Momentum builds to shorten innovation cycles for eco-inclusive entrepreneurship
To be an entrepreneur means more than just starting your own business. An entrepreneur is a risk taker who engages in finding ways to solve problems and create value. Entrepreneurs commit to embracing change and require dedication, time, resources and optimism when running into dead ends while growing their business ideas and operations.
When trying to transform your idea in an eco-inclusive business model more than one question comes into play. What business model is adequate to avoid failure? How should I approach the market? How can I make it sustainable? Is my product going to make a difference and create an impact? What journeys have others taken and what are their learnings?
These questions are the ones being answered by our SEED Replicator Workshops. We are trying to show all the brave eco-inclusive enterprises that they are not alone.
The number of successful eco inclusive entrepreneurs that have participated in our SEED workshops is increasing almost every week and to take a look back at what there are doing right might be a good learning strategy. We had the idea of taking advantage of the experience of successful entrepreneurs around the globe, use their locally-tested market solutions and replicate them.
Our SEED Replicator Programme is continuously looking to transfer the knowledge already acquired by our Originators to our newcomers and create insights that can shorten their innovation cycle and make their road towards sustainability easier.
The SEED Replicator activities draw in the insights of Replicator Workshop participants and pair these participants with case studies and entrepreneurs of established enterprises that operate in other geographic locations.
Replicator Workshop attendees share their experiences and gain lots of hands-on knowledge. The participants share their own entrepreneurial experiences and knowledge, get inspiration and learn what works.
Our 4 stepstones way to make use of what proved to work
SEED Replicator acts as a connection bridge: Participants are guided in four different steps. First, brainstorm sustainability challenges in their countries and region to be tackled. Second, identify your customers. Third, get inspiration from case studies and explore what works how. Fourth, form partnerships and drive your idea further. As we like to summarize it in: detect, determine, discover and develop.
The SEED Replicator Workshop helped me to meet with other business partners and inspired me with examples of business models which are proven to work, and by knowing my audiences for business and how to detect, determine, discover and develop.
-- Eva Sefora, SEED Replicator Workshop, Polokwane (May 2018)
Our SEED Replicator workshop provides our ambitious entrepreneurs with business blueprints – proven to be profitable and deliver eco-inclusive benefits – and powerful tools that will empower them to fit the business models into their own markets.
Our experts guide participating entrepreneurs to design and take the first steps towards starting up their own enterprises, inspired by the secrets of successful enterprises. We disseminate the tools and facilitate the partnerships necessary to adapt successful business blueprints for enterprises across sectors to new environments.
[The SEED Replicator Workshop] is the right channel for aspiring entrepreneurs because the models used are one of the best in the world. SEED's support is great because it helps enterpreneurs understand how to structure and conceptualise business ideas.
- Maripani Inocen, SEED Replicator Workshop, Polokwane (May 2018)
Multiplying eco-inclusive impacts
Participants in these recent workshops are now equipped to establish their own enterprises and return to their communities with the hope of making things happen. Furnished with the appropriate tools and methodology, the entrepreneurs that we have worked with over the past months will continue to develop their business idea into a replication plan – which includes market information, their replication concept and approach – and identify milestones against which they can measure the growth of their business venture and their positive social, environmental and economic impacts.
These business plans will be shared with SEED’s network of established eco-inclusive enterprises and serve as the basis for collaborative partnerships. Our online SEED Replicator Connect Platform will assist with the identification and jumpstarting of partnerships between aspiring entrepreneurs and established enterprises.
Our upcoming Replicator Workshops promises to be just as inspiring. We are looking forward to motivating new entrepreneurs generations and guide them to become a game changer. Current workshop openings are found at app.seed.uno.
Watch this space and follow us on Facebook and Twitter to hear more about stories of replication success as these most recent Replicator participants drive entrepreneurial innovation and establish their own eco-inclusive enterprises.
