A perennial question for social entrepreneurs is the question of scale. And perhaps the two greatest levers for scaling social enterprises are technology and government. So, it should come as little surprise that the topic of civic technology featured heavily at last month’s Social Enterprise Conference at Harvard! Here, I’d like to share some of the insights presented.
The Harvard Social Enterprise Conference, now in its 19th year, is an initiative of students at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School of Government, meant to bring together practitioners, students, and academics to discuss the most pressing issues of organizations and society. This year, topics spanned a wide range, and included a variety of panels regarding civic technology. Microsoft’s Aimee Sprung moderated a panel on “Pitching the Public Sector,” while others led panels on mobile technology in the developing world, education technology, and many other topics.
Their conversations were wide-ranging, insightful, and eye-opening for those in the audience who have ever thought of leveraging technology to impact problems they care about. Here are just a few of the lessons they shared:
- Technology is just a tool. It’s easy to get excited about all of the possible features and capabilities that technology can bring to bear on social issues; it can also be easy to lose track of the fact that technology is only one tool to address these challenges. In schools, even the most advanced learning platform won’t be useful without outstanding educators. Technologists should think of themselves as one part of a larger puzzle in addressing social issues like education, which includes other pieces like process improvements, human capital support, changes in resource use, and more.
- Governments can be great clients. Governments often get a bad reputation as clients to technology companies and other service providers. But our panelists reminded us that the opposite can also be true: governments can be uniquely outstanding clients. Not only do governments offer unparalleled scale and opportunity to work on important social issues, but there are also marketing and sales advantages. While sales cycles to governments can be long, the turnover rate of existing government clients is very low. And although governments are often unwilling to try brand new solutions, leaders in government talk to one another frequently, making it easy to sell high-quality products that already have a few users.
- Always keep iterating. Nothing is a substitute for talking to users, understanding their needs, and iterating your technology to meet those needs. This can be especially hard for new startups, who lack both resources and a large client base on which to test new ideas. Panelists offered some creative ways to gain access to those first clients, such as leveraging a university’s brand name (as a student). But mostly, they reiterated how important it is to choose to tackle a problem that you care about enough to get out of the office and into the field.
For more information about the conference, visit our website: www.socialenterpriseconference.org.
Daniel Goldberg is an MBA Candidate at Harvard Business School and an MPP Candidate at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where he focuses on performance improvement, innovation, and service delivery in the public sector. He is the Director of Marketing & Attendee Relations for the Social Enterprise Conference.