Research Outline

Social Entrepreneurship Business Model for Watches Market

Goals

To gather recent literature related to the nature of business planning and to the individual components of the business plan with relevant data collected to inform the final business plan that will help to support the creation of a business model to follow the concept of social entrepreneurship where part of the business core mission is to devolve a percentage of the revenue from each sold item to a specific UK charity (supporting families in the UK living below the breadline), and analyze strengths and weaknesses of theories relevant to the creation of the business plan to justify why certain methods and methodology should be adopted for that highlight any issues and limits, with both the watches market and charity’s backgrounds being taken into consideration, in order to help determine the viability of for-profit start-ups to direct part of their revenue to charity from birth following a “buy one, give one” model.


Early Findings

Our research on social entrepreneurship and business planning revealed insights. Here are key pieces of information we found:

Social Entrepreneurship Business Planning

Overview:

  • When developing a business plan of social entrepreneurship where part of the business core mission is to devolve a percentage of the revenue from each sold item to a specific charity, the following components are to be considered in order to make it work: Choose a charity that aligns with core values; Engage stakeholders; Establish giving guidelines; Implement a strategic giving program; Market philanthropic efforts. Stakeholders may include employees, executives, customers, suppliers, investors, and community leaders, and giving guidelines must be realistic and aligned with other businesses within a market space. A strategic giving program should include collaborating with business partners to create a new charitable giving initiative and reaching out to customers to raise funds and awareness for a cause.
  • For-profit start-ups are also encouraged to develop an ongoing relationship with a chosen charity and to maximize the value of their charitable giving by demonstrating the commitment that they are in business for more than profit and as a way to build alliances with other organizations and networks in their business planning.
  • More and more for-profit start-ups and businesses are embracing the "buy one, give one" model that was pioneered by the US shoemaker Toms in the previous decade and are still making a profit.
  • Strengths of the "buy one, give one" model are that consumers are often attracted to this business model because it helps them give back, and the marketplace is leaning more and more towards brands that offer quality products with a social purpose.
  • However, a weakness of this business model is that it may foster dependency and unfairly compete against local businesses by giving away products.