BREAKAWAY START-UP FRAMEWORK - CONTEXT & CONCEPTS

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 Context: 

As you can see, the Breakaway Social Venture Start-up Framework is structured like a compass but with one key difference; at its center is YOU! This is THE essential starting point for your entrepreneurial leadership journey because “Success” within our Breakaway Social Venture Start-up Framework philosophy and approach is ENTIRELY defined by YOU. Everything that follows from the work you do in this stage will be influenced by, and evaluated against, the “SUCCESS” attributes you establish here. It is here that you establish the focus and approach to your journey as well as the outcomes you desire to achieve at its end. Once established, you’ll constantly monitor your progress and take both subtle as well as dramatic actions to make sure your decisions and progress forward stay on a course to support achieving the essential outcomes you have established here. You will want to ensure that you are consistently working towards achieving those essential outcomes in a manner that you feel supports the “quality of the journey” you initially desired to experience. We all believe that achieving the goal of creating a successful and sustainable social venture would be a big part of the entrepreneurial leadership reward but achieving that at step emotional or relationship costs might more than offset those rewards. We encourage you to always remember, in utilizing the Breakaway Social Venture Start-up Framework, “Success” is defined by you and only you . When all is said and done, you will evaluate your entrepreneurial start-up journey’s “Success” based on how well you were able to meet, and hopefully exceed your own “Success” measures.

Concept: 

At its center: YOU! Whether you are a social venture leader within an existing socially oriented organization, or a new entrepreneur we think it’s essential that the entire journey of discovering, designing, developing, launching/implementing, and sustaining a successful new social venture MUST be led by a passionate, collaborative, innovation-centered entrepreneurial leader. Furthermore, we believe this leader (You!) MUST establish up-front clarity around your personal mission, vision, goals, objectives, as well as the new venture’s teaming and operating preferences in order to efficiently and effectively take charge of leading the social venture creation journey forward towards “Success”; “Success” as measured against your own definition of success and not those measures that others have for themselves. You see, like any journey, success is ultimately measured in terms of where you end up (vs where you intended to end up), the path you took to get there (vs the one you wanted to take), and the experiences you had along the way (vs what you desired to have). By taking the time to reflect and to build a level of personal clarity around the array of attributes and measures that define your own model of “Success” you’ll be much more likely to take the proactive and thoughtful leadership steps necessary to drive your social venture start-up forward towards that “Success” and in a manner consistent with how you wanted that journey to unfold. 

Context: 

Once you have established your personal mission, vision, goals, objectives, and new venture start-up teaming and operating preferences, it’s time to jump into the meat your social venture start-up journey. The north point of the Breakaway Social Venture Start-up Framework, “The Right Start”, represents Stage 2 of the Social Venture Start-up Framework and it’s here you’ll continue building the strong foundation that will support accelerating and focusing your social venture start-up journey towards success. Within this stage, you’ll be working to more clearly define your “Field of Interest” focus as well as the profile of the “Winning Team” you’ll recruit and bring on board to best support the work ahead of the start-up on its journey towards success.  Let’s take a look at the two major steps within this stage: “Field of Interest” and “Winning Team”.

Concept:  

The Field of Interest step is all about bringing focus and clarity to the Community segments and the social challenges, needs, or problems of those segments that the social venture will be setting off to address. The goal of this step of Stage 2 is to bring more specificity to the areas of the Community that you’ll focus as well as the needs, challenges, or problems that you are deeply interested in and passionate about creating solutions for within those segments. Similar to the storyline of the Three Little Bears, in this step you’re looking to define your Community segment a Community segment challenge, need, or problem focus areas in a way that is not too wide, not too narrow, but instead, just right!

You might also find that by working through this step it will help refocus some of the initial energy and momentum you (a passionate social venture entrepreneur) are bringing into the new social venture start-up efforts. It’s not unusual to see start-up leaders initially set off on a social venture start-up path because they’ve had a specific personal experience with a Community social challenge, need, or problem. In addition, it’s not unusual for these entrepreneurs to already have an exciting idea (or kernel of an idea) around which they feel passionate about in terms of its ability to help to solve these challenges, needs or problems. While this passion and energy should be seen as a positive thing, if it causes a leader to prematurely lock into a specific need/challenge/problem definition and/or solution it can later turn into a painful and expensive learning lesson that undermines the ability of the team to find a better and more impactful Community focus and to develop an even more exciting social venture solution into reality. The goal here is to channel this energy as might be necessary in order to ensure the social venture start-up’s journey, at this point, is defined in terms of a “clear direction and outcome” vs “specific destination and means of getting to that destination”

Concept:  

The Winning Team step is all about putting a diverse (e.g., knowledge, skills, experiences, perspectives) and collaborative team in place to more effectively support the process of discovering, creating, and launching a truly great new social venture start-up. Much has been written about the need for, and the power of, diverse and collaborative teams. The Breakaway Social Venture Start-up Framework is purposely designed to promote putting such a team in place early in the social venture start-up journey. Without this team in place early, an entrepreneurial social venture start-up leader will have taken a common misstep that often leads to more unnecessarily expensive and painful learning lessons that can undermine or limit the overall success of an entrepreneur’s work. Simply put, without the right team engaged early in the social venture start-up journey, as the start-up’s leader, you’d be heading down the challenging start-up path half blind and less than fully provisioned to reach your destination. 

Context: 

The next stage in the Social Venture Start-up journey is focused on establishing a collective team understanding of The Right Goals around which your social venture start-up efforts must stay focused.  In this stage, you and your team will progress through two steps: 1)  Building  a Common Orientation to , a) the community’s range of existing needs, challenges, and problems, b) the Community’s current solutions and delivery organizations, c) Community’s eco-system of stakeholders and stakeholder organizations that play a part in serving the community and who you’ll need to be aware of and work closely with in order to successfully achieve your mission, vision, goals, and objectives, and  2) understanding the community’s Stakeholder Objectives; identifying and understanding the objectives of the Community stakeholders whose support and sponsorship is desired, and in some cases essential, to supporting your start-up success. While you’ll l work to identify the full range of stakeholder groups throughout the Community, you’ll pay special attention to fully understanding and embracing the realities of how, and under what conditions, the most critical of these stakeholders would most likely offer up their direct support and sponsorship.

Concept: 

During the Common Orientation step you and your team will be leveraging a range of resources to build a shared awareness and understanding of the field of interest you've chosen to focus on. Think of this as the background research aimed at developing a collective view and understanding of the Community challenges, needs, and problems that fall within your Community segment area of focus and around which you’ll be working to discover, create, build, and introduce new solutions as part of your social venture start-up. 

Concept:  

In the “Stakeholder Objectives” step, you and your team’s primary objective is to identify the key stakeholders existing within and around your Filed of Interest with a focus on identifying the range of its stakeholders: "Essential", "Strategic", "Important" and "other" stakeholders that exist throughout your Community and its ecosystem. You will ' pay particular attention identifying and understanding those "Essential" stakeholders who represent the potential funders and sponsors you’ll be approaching to secure the time, talent, and resource support that might be needed to move your new social venture start-up. In simple terms, at the end of your Breakaway Social Venture Start-up Framework journey, you’ll be pitching your new social venture proposal to a set of targeted funding and sponsorship stakeholders with a goal of securing the commitment and support necessary to move your new social venture start-up forward into the next phase of its realization; full development, launch, and scale-up to steady-state operational sustainability and self-sufficiency. If you fail to secure this funding and sponsorship commitment, your new social venture creation journey is over! As we highlighted earlier, in the commercial venture capital world, 995 out of every 1000 proposals (>99%) fail to gain the funding and sponsorship commitments they need to continue their work beyond that which was only possible, in most cases, through the support of friends, family, and the founder. Creating clarity around your Essential stakeholders' interests and objectives at this stage of your start-up journey will help improve the quality of the solutions you decide to pursue and the plans and proposals that you’ll put forward; significantly increasing your odds of achieving funding and sponsorship succes

 Context: 

The next stage of your social venture creation and  innovation journey takes you and your team through three distinct steps: 1)  Empathic Marketing; building a truly empathic understanding of your targeted challenge, need, problem area and those individuals and groups being directly or indirectly impacted, 2) Ideation Magic: generating an unbounded set of  ideas that represent a range of  core product/service/operating model/etc. solutions that appear promising in regards to  positively addressing  the  challenges, need, and problems identified during the Empathic Marketing step, and 3)  Filter & Select: culling through those solution ideas in a thoughtful and pragmatic way to  identify the most promising ideas,  to rapidly prototype  those ideas, to collect initial feedback/validation on those solution ideas, and  ultimately, to select the most promising  one or two of these solution ideas  to take forward into a deeper feedback, validation, and iterative design development cycle of work.

Concept: 

The first step in this stage is absolutely critical to the discovery and formation of the core solution ideas and innovations that will eventually be at the heart of your new social venture or innovation program, . It’s here where you and your team take an empathic marketing approach to developing a deep understanding of the “day in the life” realities of those in the Community touched by the social needs, challenges, and problems that are the focus of your start-up’s work. It’s also where you’ll build a similar level of understanding around those Community members, groups, and organizations that are currently serving these of Community challenge, need, and problem areas. The intimate and deep perspectives you and your team gain here will significantly enhance your ability to generate (in step 2 of this stage) a rich array of solution ideas; solution ideas from which you’ll later (in step 3 of this stage) select and then further develop as the solution at the core of the start-ups work. 

Concept: 

The second step within the “Right Idea” stage of the Breakaway Social Venture Start-up Framework, “Ideation Magic”, is all about generating a wide array of solution ideas to address the challenges, needs, and problems identified and more contextually understood through the empathic marketing work you will have just completed in step 1 of this stage. This rich pool of ideas will provide you and your team with the raw material from which to identify and further develop a small subset of those ideas that are seen as having the highest potential in regards to securing external funding and sponsorship while also being fully supportive of achieving the unique goals and objectives that YOU, the social venture entrepreneur, established in Stage 1 of your Breakaway Social Venture Start-up Framework journey.

Through the empathic marketing work in step 1 of this stage, you and your team will have identified a number of "personas" and "archetypes"   around which you will have created rich and insightful “Day in the life” stories; stories that give your personas’ challenges, needs, and problems contextual meaning and make their impact more richly understood and appreciated.  The goal here in step 2 of this stage (the “Ideation Magic” step) is to generate a broad array of solution ideas, each of which holds the “potential” of having a positive and meaningful impact on your targeted Community segments and its challenges, needs, and problems as well as having the potential to do so in a sustainable (preferably in a self-sufficient) way. This step is not about filtering these solutions and ideas as to their desirability, feasibility, viability, or stakeholder attractiveness (that evaluation will come in step 3 of this stage) it’s simply about creating a large volume of interesting and promising solution ideas; Solution ideas that hold the potential of creating a new “Day in the Life-Tomorrow” realities for the Community. 

Concept:   

Step three of the “Right Idea” stage of the Breakaway Social Venture Start-up  Framework; “Filter & Select; Success Factor Fit”  is where you’ll take the broad array of blue sky solution ideas that were generated during the “Ideation Magic” step,  cull them down into a small handful  of high potential candidates,  and  then rapidly prototype them to begin assessing their desirability, feasibility, and sustainability/viability potential ideas and quickly boil them down into the top three to four that hold the most promise in regards to  achieving success in your new social venture start-up efforts. To do this , you'll  go through three steps, 1) a quick solution idea assessment round where your goal is to come up with three to four ideas that you believe represent the highest potential solution ideas to pursue, 2) a rapid prototyping, validation, and rough SROI/venture plan assessment  cycle around each of the three to four  ideas you identified , and lastly, 3)  finalize your  selection of the 2 (recommended)  most  promising solution ideas to  take forward into a full feedback, validation, and design development cycle. 

Context: 

In this stage of the Breakaway Social Venture Start-up Framework, you and your team will be engaged in two key sets of activities; First, Solution idea feedback, validation, and  tuning  to perfect your new social venture ideas and  secondly, “Telling A Winning Story”  where you’ll be structuring and delivering a well-designed  and crafted proposal to key funding and sponsorship stakeholders in order to gain  the commitment and support necessary to move your start-up forward into full development and Community launch of your new social venture. 

Concept: 

Feedback and Validation: In the Feedback and Validation step, you and your team will be focused on:1) further perfecting  your solution idea by developing more functional prototypes and using those to engage a range of users and stakeholders to gather feedback, tune the idea/solution (“plussing”),  and more fully validate the idea’s/solution’s desirability , 2)  fully fleshing out the idea/solution’s feasibility by completing a thorough development/launch/implementation requirements plan as well as associated risk assessment/mitigation scenario plans, and lastly, 3) assessing the viability of the new venture by, a) developing a comprehensive set of  new venture business/ development/ launch /implementation/operational plans and using them to fully flesh out  the necessary levels of    short, medium, and long-term  time, talent, and resources that will be needed  to develop, launch, implement, and operationally scale up  the new social venture, and b) ensuring these plans appropriately support achieving the essential, strategic, and important stakeholder goals, objectives, priorities, and preferences  that have been identified  as critical to achieving YOUR success and to securing the funding and sponsorship needed to move forward

Concept: 

 It’s time to move onto the final step of the Breakaway Social Venture Start-up Framework: “Telling a winning story” which is aimed at : 1) effectively designing and  preparing the written documentation that you'll use to  support your ability to efficiently and effectively communicate your new social  venture proposal to others,  2)  securing a range  opportunities in which  you can present your proposal to key funders and sponsors,  3)  preparing an  appropriate range of engaging  presentation and  presentation support  materials  you'll use to  deliver your “winning” new venture proposal (“story”) , and 4) preparing yourself and your team to engage with these potential funders and sponsors and to deliver these presentations in a highly effective and engaging manner; a manner  that significantly improves your  chances of securing their  support.

The Breakaway Social Venture Start-up Framework is designed to be used as a "compass" by any social venture entrepreneur that is truly interested in achieving greater success from their efforts.  For those of you who have joined us here at the Social Venture Café, we hope you'll join us in advocating, incubating, and supporting the creation of new social ventures that help to better serve our local community's most pressing social challenges, needs, and problems.  We look forward to helping support your success and we hope you'll help other Community members achieve greater success through your willingness to share your own "entrepreneurial start-up journey” insights and experiences.