Emergent Ventures
= a subset of Social Entrepreneurship. Social Entrepreneurship ventures are often about solving survival needs (Food, Water, Shelter). Emergent Ventures solve enrichment needs (Knowledge, Community, Collaboration).
Characteristics
Max Marmer:
"Defining Characteristics of Emergent Ventures:
1) They have information technology component at their core, and are connected to the Internet. This is what allows these businesses to easily benefit from complimentary products and services, rapidly scale, and quickly integrate into the fabric of society.
2) Social Entrepreneurship ventures are often about solving survival needs (Food, Water, Shelter).
Emergent Ventures solve enrichment needs (Knowledge, Community, Collaboration).
3) A portion of the value these ventures create and capture is economic and they make enough money to self-sustain, and often create a significant profit.
4) The ventures we’re talking about on this blog for the most part create a low to medium amount of economic capital. Terms 1 through 3 leave the door open open for companies like Google and Facebook, which create both a high amount of economic capital and social capital. And while companies like Google and Facebook probably could benefit from some of the discussions on the bleeding edge of harnessing social capital, they don’t need help attracting more resources and attention. (Other ventures to include in this category: Meetup, Quora, Asana,Halycon Molecular)"
Discussion
Max Marmer:
"There is a new class of ventures emerging. They’re not focused on creating the next profitable widget. Their core purpose is about empowering people with tools, knowledge, social connections to live a better life and fulfill their dreams.
The currency of their value creation is broader than just along the economic spectrum. They are about unleashing the abundant resource of human potential and social capital.
This is a transformative departure from most organizations whose fundamental currency is economic capital. Given this, there’s bound to new ways of organizing, sharing resources, knowledge, tools and people. Social capital is fundamentally positive sum, and therefore potentially abundant, as it grows in value the more it’s used. Whereas organizations based on economic capital predominantly engage in pure quid pro quo, zero-sum exchanges of value." (http://emergenttransformation.com/implications-of-startups-that-exist-to-maximi)
Examples
Examples of companies that would be emergent ventures:
- Kiva
- The Extraordinaries
- Kickstarter
- Sandbox Network
- The Hub
- Sparkseed
- Assetmap
- Supercool School
- Trust Art
- Ground Crew
- Jumo
- The Unreasonable Institute
- Open Action
- Enzi
- Udemy
- Unclasses