Saif Kamal, for his work in building an integrated social innovation ecosystem, was recently awarded as a New Champion (2015 -16) at World Economic Forum’s Summer Davos China. He explains to IBT how social enterprises can address world’s biggest challenges and why we need to fuel innovations first before supporting the building of enterprises.
Photo: Rajib Dhar
On The Global Shapers Community
“As a Shaper you have to think about what about the challenges faced by your society. Our hub’s vision is to make Dhaka a more socially inclusive city. The Community is a fairly new initiative of the World Economic Forum which was started in 2010. People are recruited between the ages of 20 and 30 and a person can remain a shaper till they’re 33. Global Shapers are people involved in disrupting the society in a positive waywith any kind of work, which can include social innovations, human rights, literature, the arts, enterprises, etc. Today we are present in 450 cities across the world and there are 5000 global shapers around the world.”
On being the curator of the Dhaka Hub
“We don’t look for superstars we look for people who can bring positive disruptions and have the potential to be shaper the future. Change is lonely, so we gather likeminded changemakers and support each other on their mission as well as hub project through personal expertise that each Shaper brings. As Curator it is my duty to gather and drive hub projects that is initiated by the Shapers and channel them to the global network.”
On starting Toru, the social innovation hub
Globally innovation is driven to create more “wants”, however there are 3 billion people who live under $2.5/day and they have a “need”. Who innovates for them? Those innovations need to supported to be taken to market.
“When I left Dhaka Tribune, I came across a number of Bangladeshis who won global competitions but failed to scale their ideas to businesses. Can an innovation die just because it is born in here, it’s fate would be different if it was born in a developed country. So, I quit my job and decided I wanted to do something. Toru isn’t just an incubator but an integrated platform that facilitates the journey of skills for innovation to the transformation to a social enterprise. Thats why we call it a hub. Bangladesh needs to have more social enterprises which can help the country solve some of its crucial problems which are acting as hindrances to our country’s overall development. Recent successful social enterprises in Bangladesh were mostly incubated abroad. So, we first went on a journey for 6 months to understand why innovations fail to scale in Bangladesh.”
Why we fail
How many products can we claim that came out of Bangladesh and made it to the global platform? Micro-finance, Oral Rehydrating Salt and… Why is it that we in Bangladesh have failed to grow innovations? The World Bank’s Knowledge Economic Index places Innovation in Bangladesh at 191. The world of entrepreneurship, development in societies, economic progress are all geared by innovation. However, in Bangladesh we have failed to provide suitable ecosystem for innovations to thrive in because of certains “gaps”.
Knowledge Gap
Our education system does lacks applied knowledge which teaches people how to make solutions but not marketable products. The absence of the understanding of human centered design and multi-disciplinary thinking often stand as a hindrance in cross pollination of ideas. Often an engineering student cannot understand consumer insights or aesthetics unless they interact practically with business or the arts.
Information Gap
When we talk about social entrepreneurship, we talk about problems at the base of the pyramid.Most of the best minds in the country don’t have proper access to information about the problems being faced by the poor, let alone the much needed solutions. To me making robots is good but making a new cookstove is even better!
Infrastructure Gap
A facilitating environment is required to let all of this grow where the incubation can take place. We need a good set of mentors, sectoral expertise and access to legal and business framework, makers’ lab facilities and a integrated effort from multiple stakeholders on a platform can facilitate this. Access to network and people often is a reason for a failure.
Finance Gap
Access to grants, seed capital and impact investments in smaller scale shall make this space more vibrant.
How Toru helps innovators grow
Due to these gaps innovators in Bangladesh who can build solutions and create the next big social enterprse like Grameen or BRAC are compelled to join jobs where their potential in not utilized. Where their drive to bring a social change is often sacrificed. We want to support not one but hundreds of futhre Sir Abed and Professor Yunus. They will multiply the impact brought about by these legends.
At Toru, Saif and his team has started work on a holistic model to address this. They call it the “Pyramid of 3i”
Inspire – The First Base
Before you become an entrepreneur you need to gain the right skills to become an innovator. Toru partners with global institutions to being the principles of human-centered design, rapid prototype testing, commercialization and empathy mapping. Through our university networks present across 18 institutions locally and 54 campus representatives and 1000 members, we plan to grow the footprint of if this initiative in the years to come.
Integrate- The Second base
Our NGOs have had the most significant role in the rapid growth in Human development index of Bangladesh. Today they want innovations but institutionally it becomes harder for many to do so. Toru values the plethora of knowledge in this sector and works with them to explore scopes of innovation where social entrepreneurship can thrive to deliver right products and services and yet remained aligned to the vision of the NGO. Merging aspiring innovators to the right information from the development sector will accelerate social innovation. The scopes of innovation is narrowed. For example, instead of telling a person to work with water it asks an innovator to come up with a filter that removes arsenic. This reduces the risk of the innovator as well as future impact investors while creating the impact that development sector can envision.
The top – Incubate
This is where innovators go through their journeys to become entrepreneurs. This is at least a year long process tailored to entrepreneur. Here a dedicated portfolio manager will manage the involvement of mentors, sectoral expertise, technical assistance in legal and financial framework, future investments , exposure to the right network globally and get them ready for the next level of impact investments and growth. While many program are short term and replication of western models we recognize the differences in ecosystems and Bangladesh being on a more embryonic stage requires the intensive tailored support.
We don’t do it alone!
Saif does not believe in reinventing the wheel. He mentions how fortunate he has been to find the right supporters. His grateful for his board members Pial Islam and Zara Mahbub for believing in his crazy ideas. Next, his mentor Mr. Paul Basil who is the founder of Villgro. Villgro is one of the most successful incubators for social enterprises in India. Villgro is now a partner of Toru. Toru is working on global and local partnerships with top institutions to empower the best brains of this country and transform them into social entrepreneurs.
