Monthly Archives: November 2010

Barefoot College is a social enterprise that educates illiterate women in India to become doctors, architects, and other professions.  Its founder, Roy Bunker, believes strongly about education and the impact it will bring. He also believes in the fundamental skills that the elders bring is an important aspect that should not be ignored.

 The students from his college are able to construct buildings and design water diviners even without a professional’s involvement. They attribute this to the sharing of knowledge and learning new skills from each other. The college solely relies on solar power, which is also a skill that Bunker is trying to teach to his students, in which they are able to bring this skill back into the city and apply it there.

This is an social enterprise because its main purpose is to help people in rural India to obtain the skills to help improve the standard of living. Bunker is a social entrepreneur because he is a person who strongly believes, and is passionate, in change and improvement on people’s lives.

information from http://www.barefootcollege.org/

Zappos, a highly sucessful company, displays properties of that of an entrepreneurial company.

First of all, they created a new method in which they were able to provide products and services that no company has done before. And it is because of this innovation they are able to generate great amount of revenue and keeping their cost low. 

Second of all, they were able to capture a much larger market since they were a Internet based organization. Because of being sucessful in this area, their speed of wealth creation was substantially quick.

Third of all the company structure, itself, is a noteworthy factor. The way of organizing the people, and their culture is a big risk. In a laid back environment there is always a possibility that employee may not fulfill their responsibilities to the best of their abilities, however, Zappos created an atmosphere that was pleasing to the employees which generated high job satisfaction leading to great productivity.