How much good is good? Designing to enable impact envisioning practices for social enterprises

Abstract

With the increasing prevalence and complexity of systemic challenges like climate change, social entrepreneurs focused on tackling them need to have clarity on how the existence of their venture is creating positive change. This master's thesis, PurposePathways, is a web-based tool that helps first-time early-stage entrepreneurs clarify the impact of their business operations and communicate it effectively to relevant stakeholders in the impact ecosystem. The intervention guides them visually in building a theory of change that incorporates industry standards, their relevant metrics, evidence, and common assumptions by providing prompts and recommendations.

Currently, impact-focused accelerators take on the responsibility of equipping their incubated social entrepreneurs with the training and resources needed to incorporate the foundations of impact strategy and management practices into their businesses. These practices help entrepreneurs maintain transparency and accountability with stakeholders and access impact-linked investments by regularly showcasing relevant data. Despite many resources from global organizations catering to most sectors, first-time social entrepreneurs navigating these practices need additional support from impact management consultants to build their impact thesis. This traditionally service-based approach needs scalable systems to cater to the exponential growth of social entrepreneurship for the climate space in India. Integrative designers are well-positioned by their ability to identify shortcomings by applying systemic design frameworks to create artifacts for this multi-stakeholder impact ecosystem. PurposePathways has been co-designed with Impact Dash, an India-based product-led impact consulting start-up, and numerous social entrepreneurs, impact investors, and portfolio managers in the Indian impact ecosystem. While initial testing with stakeholders shows a clear need for the tool and additional applications across communicating with stakeholders, potential future work includes the development of the functional prototype and piloting with interested impact accelerators.