Elements of Personnel Management
Following are the elements of Personnel Management: Organization- Organization is said to be the framework of many activities taking place in view of goals available in a concern. An organization can be called as a physical framework of various interrelated activities. Right from manpower planning to employees’ maintainance, all activities take place within this framework. […]
How to Increase Employee Productivity by Building Learning Organizations
The Link between Organizational Learning and Productivity Learning organizations are productive organizations. When employees acquire knowledge, they learn to actualize efficient and productive ways of working. When they share the knowledge acquired thus, they tend to ensure that other employees are productive as well. When the entire team collaborates and works together, they leverage the […]
How Should HR Managers Deal with Occupational Hazards at the Workplace?
What are Occupational Hazards and how they have Manifested in the Industrial Era? By definition, Occupational Hazards are those casualties, injuries, and accidents that involve workers and professionals in the course of their work. As the name implies, these are hazards that are associated with their workplace lives and hence, are sustained in the course […]
Role of Opinion Leaders and Change Agents in the Knowledge Management Paradigm
The Role of Opinion Leaders and Change Agents in Diffusion of Innovations Knowledge management systems are effective when the innovations are pioneered by organizations. Apart from the innovations themselves, they have to be diffused throughout the organization to benefit the employees. The key question here is that when there are thousands of artifacts and documents […]
Elements of Employee Engagement
The term employee engagement has been defined by various researchers. A commonly agreed upon definition would be physical, psychological or emotional involvement of the employee while at work. Four things are important when we talk about employee engagement; commitment, motivation, loyalty and trust. Their level determines the quality of engagement of an employee. Each one […]
Social innovation is a very wide term that includes ideas, ways and means, strategies and even organizations that works out innovative solutions to meet the demands of the public, especially those who live at the bottom of the pyramid. It may include innovative fields in a wide variety of setups like education, healthcare, community development etc.
The micro credit scheme started by Mohammad Yunus in Bangladesh is a very good example of social innovation. Distance learning methodology similarly is a social innovation that enables people in far fetched areas to have access to quality education. The concept can still more be extended to open source techniques used in software development.
The idea of social innovation is not a recent one, though it may have been discussed more often recently. Benjamin Franklin, for example, made references of it in his writings as small modifications that may be brought about in the social structure to solve everyday problems.
Later on certain French workers made mention of the same in their writings. In the recent literature the term social innovation is frequently found in the writings of some management gurus like notably in those of Peter Drucker and Micheal Young. Some other noted sociologists like Karl Marx and Max Weber also worked extensively on social innovation for bringing about social change.
Of late Joseph Schumpeter incorporated it into his concept of creative destruction. He also extended his concept to defining entrepreneurship as a way of creating new product or service by combining the existing elements.
Organizations are globally being attracted to the idea of creating and marketing products and services for those at the bottom of the pyramid. As C.K Prahlad rightly notified us about the fortune at the bottom of the Pyramid, increasingly marketers are driven to the idea of tapping this potential hitherto undiscovered.
Nearly four billon people around the world make a living on about two U.S dollars a day and this is magnanimous not only in terms of a business opportunity but also in terms of a reciprocal relationship. Firms cater to the needs of these people and they in turn offer a huge profit opportunity that is dependent on the scalability of the same.
The operation may however not be as simple as it appears on paper. There are barriers not in production but in distribution because low income household markets are price sensitive and highly segmented.
Global FMCG giant P & G, for example, developed PUR (a water purification system) in partnership with US government which was meant for low income consumers. The product was meant to serve a social need which was to provide clean and hygienic water at places where the drinking water was unsafe. The product failed to serve well and after three years of launch, it was found out that the product was a failure!
It clearly appears that cost is not the only factor that acts a barrier to the success of a social innovation. There are yet other examples where out reach (ease of access), distribution channels were ignored and social innovations failed their purpose. The need is of building sustainable models that are operationally well laid out and successful in delivering the goods. Remember cost is not the only factor!
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