Noah's Social Entrepreneurship Blog

Tone Characteristics: Informative, dense, conceptual Green-washing: that little term coined by Jay Westerveld in the 1980s who became outraged after he took notice of his hotel leaflet informing him that washing once-used towels produces masses of chemical waste products on top of contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. Westerveld, a green activist, clearly saw the true motives of the hotel, as they were certainly not in business to improve the well-being of the planet, they were in business to maximize shareholder returns. This cost effective way of attributing guilt onto their guests for the externalities of the hotel's services could, on a large scale, save them thousands every year. This term has done anything but fade into irrelevancy over the last 40 years, becoming ever so useful in describing the profit-seeking motives behind publicly traded, close-fisted corporations. British Petroleum and other like-minded corporations in the oil and gas sector are prime examples of gre...

"Scrap Your R🗲de Manitoba" Strengths:  Strong partnerships and ties with community and government (especially Manitoba Hydro) Unique business model / Value proposition Strong vision to guide organization (turn Manitoba's personal vehicle fleet electric) No current competition Recycling locally lowers reliance on Asian countries Weaknesses:  Heavily reliant on funders and partners  Requires collaboration with governments, municipalities Needs to remain incentivizing for customers Scrapping and Recycling could easily run over budget Opportunities:   Growing innovation and popularity of electric vehicles Growing amounts of disposable income among target market (young adults) Greater access to funding depending on political party in charge  Potential to import vehicles from other provinces Threats: Electric vehicles can struggle with Manitoban climate Partners could cease contributions City/Province could fail to implement complementary infrastructure Restricted ac...

In researching food innovations, something that caught my interest had to do with micro-financing rural farmers in Africa. Part of Africa's agriculture problems has to do with farm financing. Looking at the North American farming system, it is very intertwined with financial institutions. Loans to purchase land, openly-traded forward-contracts to purchase crops at fixed prices, and various other channels to access capital mean that farmers can distribute their risk and returns evenly among more people. These various advancements have yet to reach Africa for a few reasons. Firstly, rural farmers in Africa tend to not have easy access to banks. This means that finding an institution to provide a loan can be quite challenging, forcing farmers to get creative in funding their farm. Secondly, many farmers in rural Africa are financially illiterate, meaning that they are vulnerable to financial exploitation from those who provide informal high interest loans. One possible solution to the...