other one, which we're seeing emerge is really exciting, and we're really excited about kind of getting involved in trying to make this work more efficiently on this, what we call open source franchising or the replication model. We actually conducted a survey of about 30 social entrepreneurs whose business model, we believed could be replicated to other geographies. And so we asked them, you know, would you be interested in doing that? And to, you know, to our surprise, over 75% said that they would want, you know, nothing more. They, that's what they wanted. They themselves actually didn't really have an interest in, you know, if they're an Indian based social enterprise doing business in some place in Africa, say in Nigeria, but they were more than happy to kind of, if you will, take everything that they're doing, kind of box it up and give it to a Nigerian social entrepreneur for them to do in Nigeria. And so this kind of open sharing and being able to replicate freely without, you know, these, the folks that we were talking to, they didn't want any financial renumeration or anything. They were just really happy to be able to see that what they were doing was useful and could be taken to other countries and serve other communities and they were all for it. So like I said, at the GSBI, we're looking to get more involved in this and figure out how we can do this and to help social enterprises do this efficiently. Cooperatives is a way that many of our social enterprises that are dealing with artisans is a way that they're scaling. So they'll form cooperatives around different communities and then, you know, those communities are already used to working with each other. So it's kind of a natural extension to the way the communities are working. And then one that is just starting and we'll see where this goes is being able to, you know, outsource, if you will, some of the business functions that all social enterprises need to deal with, like accounting and financial systems and such. So that using that as a way of getting their economies to scale is something that we're starting to see people playing with and we'll see how that goes in the future. But like I said, there's probably some other models here, too, for scaling that we haven't thought of and but it is something that a social entrepreneur needs to be thinking about and, you know, and figuring out what makes sense for them. So just like we work with our social entrepreneurs and how to scale their business, the way that we're scaling GSBI is through replication. And what we're doing is we're working with mission-aligned organizations and basically they take our content and they localize it and translate it, if need be, into other languages and basically do this with their social entrepreneurs locally. And so we have eight MOUs, Memorandums of Understanding signed with organizations around the world that you can see here and so this is the way that we've chosen to scale our own impact. And remember, I talked about getting to a billion, positively impacting a billion lives by 2020. We're not going to be able to do that by ourselves sitting at Santa Clara University and so this is a way for us to get there. So, you know, there are barriers to scaling. We talked about technology and the fact that in human capital, financial capital, the metrics and measurement, you know, being able to measure impact and then scaling models. But the reality is that there's a lot of stuff going on and in the developing countries and, you know, they are leapfrogging us in terms of technologies and such, you know. A lot of those four billion people that we've been talking about won't ever see a landline. They are all working with mobile devices. The fact that, you know, the banks, many people, you might have heard of Empessa in Kenya. There's a lot of people in Kenya that don't touch money at all or if they do, they certainly don't have a bank account. In Kenya alone, over 80% of the businesses are what we call the informal economy. They're not registered with the government. They don't have a bank account and so they're using Empessa. They're not doing traditional banking. You know, we've talked about off-grid energy. There's a lot of stuff going on. They're not going to, the governments aren't going to be doing the, laying the wires and towers for electricity and such. It's all going just straight to solar from no energy to solar and other, of course, other clean energy solutions too. And then manufacturing is being done differently too with the advent of 3D printers. So there's a lot of these developing countries that are, like I said, skipping this large need for infrastructure that we have just built and we expect to work here in the developed countries. And so, you know, keeping that in mind as you're innovating in the technology aspects is key. But as I said at the beginning, technology isn't just enough. You need to be thinking about having the appropriate business model and a deep understanding of the local context. So with that, I know I talked quite a bit and a lot and fast and I apologize, but I wanted to leave some time for Q&A. So I will turn over the moderating back to Paul so that he can take your question. Then we'll go from there. Thank you so much for your patience and listening. I do very much appreciate it. Pamela, thank you very much for that brilliant overview. You know, I think you covered a lot of ground and a lot of topics in great detail and, you know, really painted a picture of the social entrepreneurship ecosystem, which I think is, you know, a really good way to understand it and to understand where things are going. For everyone out there, there's a number of questions coming in, lots of questions, lots of interesting questions. But if you do have any questions that you'd like Pamela to address, if you could ask them in the Q&A aspect of your screen, that would be great. I want to start with two questions that have come in from the network. Firstly, and I think this is, you know, a really interesting question regarding, you know, the recipients of these products and services often referred to as, you know, based on the pyramid consumers. And just, I was wondering if you had an opinion or you could talk a little bit about, you know, what the value is in engaging based on the pyramid consumers as stakeholders in the business. So, you know, often they're seen as consumers, but there's a move at the moment to see them as co-creators in product development. You know, is that a trend that you see and is that something that you have an opinion on? Yes, absolutely. And so, you might, some people might have heard the whole lean principles, you know, lean startup, the lean methodology and that's certainly what's being done in Silicon Valley and in technology, software technology companies. But I also see it with social entrepreneurs that they are working with their customers and they're iterating quickly with the products and getting feedback. And so, that's why, you know, it's really critical, like I said, to be doing this in the local context and so being wherever your customers are that you wish to serve, you need to be on the ground with them and really, you know, working with them very closely in order to make sure that, you know, if you, if we go back to remembering that slide around thinking about the appropriate technology and what that means in all aspects and you're going to need to do that with your customers in a very iterative and rapid cycle. Excellent. Thank you. Some more questions to come in. This is a very good question, I think, that's come in from Europe. You know, I think there's a lot of putting social entrepreneurs out there, but it's a very difficult thing to take the first step, you know, for putting social entrepreneurs on the call. What's the first step that you can take in order to, you know, to make your idea a reality? Well, you know, there's, so assuming that you have an idea and such, I think there's places to go, there's challenges, there's a lot of challenges that are being run constantly and I can't even rattle some of them off the top of my head right at this moment, but I would encourage you to search around the websites, around social entrepreneurship and see that these challenges are sometimes they're like, you know, run across like a weekend, but then some of them are run across months where there's some training, so basically they kind of go through a training with you to kind of tease out what your idea is and make some sense around the business model and things like that, and then at the end people are selected and, you know, and often are given some, you know, see some money. It could be, you know, $10,000, you know, it could be $50,000, and I've seen some challenges up into the millions of dollars, so that would be a way to get started. Wonderful. Thank you. I think that gives, you know, a good suggestion on how to break down this, what is a, you know, a big challenge and seems very grandiose to begin with into simple small steps. There's a question coming that has relating to financial returns, and, you know, I like this one because I'm really a business guy, even though I always focus on social entrepreneurs, I think that it's very important to think about why people are investing and what they're getting out of investing in social entrepreneurs, so could you talk a little bit more about, you know, what type of returns are investors looking for when they're investing in social entrepreneurs? Yeah, so, you know, some of this is changing as we're getting a bit older and wiser in the space, you know, initially the idea, the thought was, you know, returns could come in three to five years, and it could be, you know, seven to nine times, and now we're realizing it's not three to five years, it's probably more likely to be five to seven or even beyond seven years to get returns, and it's maybe, you know, three to five times. So, like I said, you know, the expectations have shifted over time, and who knows how they'll continue to shift. As I mentioned earlier, there's been very, very few exits. I mean, if you think about, you know, so certainly there's been, people will point to, well, you know, there's some MFI exits, but I would submit that the MFIs are a different beast in terms of social enterprises than most social enterprises. I mean, there's a clear financial piece of that, and so it's easier to, you know, to value that and such rather than a solar lighting company, for instance. So, as we start to see some more of the, it's more of these exits, then I think the expectations will adjust again. Yeah, fantastic. So, just to summarize your answer there, you know, I think the people who are investing are looking for a financial return out of their investment, but they're also looking for social return and environmental return, and I guess the difference between a social investor or an impact investor and a regular investor is the added social return that we're looking for, and perhaps also the patience in which they're expecting to get their return back. Is that a fair comment? Yes, I mean, and that's exactly what we also talk about, Paul, is about patient capital. It's, you know, if you can't be in here for the short term and expect, you know, money back in 3D years. I mean, it's very, very, very unlikely. Okay, wonderful. Thank you. There's a very, there's a specific question come in in terms of wash, in terms of water and sanitation, and I'm going to take the opportunity to answer that if you don't mind Pamela, and just do a shameless plug for our next webinar, which is actually in collaboration with the Water Institute at UNC at the University of North Carolina, and I think that if you're interested in wash, that's a really good place to start. If you go to their website and look at the things, some of the things they're doing, they have a conference each year called Wash Tech, which is very interesting, and as I say, if you want to participate in our March webinar, that's exactly what that will be about in terms of household water treatment products and standards, and more generally the wash arena. So I think that that's a good question and a good opportunity to participate next time. There's also an organization which I personally love called the World Toilet Organization, the other WTO, and they're doing some great work in water and sanitation, so that's a good place for you to look. Pamela, a question that I often get asked, which I'd really be interested to hear your insights in on, you know, from your perspective, where you obviously have a great network around the world and you see emerging technologies and emerging challenges. Are there some areas or markets that you see particularly growing quickly at the moment that would be a good opportunity, either from a need perspective or from a demand perspective? Yeah, so there are. So if I look at our over 200 alumni, I'd say that about 45 or so of them are in India, and there's a lot of need in India, and there's a lot of activity in India as well. There are a number of incubators and accelerators there. There's a lot of money being put in there. Actually, if you're interested, I do know that the World Bank has applications open right now for their development marketplace, of which that's another place. Basically, you have to have a social enterprise and then commit to doing work in four of the poorest states, and they'll support you with, I'm going to say, $100,000, that might not be exactly right, but it's a significant amount of money. And so India is a place, and the other place is Nairobi and Kenya. Like I said, I was in Nairobi last week, and then in December, and then actually last June, and there's just a lot of bubbling around that's going on. The whole ecosystem is supported there. I mean, they do have impact investors. So I mentioned earlier that typically impact investors are found in North America and in Europe, but there are impact investors in countries as well, and certainly Nairobi, there's a lot of impact investors in Nairobi, and then social entrepreneurs and incubators and accelerators and co-working space. And so there's kind of a real energy there. And from there, you're not only supporting Kenya, but a lot of those organizations are supporting all of East Africa. So Uganda, Tanzania, and then some going into Rwanda and such. So let me say that both areas are where we see a kind of a hotbed of activity. Yeah, and just to add to that, I know that USAID has their Development Adventures Initiative, which has certain challenges that they're trying to solve that they expect a call to action or competition for social entrepreneurs out there. So the USAID Development Adventures Initiative is another place where people can look for emerging market trends. Just for the last question, and I think this is a really good way to finish, given the nature of the audience on the line and given that it's engineering for change, there's a question regarding the importance of human capital. For social entrepreneurs and building that capacity, you know, obviously we often try and focus on technology solutions and the importance of technology. But clearly, human capital is key to building and scaling social entrepreneurs, enterprises. So I don't know if you've got any reflections on some of the ways in which GSBI have been able to instill that perspective into the people they work with. Well, I mean, I take it even, so with the GSBI, you know, we work with social entrepreneurs that are already doing, you know, in countries or in business and have something, like I said. But, you know, even starting before then, being able to, I know a number of universities, Santa Clara, Penn State, have a big focus on engineering for the developing world. And so, you know, for those that are in school or are considering going back to school, that looking for institutions that have a thrust in those areas, I think, is important. Because, you know, like I said earlier, I mean, engineering for these different, for making sure that the technology is appropriate is important. And so getting going to institutions that support that, to really understand that, that actually oftentimes you will go out into the field and do field work with those programs. So that's a way that you can get started earlier in your career, so to speak. And so then, you know, then I think that it's, there's a lot of workshops and things like that that can help you just become a better social entrepreneur and make sure that you're, you know, constantly learning because there's, this field is changing a lot. You know, I've been a mentor for the GSBI, I started as a mentor six years ago now. And what was happening then is very different than what's happening now. So being able to stay on top of trends and making sure that you're doing that, I think, is important too. And then the one thing, because, I mean, I used to work in the private sector, you know, and we were always, you know, very close. We weren't sharing. I mean, but the social enterprise space is very much, I love the fact that people are willing to share, they're willing to convene and get together and, you know, make sure that all of you are moving forward. So I would encourage you to be networking in such too with others because it really is a very friendly environment. Wonderful, Pamela, thanks for that answer and I think, you know, it's a good way to finish because it's such an interesting way in which this community is evolving and which the interdisciplinary nature of the community brings together people from all walks of life and it's that communication and collaboration between those different viewpoints that really end up making such successful solutions. So thanks very much for your time today. I think, you know, you gave us an excellent overview of the space and I know I personally found it very interesting and I'm sure the other 100 participants online equally enjoyed it. Thanks to everyone for your questions and your comments. As I mentioned, EPUC is a community and a network that is fantastic for you to join if you're not already a member and then please join us for future webinar series in there, in first of all in March and then we have them every month. In case you need your professional development code, the code's on the screen now. If you have any more questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at webinars at engineeringforchange.org and again, thanks very much to Pamela Rosos from the Global Social Benefit Incubator at Santa Clara University. Thank you.