The factory is billed here as a “high-minded experiment”, a project of passion for one socially minded company.  Though paying higher wages means their costs are higher than their competitors’, Knights says it will not ask its customers to pay more. Instead, the company absorbs the added expense and loses some profit on each shirt. But Knights’ prices are still high, in line with more premium brands like Nike and Adidas–the company says this is warranted by their high-quality processes and materials. In order to gain an edge amongst these major players, it will be critical to make their message of impact compelling to consumers.

For us, this points to a question we get often: are our clients willing to pay more or be “easy” on us because we’re an impact-driven nonprofit? The short answer is no. The longer answer is that we would never ask them to–we believe that a large part of our impact comes from bringing the rigor and meritocratic culture of the international marketplace to Cambodia and Laos, emerging markets that are only now learning how to compete on a global stage. Sustainability is one of our core principles, and if our pricing, quality and services are not competitive in the market, we are not sustainable as a business or as an agent of change.

We’re proud that we are able to be a competitive leader in the digitization industry, delivering high-quality services at a competitive price, while also having a social impact–and it’s our hope that our clients feel that pride, too.

The Young Leadership Program addresses a critical gap in today’s training for future leaders: The purpose of the program is to provide an experiential course which ultimately uses the inputs of relevant business practices to make a positive impact on society. The program provides experiential leadership development by combining a week of classroom-based learning (Module 1) — comprised of intense debate and discussions with well-known leaders from HSBC, Siemens, Sonepar etc — followed by a week of on-site work on a real-world project (Module 2). The goal is for your team to identify a business idea and capitalize on it to create either an investment opportunity or a business plan. We put in an average of 14-16 hours per day to complete the program objectives.

I was lucky to have a lot of opportunity to give my input from the perspective of a social enterprise. Particularly, I emphasized a major lesson my job has taught me: how critical our everyday decision making is, and how deeply it can affect the people and society around us. Since most of my teammates in the program came from a corporate background, my presence in the team did bring about a different perspective. Of course, I took this opportunity to share our experiences from DDD with everyone. Many of the participants had never heard of social enterprise before, but became interested in making our model part of the business plan we were developing.

During Module 2, we met up with many local government officials in China. We found that there were too many policies and regulations working against establishing a non-profit organization due to the Chinese economic system. Therefore, our initial business model changed from a social business model into two models: The first model is a commercial model that will use its profit to pay annual royalty fees to our second (social) business model in order to achieve the program objectives.

At end of the program, we completed the business plan on time and presented it at the investor conference. We were congratulated by our Chinese partner for our ability to come up with new ideas in such a short time, and they promised to look into adopting our ideas in order to achieve sustainability in their current business expansion.
During the reflection at the end of the program, I concluded my participation with appreciation of the GIFT Institute team, and I of course thanked my sponsor,Ms Annie Chen, who funded my trip and program cost in Hong Kong. I also requested that the GIFT Institute look into giving more opportunities to our local managers in DDD Laos and Cambodia to attend this program in the near future. I am thankful for the opportunity to participate in this program, and I appreciate that DDD encouraged me to learn more about leadership and to share our DDD stories during this two week program.

Lessons learned:
Diversity – I was assigned to a diverse team that consisted of people of more than 10 different nationalities, industries and backgrounds who were to accomplish the tasks set. Our openness to the views of others was tested. Diversity of the team was crucial for the team’s growth and development.

No passivity — Stepping up to be a leader is the key to success and self-realization; failure to do so, on the other hand, will not help me or my organization. An open mind and a high level of intellectual curiosity were essential to get the most out of this program. I learned to be more engaged and to always find a way to be effective.

Ability to communicate – Understanding the participants’ individual ability to communicate was really important in order to ensure that we were not weakened by language barriers during the program. It was clear that when the session was conducted in English, the native English speakers tended to be very dominant on the floor and most Chinese speakers remained quiet. This situation changed as we went to into Module 2, where most of the sessions involved Chinese speakers from the government and local companies. Suddenly the quiet Chinese participants became lively and participated in every debate and took the lead in all of Module 2. Some native English speakers suddenly became less dominant, although there was a translator who worked with us in every session. During the reflection, some of the English native speakers admitted they had felt insecure in most sessions and apologized to the Chinese participants for being ignorant during Module 1. It was interesting for me to observe these things, and the team was really great in acknowledging this lesson.

Social enterprises are considered part of the third sector, or the civic sector, placed between the public and private sector. However, in developing countries where the public sector is sometimes non-existent or very weak, other agents of change like social enterprises often provide most of the social infrastructure a country needs in order to advance – even if they don’t have the legislative support to do so.

The realization that social entrepreneurship might be the key to the advancement of the developing world has only emerged in the past decade or so. A key contribution to the social entrepreneurship movement is David Bornstein’s How to Change the World, a book that turned a spotlight onto social innovation and examples of how the model could effect profound change. Now, Bornstein has founded and launched a new website, www.dowser.org, which aims to showcase more stories of change happening around the world right now.

Partly, Bornstein’s motivation is that while social entrepreneurship does yield social change around the world, the change is generally hidden. Moreover, he and his well-written team focus on solutions rather than problems; through a number of case studies, they are exploring who is solving what and how.

DDD is excited to be profiled on Dowser.org via an interview with our CEO, Jeremy Hockenstein. We look forward to following the Dowser.org team as they showcase more examples of positive change, and hope that their efforts will help pave the road for better conditions for social enterprises, in all corners of the world.

Since we opened our doors in 2001, more than 380 of our staff have graduated from entry-level jobs to employment opportunities that earn them over four times the average income in Cambodia and Laos.

However, numbers and metrics will never mean as much to me as talking directly to our staff. The change in the lives of our staff is the hardest piece of DDD to convey to others–and it’s what we hear most often from visitors to our offices in Asia: “I knew what DDD did before, but after coming and meeting everyone, I really get it.”

When Chhayrorn first told me her story, I was immediately moved by her strong character and soft-spoken humor.  Eventually, we produced a video in which Chhayrorn has the opportunity to tell her story to the rest of the world, so that you can see for yourself. Please use the comments section to let us know what you think.

Chip Conley, the CEO of Joie de Vivre, is known for his Transformation Pyramid; a reincarnation of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Pyramid. Conley’s Transformation Pyramid applies to groups of people, such as a business, rather than just the individual. But what happens if you look at the Transformation Pyramid in the context of a social enterprise?

Conley’s point is that businesses must take intangible values, such as employee and customer happiness, seriously, because they are crucial for the success of the business. The three themes in the Transformation Pyramid are fundamental in life as well as in business. As in the case of Maslow’s renowned Hierarchy of Needs Conley moves from basic needs to full potential: From survival, to success, and to transformation. When self-actualization is achieved, when you are all you can be, or in Maslow’s words “when what ought to be just is”, the full potential of an individual, a business, or an organization is reached.

When we talk about social enterprises, especially ones akin to DDD, who aim to grow human resource in the developing parts of the world, it becomes clear that reaching the full potential is key. Employees’ self-actualization, i.e. transformation into skilled leaders and dedicated change makers, is the most important goal we strive for.

For the employees at DDD the first level of the pyramid, survival, also sometimes referred to as “money” or “compensation”, is closer to an actual matter of survival than Conley probably imagines. The operators who are accepted into DDD’s program come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and after four years of education and on-the-job training, they go on to earn six times the average income in Cambodia. Their success is continuously measured and validated through their productivity at work and their results in school, and if they fail someone in the DDD family is ready to help them succeed. In making sure that basic needs are fulfilled DDD is creating a habitat for happiness* – providing the opportunity for transformation. How we measure the amount and degree of transformation will likely continue to be a challenge for some time.

What the world really needs right now is the transformation of youth into skilled and dedicated leaders. Not for the sake of our business, or any business, but for the sake of the world.

***

Thank you to peakorganizations.com for transcribing Chip Conley’s talk, and to TED and Chip Conley for the inspiration.

* How the Bhutanese Prime Minister describes Bhutan. Shamelessly borrowed from Chip Conley’s talk at the 2010 TED Conference.

The two-day conference was the first Asian version of the summit that Bill Clinton has convened annually in New York since 2005. It aims to bring together political, entertainment, business and NGO leaders to collectively inspire people to take more action to tackle global poverty and environmental challenges.

The content was a combination of large plenary panel discussions and break-out sessions on education, health, and climate change. There were about 400 attendees. The goal is for people to make specific commitments of how they will address these issues. I shared DDD’s goal of adding 1,000 people in the coming years. We were one of only a few dozen nonprofit organizations represented, and many people expressed their interest and admiration for what we’ve accomplished.

It will take a lot of work all around the world to undertake the global challenges discussed at CGI. We should be proud that we are making a real and significant contribution to these issues. It’s not easy–we are doing something special which could never happen otherwise. While it was an honour to represent DDD in Hong Kong, it doesn’t compare to listening to our managers present at our recent board meeting, or to witnessing the humming efficiency of our three offices or the shy smiles of pride on the faces of the operators there. It is in our offices day-to-day where I am always inspired to see everyone working to create lasting solutions to poverty.

- Jeremy Hockenstein, Co-Founder & CEO

Read a South China Morning Point article profiling the Clinton Global Initiative in Hong Kong, including DDD’s participation