Social Good Lab is an initiative between Paris Incubateurs, a Paris-based incubator network of over 400 startups, and Le Comptoir de l’Innovation, an impact investment and consultancy firm.

The City of Paris and Bpifrance, the country’s public bank for assisting and financially supporting French micro to small and medium enterprises, are backing the incubator through their “Paris Innovation Amorçage” fund, which is designed to finance innovative pre-seed or seed stage projects.

Although incubators and tech firms are a familiar couple, Social Good Lab purposely focuses on technologically innovative social enterprises in hopes that the tech sector can become more inclined to benefit society with their innovations.  Likewise, Nicolas Hazard, the president of Le Comptoir de l’Innovation, is counting on the possibility that Social Good Lab can influence other businesses to draw inspiration from social ventures in their ability to balance operations while creating positive impact to society.

What remains to be seen is the extent of their impact, but for now these are the eight startups to follow:

1. Arizuka

Arizuka, meaning anthill in Japanese, is a crowdfunding platform for organizations developing socially, economically, and environmentally innovative projects.

2. Cine Apps

Described as a young enterprise, Cine Apps has developed digital cinema “smart glasses” and “smartphone” services, such as personalized subtitles, last-minute bookings, alerts, and public transport information, for people with sensory impairment.

3. Eqosphere

Eqosphere is a collaborative web platform that facilitates the redistribution of end-of-life products and items that are unsold to reduce food and non-food waste.

4. microDON

microDON aims to revolutionize how donations are made by creating a service that allows people to round up the bill on their everyday purchases, so that anything from a few cents to a few euros would be donated to a specific cause.

5 and 6. Planète Langue des Signes and Egonocast

Planète Langue des Signes, professionals in sign language for audiovisual purposes, and Egonocast, a multimedia software company, have partnered to create a sign language translation service for television.

7. Power:On

Power:On developed a software capable of determining which hybrid of power supplies (solar, diesel generator, etc.) costs the least in a given situation, so that they can assemble sustainable and innovative solutions for rural communities that do not have access to electricity.

8. Social Club

Social Club aims to address the digital divide in France and around the world by creating a search engine that runs without access to the Internet, but uses interactive voice response to parse spoken queries and redirect the user to the person most suitable to respond.

For over 25 years, the San Francisco-based nonprofit made up of values-driven business leaders and investors has been helping “profit with a purpose” entrepreneurs get off the ground, but one gap for this movement of mission-driven companies is the absent level playing field for women and minority entrepreneurs.

The traditional “old boys’ network”, SVN explains, has always been a powerful source of support and money for promising entrepreneurs.  But an Emory University study shows that it makes business sense to support women and minorities too.

To be exact, it found that women-led social enterprises generated an average of 15 percent more revenue than their male-led counterparts, yet they are 40 percent less likely to be funded.  Similarly, minority-led firms are 35 percent less likely to receive venture capital financing than non-minority-led firms.

In response to this problem, SVN launched an Indiegogo campaign last week to fund scholarships and support services to women and minority social entrepreneurs.  The goal is to raise $25,000 but as a “flexible funding” campaign, all funds will go to SVN even if it doesn’t reach its target.  The campaign is well on its way to success.  So far, over $10,000 has been raised between 22 funders in just the first week, with over a month left before the campaign ends.

“We’re raising money to offer scholarships and valuable support services to women and minority entrepreneurs — resources that can help them connect to investors, mentors and peers.  And we can’t think of a better investment than that,” SVN addressed.

Sir Ken Robinson criticized educational institutions around the world for hampering creativity among children.  The whole purpose of public education, he says, is to produce university professors.  Rather than regurgitating information, the DO School hopes to help the next generation come alive.

With a focus on allowing social entrepreneurs and impact makers to flourish, the school asks youth to work on challenges where they will learn how to put ideas into action.  By learning from doing, the youth will acquire the skills needed to launch their own organizations.

“Our school tries to educate young social entrepreneurs from around the world, who come to us with an idea that they want to implement in their home countries,” said Marie Steinhoff, Communications Director.  “Usually it’s people who are engaged, motivated, but don’t know how to set up their initiative or campaign or enterprise.”

Based in Hamburg, Germany, the DO School is a one-year program divided into two phases.  The first involves a ten-week incubation period where fellows work on a challenge in Hamburg.  During this phase, fellows will also transform their personal ideas into viable plans.  The second involves a ten-month implementation period where fellows implement their plans in their home countries.  They receive individual mentoring and online support during this phase.

Founder of the DO School, Florian Hoffmann, realized early on that he wanted to do something with impact.  While he is well-educated, Hoffmann received most of his learning through fellowships.  He developed the idea for the DO School together with the co-founder of the Dekeyser&Friends Foundation, which, up until this year, operated the Do School before it branched out.

Photo: Florian Hoffmann.

One of the previous challenges, the Peace Challenge, was presented by Scilla Elworthy, a peace activist and the founder of Oxford Research Group.  The challenge asked fellows to establish an online portal that would highlight the successes and efforts of local peace builders across the world.

Elworthy believes in grassroots initiatives.  “She said no United Nations, global company, organization, or NGO can know what a country needs.  The best way to solve conflicts in an area is to listen to the people and to empower the people who actually are based in the conflict area to find ways to solve the conflict,” said Steinhoff.  “That’s why she and her organization Peace Direct try to empower local peace builders.”

Every year, the DO School launches three challenges, typically alongside an influential expert at their craft.  After each challenge is completed, fellows implement their own projects.  Rosebill Satha Sambo decided to launch her own social business producing eco-friendly bamboo handicrafts in Malawi.  Beyond putting Malawi on the business map, her vision is to provide youth and women entrepreneurial and weaving skills to become self-reliant and job creators.

Photo: Rosebill Satha Sambo.

Elizaveta Mamaliga hopes to use bees to create social, economic, and environmental benefits for Moldova.  While honeybees are dying at unusually high rates, her enterprise Dulce Plai produces organic honey, sources from young rural bee keepers, and promotes biodiversity.

Photo: Dulce Plai team.

The latest challenge is being launched in partnership with Swedish clothing retailer H&M.  For this challenge, fellows will create a green store prototype, which means that the store considers the environment in terms of materials, construction, and energy consumption.

“As a responsible company we want to make people in H&M stores more aware of sustainability aspects, helping to create a more conscious group of consumers worldwide and boost the innovation of a multinational company.  We are excited to work with the 20 fellows to contribute to a more sustainable world,” said Angela Gallenz, Human Resource Manager of H&M Germany.

The prototype would be scalable to H&M stores worldwide.  Upon completion, it will be tested for one week with real customers and staff in an H&M store in Germany.

“H&M is a powerful player in the garment market.  If they want to do something and they realize that the topic of sustainability is really important, then we’re really happy to provide them with young, talented people from all over the world who will help them identify great ideas,” said Steinhoff.

Photos from the DO School.

Singaporean social entrepreneurs, benefitting from national policy, are known to receive a wide range of support from different groups, including government, corporations, and think tanks.

A 5-episode reality show, Social Inc. goes over some of the entrepreneurs’ challenges and brings in a local entrepreneur to offer advice.

Episode 1: Laksania Redefined

Sim Sin Sin left a comfortable job working at her family’s restaurant empire to start Laksania, a food and beverage social enterprise hiring marginalized people and serving up a popular Southeast Asian soul food, laksa.  However, two of her three restaurants are swimming in the red.  To help turn things around, Lyn Lee, an ex-lawyer who founded Awfully Chocolate and built a multi-million dollar cake shop starting with just one chocolate cake, is put to the challenge.

Episode 2: Aii Sweets Repackaged

You may be familiar with Leona Leong, the founder of candy business Aii.  While she manages to turn a profit, some months are harder to get by, so this young and inexperienced entrepreneur hopes to improve her business.  In comes Nicholas Ng, the founder of FoodXervices Inc, Singapore’s market leader in foodservice distribution with over S$30 million in annual revenue.

Episode 3: Silver Spring Retrained

Founding her social enterprise in 2009, Helen Lim, now 65, is the Managing Director of Silver Spring, an employment agency focused on seniors.   Lim rejects the idea of “being old and being weak” and wants to bring senior talents back into the workforce.  However, good intentions aren’t enough to sustain the business.  Richard Hoon, the CEO of I Search Worldwide, a headhunting firm focusing on C-level executives, coaches her on doing well to do good.

Episode 4: Gone Adventurin’ Retrained

Gone Adventurin’ co-founder Ashwin Subramaniam left a stable job at a bank to work on this company, which creates outdoor adventures with a social cause to support a company’s branding efforts.  But he hasn’t secured a client for the past six months.  Jörg Dietzel, a PR guru who has previously worked at DDB China, DDB Berlin, BBDO Asia, and now runs his own agency Jorg Dietzel Group, will try to help rebrand the company.

Episode 5: Purple Threads Reclothed

Purple Threads is an online store started by Shamla Ramasamy that sells adaptive clothing to the disabled and elderly.  For many in a wheelchair, normal clothing can be difficult to put on and obstructs the ability to carry out daily functions.  But sales for the business are slow and supplies are uncertain.  Bert Tan is the Director of Bodynits International, and is given the task to take the business further.

Photo courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

After meeting with the founders of Watsi, they felt that the nonprofit was the best candidate to start with. Watsi is a crowdfunding platform for healthcare that has received funding from a range of investors – entrepreneurs, angels, and social investment funds.  Graham says, “I’ve never been so excited about anything we’ve funded.”

Y Combinator has just opened applications for the upcoming winter class and for the first time, they’ve included an application form for nonprofits.  Graham says that they’re going to start including nonprofits in every batch.

Rather than an investment, the money put into the nonprofits will be a charitable donation.  Y Combinator won’t have any financial interest in them.

What kind of nonprofits will they be looking for?  Frankly, Graham doesn’t know.  It’s all an experiment.  But he does mention that they like Watsi “because they help people who really need help, and do it in an efficient and transparent way.”

Isenberg argues that these entrepreneurs are not larger-than-life superheroes from Silicon Valley, but accessible human beings.  They may come from different parts of the world, but they are the same in their ability to create and capture extraordinary value.

Hoping to trigger some debate and discussion around the topic, he tells the stories of these contrarian entrepreneurs in his new book “Worthless, Impossible and Stupid”, where he offers three ways they shatter stereotypical perceptions of who is an entrepreneur.

Myth #1 – Entrepreneurs must be innovators.

While multiscreen cinemas were prevalent in Canada and the US during the 1990s, this was certainly not the case in Mexico.  Harvard MBAs Adolfo Fastlicht, Miguel Davila, and Matthew Heyman felt there was a huge opportunity to import the idea.

They decided to put together a concept that they would attempt to bring to life.  The project consumed much of their final year at school – they flew back and forth between Mexico and the US to validate their idea and put in 50 hours per week on the startup.  The result was a 93-page document envisioning a cinema with 16 theatres, 158 screens, 32,800 seats, and $71.6 million in estimated annual revenues.

The entrepreneurs had a rough time with the venture.  They were plagued with issues in financing, devaluation of the peso in 1994 by the Mexican government, and a union protest just days before its first multiplex opening in 1995.  With each obstacle, the entrepreneurs fought back with fierce commitment and created opportunities out of adversity.  Their venture Cinemex went on to transform the local cinema culture and sold for $300 million in 2002.

If there was any hint of innovation, Davila says they simply introduced lime juice and chili sauce on popcorn in place of butter.  In the words of Isenberg, “Entrepreneurship? Si! Innovation? No!”

Myth #2 – Entrepreneurs must be experts.

Abhi Shah is the founder of Clutch Group, a legal process outsourcing company with offices in Chicago, New York, Washington, London, and Bangalore.  Shah is by no means a legal expert.  In fact he has never spent a day in the courtroom.  Yet it is precisely the lack of legal training that Shah believes helped him see a gap in the market that he wouldn’t have noticed if he were an expert.

Shah knew that he wanted to start a business process outsourcing (BPO) venture in India but didn’t know which area he wanted to focus on, so he convinced Jerry Rao – the founder of BPO software company MphasiS – to agree to a summer internship.  Shah thought it would give him access to learn from the CEO personally.  Rao would later become an investor in Shah’s company.

Approaching graduation from Harvard Business School, Shah had trouble coming up with a viable idea.  It was not until a dinner with friends who have finished law school and now work at large law firms that he saw how miserable they were, working long hours.  Shah thought legal work could be outsourced.  He convinced Harvard Law School to allow him to do a field study which gave him access to the general counsels of some of the Fortune 100 companies.

Using what he calls his “Ocean’s Eleven strategy” based on the movie about assembling a team to pull off a casino heist, and with Rao making a few phone calls, Shah added credibility to his business by recruiting key players.  Since launching in 2006, the company has registered $25 million in revenues.

Myth #3 – Entrepreneurs must be young.

Unlike the twenty-something youngster in jeans and sneakers working on a mobile app at one of the local accelerators, Atsumasa Tochisako was 52 when he left a 30-year career at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi to start Microfinance International Corporation (MFIC).

Tochisako is not alone.  Many entrepreneurs profiled in the book founded companies in their forties and fifties.  Research conducted in 2008 shows that baby boomers aged 55 to 64 had the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity, and that the average founder age was 40 for men and 41 for women.

Early in his career, Tochisako was dispatched to Mexico where he first realized that hardworking families did not get access to credit services.  In one experience, José, the son of a family he befriended, was particularly delighted that he was visiting for dinner.  Tochisako quickly realized it was because of his presence that the family ate meat that evening – something José had not done for months.  Tochisako believed “the role of bank should be to add oxygen to every single corner of society and the economy”.

Determined to learn as much as he could to become a knowledge banker, Tochisako was rotated to Ecuador, then Peru where he learned that José had succumbed to a fever, and finally Atlanta.  In Atlanta, he also noticed that immigrant populations were denied by traditional banks and paid large fees for money remittance services.  In 2000, he was transferred to Washington, DC and, at 48, enrolled in a part-time MBA program.

With $430,000 from savings, friends, and cofounders, Tochisako started MFIC in 2003 to offer affordable banking services to immigrant families.  When he quit his role as a top executive of the bank, his mentor warned that he was throwing everything away.  But for the banker-turned-social entrepreneur, Tochisako believed it was exactly his banking experience in Latin America that would help him launch a profitable venture for a neglected community.

Worthless, Impossible and Stupid: How Contrarian Entrepreneurs Create and Capture Extraordinary Value.  By Daniel Isenberg.  Harvard Business Review; 304 pages; US $27.00/CDN $30.00/£17.00.
Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk.

Today, 15 social enterprises chosen from 116 applicants have been announced as finalists.  They are:

Aakar Innovations Pvt. Ltd
Arogya Finance
Avani Bio Energy
Banka BioLoo
Boond Engineering & Development Pvt. Ltd
Edubridge Learning Pvt. Ltd
Jackonblock Facility Services Pvt. Ltd
KNIDS GREEN Pvt. Ltd
NextDrop
MicroGraam Marketplace Pvt. Ltd
Sanchayan Suraksha Solutions Pvt. Ltd
Sevamob
Sakhi Unique Rural Enterprise
Tamul Plates Marketing Pvt. Ltd
Villgro Innovation Marketing Pvt. Ltd

“It was an interesting learning experience,” said Pradeep Kashyap, who is the founder of MART and was on the jury panel.  “Some of the plans from the ventures were of the highest order.”

As a finalist, the businesses will receive capacity building support from innovation accelerators Ennovent and Villgro to take their ventures to the next level.  If the ventures are able to secure an investment in the form of grant, equity, or debt within the next eight months, they will also get the opportunity to access Rs 25 lakh (approximately US $37,000) of matched equity funding as part of the Challenge award.

Seeing as many ventures fail because of the inability to access funding and resources required to grow, the AVC was created to invite entrepreneurs who have completed a proof of concept and are looking for growth investment.  The Challenge aims to address the missing middle in impact investing by providing high-risk patient capital and customized business support.

“The Artha Venture Challenge is a pioneering initiative for early-stage social ventures in India.  We are excited to be announcing this final cohort and providing them the capacity building support they require to secure their lead investors, which will in turn trigger our matched round of Rs 25 lakh,” said Audrey Selian, Director of the Artha Platform.

“Our goal is to shift the center of gravity in this space, to empower the entrepreneurs through our process, and then to encourage our peer impact investors to take action.  This is indeed an opportunity for us all to replace talk with action.”

The AVC was inspired by the UnLtd Big Venture Challenge where 10 early-stage co-investment deals were closed within 10 months.

For artist Phil Hansen, his limitation was a tremor he had developed in art school that caused his hand to shake involuntarily.  This tremor was the result of many years using the pointillism technique to produce drawings made up of many small dots.

This was devastating for Hansen.  He even had trouble drawing a straight line.

In the end, Hansen left art school and later dropped art altogether.  But this wouldn’t last long.  Hansen just couldn’t stay away from art and decided to see a neurologist about the tremor.

The neurologist told him he had permanent nerve damage, but also made a suggestion that would become the turning point for Hansen.  The neurologist told him to embrace the shake.

So he did.

In his TED talk, Hansen shows the art he made using squiggly lines instead of his beloved dots.  He realized that despite the tremor he could still make art that he loved.  He also realized that he could still produce art using the pointillism technique, but rather than small dots, he would paint on larger surfaces that wouldn’t cause his hand to hurt.

“Embracing a limitation could actually drive creativity,” says Hansen.

Hansen began painting by imposing certain limitations.  For instance, instead of painting on a canvas, what if he could only paint on his chest?  Or instead of painting with a brush, what if he could only use the side of his hands?

“What I thought would be the ultimate limitation, actually turned out to be the ultimate liberation,” says Hansen.

“Learning to be creative within the confines of our limitations is the best hope we have to transform ourselves and, collectively, transform our world.”

A new portal released by the Tohoku 1000 Project (in Japanese) called the “Team of 600 entrepreneurs” gathers new initiatives and businesses that help create employment opportunities and reconstruct the Tohoku area, which was largely damaged by an earthquake and tsunami back in 2011.

Rising Tohoku reports that most of the businesses on the portal are located in the Miyagi prefecture (39 percent), followed by the Iwate (32 percent) and Fukushima (29 percent) prefectures.  The most common type of activity involves community formation, followed by medical care, welfare and health, town planning, shopping mall promotion, agriculture, forestry, and animal husbandry.

The “Team of 600 entrepreneurs” is part of the Japanese Cabinet Office’s scheme announced in 2012 to assist reconstruction by selecting 600 entrepreneurs to support, as it recognizes the importance of business activity or more specifically, 社会的企業 (social enterprise), in revitalizing communities in the affected areas.

The purpose is to support the start-up and nurturing of social enterprises.

Kazuma Watanabe, who leads the Tohoku 1000 Project and manages the portal, tells Rising Tohoku that he was amazed to see Tohoku “have this much of new business in quite a short period of time”.

Currently, there are 569 businesses listed on the portal with more expected to come.

He explained three reasons for this.  The entrepreneur either grew up in a place where college attendance was not commonplace, they had no patience to endure four years of education they didn’t deem relevant, or they were too busy starting companies to finish school.

To boot, an entrepreneur – unlike a doctor or lawyer – doesn’t need a degree.  Their credentials lie in their track record.  Wilson argues that a successful first startup is “much better than a college degree” and even if it fails, the entrepreneur has shown “they can start something from nothing, build a team, a product, and maybe even a business.”

Yet his point isn’t that education isn’t important, it is.  But that one does not have to go to school to be educated.

This is what Peter Thiel believes.  Through the Thiel Fellowship, he encourages those under 20 to forfeit college by giving them $100,000 to pursue other work.  They could choose to create a startup, perform scientific research, or work on a social cause.

One recipient is social entrepreneur Eden Full, whose creation SunSaluter increases electricity production using automatically rotating solar panels.  The device functions on water, doubling as a water filter by producing four litres of clean water per day.

Thiel, who himself is a college graduate, began the Thiel Fellowship to question the need for and efficacy of higher education amidst skyrocketing tuition.  For an entrepreneur whose path to higher education may seem like wasted years, the Thiel Fellowship offers an alternate course.

The radical idea met a fair share of critics.  Observers believe the Fellowship sends the wrong message about education and undermines its importance.  The fact is that only once every decade or two that a Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg drops out of college and goes on to become billionaires.  On the other side of this tug of war are supporters who see the success achieved by social entrepreneurs like Full, believing that one can very well do without institutional education.

“I was really immature in college,” says Full in the Princeton Alumni Weekly.  “I spent lots of time rowing and hanging out.  I definitely didn’t spend a lot of time on my work.  I almost felt that I had to go through college for the sake of going through college.”

Full hasn’t written off the idea of pursing a degree.  The Calgary native currently studies mechanical engineering at Princeton and took some time off to do the two-year Thiel Fellowship she had be awarded during her sophomore year.

“Now I can go back to Princeton not feeling like I have unfinished business in the real world.  I already know what I want to do because I took time to explore.”

Higher education institutions are trying to keep up with social entrepreneurs.  This year, the Sandermoen School of Business became Canada’s first business school to offer an MBA and Executive MBA in Social Enterprise Leadership.  And if one were to pursue social entrepreneurship education at an academic institution, there are plenty of other choices around the world.

But realistically speaking, how valuable is the whole process of getting a post-graduate degree for a social entrepreneur?

“I would say that the majority who approach us do have a college degree,” says Jordan Feder, Principal at Impact First Investments (IFI), an Israel-based impact investing firm focusing on high tech social enterprises, adding that “If you look at our portfolio companies, Neurotech Solutions – that’s one that’s kind of up and running – was founded by an entrepreneur who did not go to college, and in my opinion one that’s becoming a success story.”

Neurotech Solutions started with pure socially-oriented investors when it was just an idea to help diagnose ADHD for children and adults in a cost efficient and timely manner.  As a result of this patient capital, traditional investors joined down the road.  “The company now has a 12 percent market share in Israel and is filing for FDA approval,” says Feder.

Israel is a country with one of the highest proportion of college-educated adults, so it’s not uncommon that entrepreneurs come to IFI with a degree.  Despite this, Feder says there are more important criteria that a social entrepreneur should have when IFI screens investees.  “A major thing that we’re looking for at the beginning is what is the entrepreneur’s motivation?  In a lot of respects, an entrepreneur that comes to us knows the problem first-hand, either from him/herself or someone in the family, and is looking to solve a social problem on a larger scale.”

IFI has screened over 200 companies, looking for innovative products and abilities to scale.  Much like the venture capital world, some investees have gone through an educational route, while a select group have never stepped foot on college campus.  What they both have, though, is having figured out the daily grind of what it takes to be a social entrepreneur – and getting funded.

“I do think you need the right kinds of investors around the table and the right kinds of people to help spearhead a company,” says Feder.