About Me

What design studios have you taken in the past? Which did you enjoy most?

I am a new grad student at RISD so this is my first design studio here. In undergrad I took a year of architecture design studios.

Do you have a background, a double major, or a previous degree in a discipline other than ID?

I got my B.A. from Middlebury College in Vermont. I was a double major in Studio Art and Religion, focusing on sculpture and eastern religions. My senior project for religion was a paper comparing Buddhist visualization mediation with a western scientific understanding of how the brain processes visual information. My senior project for sculpture was a series of installations in the art building. They were all about bringing attention to the movement of air and light through the building, about making these largely invisible processes concrete and visible.

What are your strongest skills in terms of craft/visual communication?

I’m a pretty good builder/fabricator. I love organizing information, but my drawing skills needs some work.

What skills would you most like to build during this course?

Designing with a sustainable business model in mind.

What areas are you most and least interested in working on during this course?

Most: Designing for positive social impact and not just business viability

Least: Why is this so hard to answer? I guess I don’t want to spend too much time working on form and aesthetics. I think they’re important, but given the limited time frame of the class, I’d like to focus on the entrepreneurial aspects of the process.

So you have experience working on social entrepreneurship projects in the past? If so, what were they?

I was the Program Director of the Steel Yard for six years before coming to RISD. The Steel Yard is an industrial art center on the west side of Providence…check it out! (www.thesteelyard.org)

Do you have long-term goals for yourself in terms of social entrepreneurship? If so, what are they?

I hope I can make it a central part of my work. I believe in design triage, a sort of hierarchy that keeps designing for our critical needs and reshaping our fundamental understanding of things on the forefront of our minds. Let’s focus on our collective health and wellbeing before we spend a ton of time and energy redesigning BBQ grills and stereos (unless of course we redesign those things in a way that addresses a critical need).

Do you prefer team or individual projects?

I prefer individual projects with a lot of group feedback. While I enjoy group dynamics, how my own projects come together is always a bit of a mystery to me—it’s generally not so linear. Working as a group often feels disruptive to my workflow and I have a harder time putting pieces together.

Responding to "Reshaping Social Entrepreneurship"

Article: Reshaping Social Entrepreneurship, by Paul Light

I agree that we do often fall victim to the cult of personality. It’s so easy to over simplify and romanticize what lead to successful change and so much easier to focus on a single dynamic person rather than a complex dynamic group. It is important to expand our definition of social entrepreneurship to include the actions of a group and ventures that, for a multitude of reasons, never quite fly. However, I think reshaping our definition of social entrepreneurship might be easier than achieving what Light hopes this new understanding will lead to, namely spreading social entrepreneurship funding out to a broader audience. The main hurdle will be addressing the entrepreneurial ventures that fail. I think there are countless brilliant ideas that flop because they don’t get the startup resources they need, but one can’t ignore the fact that these resources are extremely limited, and funders are understandably cautious about how they distribute them.

 

Responding to “Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition”

Article: “Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition”

            I really enjoyed the clear approach this article took, starting by defining “entrepreneur,” then applying this definition to the social sector, and finally carving out some boundaries to clarify what it is not. Acknowledging that many ventures are hybrid approaches was icing on the complexity cake for me. I also liked their assertion that creating new sustainable, stable equilibriums was an essential part of entrepreneurship. I think it’s the notion that the change an entrepreneur creates is so significant that it would keep on moving forward even if they stopped acting. It’s an “Aha!’ moment not just for the entrepreneur, but for the whole world.

Responding to Dees’ "The Meaning of 'Social Entrepreneurship'”

Article:  "The Meaning of 'Social Entrepreneurship'" by J. Gregory Dees 

As Dees notes, I think that assessing the “creation of value” is one of the biggest challenges one faces in the social sector. I also think we wade into some pretty muddy waters when we start comparing the economics of the social sector with the economics of the business sector.  He seems to oversimplify the relationship between funders and social entrepreneurs, and I think misses the real value of that relationship and how similar it is to a business relationship. To describe the return on investment of a donation as “psychic income” really sells everyone short. It is true, that some people just write a check to feel like they have “done something” and enjoy the ensuing warm fuzzies. However, I think many donors, especially those operating on a local level, are consciously making an investment and are expecting tangible returns. If they regularly donate to the local watershed organization, and don’t see enough improvement in the condition of the river, they will most likely stop donating. They will stop being customers because they have determined the product is not worth the expense.

The real difference between the two sectors is that we hold the social sector to a much higher standard than business sector. He states that, “value is created in business when customers are willing to pay more than it costs to produce the good or service being sold.” Here, value creation is not necessarily about the effectiveness of the product, but instead about the willingness of others to purchase it.  Value is about perception of effectiveness. For example, a lot of people might purchase an herbal cold remedy because they think it will make them feel better. If the take it and feel better, then they’ll probably buy it next time they feel sick. The value of this product comes from how well the customer can be convinced it is working, but who knows, maybe the cold just got better on its own. The for-profit world is a bit of a free-for-all, so customers aren’t always requiring rigorous medical studies to prove its effectiveness. However, in the social sector customers(donors) are a little more discerning. They operate more like shareholders in a company in that they often want tangible numbers demonstrating a return on their investment. For example, they want to know exactly how many high school children received nutritious breakfasts that year.

            Where I think Dees hits the nail on the head is his description of how such tangible results are rare, “are the lower crime rates in an area due to the Block Watch, new policing techniques, or just a better economy?” However, in situations like this, I think the social sector operates a lot more like the business sector. Most people rely on a vague perception of value, rather than a scientific measurement of value. They donated to Block Watch, things got better, they’ll probably donate again.

In short, because this response is longer than I anticipated and a bit rambley, I think both business and social enterprise can survive on a vague perception of value, but more often than not social enterprise must also meet a stricter standard of tangible and measurable returns. I disagree with Dees--markets do work well for social entrepreneurs, but they must be prepared to work harder to prove that they are indeed creating value.