Key Principles of Social Enterprises: Has a clear goal as its core purpose

2. High influence, high stake
+Residents living near the landfills are directly affected by the offensive smell and so it is likely that they have a vested interest in improving their environment. As experts in their fields, public health and environmental science officials have a high level of influence and their profession demonstrates a high degree of interest in the health and environmental conditions of the city.
3. Low influence, high stake
+While Nawal’s university and her friends and family may be useful resources for support and very interested in her enterprise, their influence remains low for now.
4. Low influence, low stake
+Nawal may consider expanding her enterprise to other port cities in the future. Until then, those cities will have little or no influence on, or interest in, Nawal’s solution.
Another Example
If your social enterprise seeks to improve areas of public school education, you would need to consider all the stakeholders who would play a role in, or be affected by, any decision-making process or entrepreneurial idea. The figure below demonstrates how a stakeholder analysis might look in this scenario. Please note how stakeholders, like parents, appear more than once. Often, within a single group of stakeholders, some individuals may have differing levels of influence on, or interest in the challenge. Depending on their involvement with the school or in other influential organizations, parents may have differing abilities to impact the outcome. In these situations, it is okay to split stakeholders across quadrants as long as you can reason why this might be the case.


Customer Understanding
Interviews
One of the pillars of social entrepreneurship is communicating directly with the communities you are looking to serve and actively listening to them, in their own words. There is truly no better way to fully understand a person’s ambitions, challenges, and constraints than by speaking with them yourself. Facilitating an interview may seem like a daunting task but below are some tips from serial entrepreneur, Giff Constable, on how to most effectively understand your challenge and the needs of a potential customer*: