How do we create innovative and effective solutions to social problems around the world ? This course was designed for individuals and organizations who want to identify and bring about transformative societal change. Professors Jim Thompson and Ian “Mac” MacMillan help you develop both a strategy and a framework for your social enterprise based on their years of experience and expertise teaching social entrepreneurship and advising entrepreneurs. You’ll learn how to define a social problem, understand contextual realities, develop a solution, and plan for effective deployment. By the end of this course, you’ll have a deep understanding of the realities of launching an enterprise, be prepared for every step of the process, and put your social entrepreneurial venture on the path to success.
Most Competitive Alternative (MCA) Analysis
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來自 University of Pennsylvania 的課程
Social Entrepreneurship
76 個評分
從本節課中
Module 4
This module was designed to help you test the feasibility of your social enterprise. By utilizing the Most Competitive Alternatives in organizing a Proposed Beneficiary Experience Table, you’ll be able to assess advantages and disadvantages against relevant competition. Once you have a plausible and attractive proposition, you’ll deploy a quick and cost-effective test-of-concept to scaffold future success for your venture. Finally, you’ll discover the inevitable socio-politics that emerge with multiple stakeholders, and learn how to navigate these issues effectively while maintaining support. By the end of this module, you’ll have developed a powerful strategy that will ensure success for your social entrepreneurial ventures.
與講師見面
James D. ThompsonDirector, Wharton Social Entrepreneurship Program
Entrepreneurship
Ian "Mac" MacMillanDhirubhai Ambani Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Management
Hi, so
now what we're going to talk about is what we call Most Competitive Alternatives.
It's an analysis of the people and
organizations that you might find yourself competing with.
And so, just to shorten it, we call it MCA Analysis.
There's always competition, always, and
what we're trying to do here is identify where that competition might come from.
And this competition might enter in all the subtle ways that are not direct.
You might find yourself competing indirectly
as you try to launch your venture.
For instance, you might find yourself competing with a government agency
who are doing something like providing health services.
And what you're doing is similar to what they think they're doing,
and so you might not be welcome.
Or you might be competing with another charitable organization, so
you might be taking health services into a country
where Doctors Without Borders is already operating.
And you'll find there are places where what they're trying to do overlaps
with what you're trying to do.
Another way in which you might be competing, which is even more subtle and
non-obvious, is you might be competing against other alternative uses for
the disposable income of the people that you're trying to help.
So, I might find that I'm asking a mother to spend money for
a disinfectant for her water that she could spend on clothing for
her kids, or schooling for her kids, or even food for her kids.
Or she might find herself spending money that her husband thinks is money that he's
entitled to as cigarette money.
And then finally, another form of competition is that the people who
are suffering from the problem that you're talking about might be just enduring it.
Maybe their families, maybe there have been generations of their suffering.
And to them, as far as it's concerned,
it's in the lap of the gods, and there's nothing that can be done.
We just have to accept it.
So, a competition is subtle.
And what we want to try to do is begin to understand places where
this project of yours, this business that you're trying to create,
actually is competing one way or another.
So, you start this process while going back to the Beneficiary Experience table
that you generated earlier.
And find the one that you've done specifically for your Torit Seed segment.
Go through this Beneficiary Experience table,
flag what you consider to be the most critical steps.
Often a very critical step would be awareness, it's very difficult for
somebody to benefit from your offering if they don't even know that you exist.
Secondly, how do they select you as opposed to
the possible competitive alternative?
Thirdly, how do they use your offering?
Fourth, what kind of post use follow-up is needed?
Do we need to make sure that they come back after an initial treatment?
And then finally, how do I create a set of, what we call,
repeat transactions where in cases where what we have is a chronic condition?
People have to keep on coming back for the same treatment.
And now what you do is go and identify all the competitive alternatives
that that beneficiary is facing as they go through your Beneficiary Experience table.
So, what doess the MCA table look like?
What we've got here is the basic format of the table.
What you're going to do is, you're going to, in the left-hand column
of the table, list all the steps of your current Beneficiary Experience table
that you envisage as what you're going to do to deliver your offering.
So, the steps are directly from the Beneficiary Experience table that
you generated earlier.
And then what we're going to do in each of the columns is try to identify
the advantages or the disadvantages at the particular steps that
you might have in relation to your competition.
So, we have your offering in the first column after the steps,
and then after that all the other competing offerings.
Hopefully not too many, we really don't need too much competition.
But usually there's at least one other competing alternative that you have to
worry about.
So if we start to move into it a little bit more systematically,
let's go back to Zambian Feeds.
And what you can see here in the title is that on the left-hand
side we've listed three of the steps in the Experience table.
And then what we have is we've identified, in the columns,
the various competing alternatives.
The second column is Zambian Feeds itself and their feeds program.
And what they're looking at is providing feeds to small farmers who want to grow
chickens and take them to market.
The alternative to people who are looking at raising
chickens is to look at free range chickens.
So what you have in the village is, instead of looking after
chickens yourself, you have a flock of chickens running around the village.
And they feed themselves, they look after themselves, and their
job is basically to keep ahead of the cats and dogs that are trying to eat them.
And when the time comes what I'll do is select my chicken from that flock and
slaughter it and eat it.
And the third alternative competition is competition that you
get from existing small hen house producers.
This is somebody in a village that has a little hen house.
And what they're doing is they're raising chickens,
but they're not using Zambian Feeds.
They're using their own feeds that they've managed to get hold of one way or
another, and this is competition.
Other people are out there, including the people that are farming the grains
themselves, providing feed for people who want to feed their chickens.
So now, let's the systemically walk our way down this table.
Looking at the rows, and looking at possible advantages and disadvantages.
Now, notice what we're going to do here is if I have a disadvantage in relation to
other competitive alternatives, I'll enter it in red.
If I have an advantage in relation to other competitive alternatives,
I'll enter it in black.
So in the interests of not droning on and on, let's have a look at
just the first few rows of your Beneficiary Experience table.
So, we're not going to go through the entire table,
that would simply bore you to death.
But what you need to do is recognize that you should go through the entire table.
Trying to identify every place where you have an advantage compared to
an alternative,
every place where you have a disadvantage compared to the alternative.
There's a temptation to say, well, we'll cross that bridge when we get there, and
the reality is that you won't cross that bridge.
You won't even get to the darn bridge before you get there and
find out that you failed because you've underestimated your competition.
Better that you overestimate them and cope with it than you underestimate them and
die a horrible death.
So, working through the process now, we'll have a look just at the first few
rows of the table just to illustrate the point.
And so let's have a look now at the first row in this chart,
the first row says we're going to sell chickens at the market.
And what we're going to do now is look at the three different competing
alternatives.
Zambian Feeds as the first, free range villagers as the second,
and hen house producers in the villages as the third.
As we can see here that if they use Zambian Feeds,
the two advantages of using Zambian Feeds are, firstly, they receive more cash
because the chickens they raise are going to be better quality chickens.
The meat's going to be better quality, the weight's going to be better per unit
of feed that the animal has eaten.
And the second thing is because of that superior quality,
their going to get higher prices.
From the free range villager point of view,
the problem there is that they're not going to get any cash.
Whereas in Zambian Feeds they will get cash, and they'll get good prices.
And with respect to the hen house producers
the competitive advantage of Zambian Feeds is in a way a wash.
They're compared to somebody getting their own feed and feeding the hens.
Now, let's have a look at the second row and
that is what we need to do is raise the chickens.
What we're going to find is, for Zambia Feeds, they're advantage is that using
Zambia Feeds they're going to have much higher yield and much higher quality meat.
From the point of view from the free range villagers,
what you have is a chicken that's what we call a survivor of the Darwinian process
of keeping ahead of the dogs and cats in the village.
Which basically means that the chicken is going to be lean and mean, and the meat's
going to be tough, and there's going to be little meat in it, little fat in it.
And then from the point of view of the hen house producer, what you're going to find
is that pound for pound feed, you're going to get lower yield.
And you're going to get moderate quality meat as oppose to high quality meat.
So, your task now is to work through that entire Beneficiary Experience table.
Go through all the steps and carry out the same process as we've done here for
all the steps in the process.
Now having filled this out, this is a great opportunity to validate.
So, the first thing you can do is see if you can check to potential beneficiaries,
people who might be farming these chickens.
And validate, firstly, whether what you think are the critical steps or,
in fact, for them critical steps.
And then have a discussion with them about whether they
agree that we have the advantages or disadvantages, and talk about why.
So what you're doing is you're enriching your insights into
the quality of this MCA table that you've generated.
And you can also begin to think about how you're going to compensate for
any of the disadvantages that you've identified.
So, that's trying to talk to beneficiaries.
If you don't have the chance to talk to beneficiaries,
you at least can talk to your advisory group.
And go through the same process of validating critical steps, advantages and
disadvantages, and how you might compensate for those disadvantages.
And then the third thing is that if you're going to any agency or
any other organization looking for support in the form of funding or
permissions or advice or assistance, to sit down with those agencies and
talk your way through this chart.
So this is a very, very powerful chart for being able to communicate to people out
there that are going to be impacted by your, Business,
whether the assumptions you're making about competition are appropriate or not.
And what this does is ensure that you don't go out there and
run into unexpected competition.
