BUS 374 Week One: What is Social Innovation

 In this first week of classes, I studied at becoming a social innovator. The purpose of a social innovator is to assess a problem caused by one of the systems we have created for the community, and figure out how to resolve the issue at it's roots. Social innovators are able to work with multiple factions of innovators to understand and respond to issues to the best of their abilities with what funding they are given. Social innovators work to improve their communities and hope to influence future innovators in the world to adapt their understanding for the same issues. I also reviewed videos about social innovation and how multiple students from the university have used their education to solve crises around the globe.

After reviewing the materials provided, I became engrossed to the knowledge provided in the article, The Meaning of "Social Entrepreneurship" . The article referenced that social entrepreneurship is difficult to work on due to limited funding:

Markets do not work as well for social entrepreneurs. In particular, markets do not do a good job of valuing social improvements, public goods and harms, and benefits for people who cannot afford to pay. These elements are often essential to social entrepreneurship. That is what makes it social entrepreneurship. As a result, it is much harder to determine whether a social entrepreneur is creating sufficient social value to justify the resources used in creating that value.

This excerpt explains that if I wanted to participate in social entrepreneurship, I need to prepare to put all of my time and effort into proving why this problem should be fixed. This is what I gleaned from my studies this week.

In response to why I think social innovation is more prevalent today, I can provide a couple examples as to why I think it is more prevalent. Social innovation is needed when a social system is creating a problem that need to be resolved. In today's world, there are more complex systems than there once were and that causes an influx of innovators to change the world. Also in my opinion, there are more opportunities to provide assistance to in need communities than there once was due to the increase in outreach programs and social media information that shares issues.