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Week 7: How can sharpening your business skills help you help others? What skills are most important?

This week we learned more about business canvas models, lean start-up, and keys to success for social innovators.
I appreciated the 5 Keys to Success for Social Entrepreneurs that Lluis Pareras listed in his TEDx talk. In particular, key point 3 where you should shout your existence to everyone and not hide any inventions you have made up for fear that someone would steal it. I think this hit me the most because if you are more concerned about theft then are your priorities really in the right place for the social issue you are trying to help. However, this was also coupled with key point 1 which was to focus on social impact and money at the same time. I spent some time thinking about these two in order to reconcile them against one another. What I came to understand is this. Sure, protect your inventions from theft but don’t allow the fear to stop you from seeking help and feedback on your inventions. This is a major way that we improve our product and make it better. We must be willing to seek the best for the innovation, social issue, and the business because if we falter on any one of those we will fail. We must seek to make money at the same time as we seek to improve the social issue so that we can attract people with financing to caring about our efforts.

Week 7 Prompt: How can sharpening your business skills help you help others? What skills are most important?

If we are well practiced in our business skills, then we will be more prepared to handle things that are both normal business and unconventional practices. If we are knowledgeable in our fields, then we will be able to work more efficiently and catch mistakes better. As for what skills are most important, I feel that knowing how to create a business and secure financing are at the top of that list in addition to having an idea of how to address a social issue. If you don’t know how to assess, learn and gather information about the social issue so that you can have the most impact and pivot your idea from that information, then it is probably wisest to just stick to business. If you don’t have both sides, then you will not be a success in your endeavors. 

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