Week 6 Revenue Generation

 I've continued thinking about my Social Innovation Wicked Problem.  

I haven't been able to stop talking about it, even during a massage where I was supposed to be relaxing.  Instead I spent the hour venting about the problem, the statistics, and being so frustrated that my masseuses couldn't understand.  She thought I was talking about Human Trafficking. Then she thought I was talking about maturation videos.  Then she thought child pornography. 

I've run into this a LOT these last two weeks, where the problem is so taboo, very few people even get what I'm talking about. But on the teenage level, we see it in the Junior High.  We see it rampant. 

While reading about Revenue Generation, it all sounded very familiar to me as I've kept up with Thorn and OUR for a number of years. I've also followed scholarship funds and memorial or arts grant foundations and the like. 

But trying to discover a way to generate revenue for something like the wicked problem I'd like to address? That seems impossible. 

Finally my MT realized what I was saying and then to her it seemed easy.  Write a book, sell a book and call it a day. That'll be enough. 

Or start an educational program, sell the program, call it a day. 

The amount of diversification that would need to go into a successful Social Enterprise are so much more and more complex than just a one off product that you hope people will eventually look for in the vast universe of the internet. 

I think the first problem is that I would need to develop clarity in the message and goals, but like I mentioned in the last entry - how can I make goals when I have no idea how to measure impact? 

This weeks lesson was interesting, and yet again I end the week feeling drained rather than edified. 


As for the prompt: Does money buy happiness and can money change the world?

Happiness is not a place, but a state of being that can be accomplished with thought and action alone, independent of money.  Money can buy security and fulfill needs, but no money cannot "buy happiness." As for money changing the world, I think the answer is also no. If I left money alone in a room with a computer, internet connection, and telephone …. nothing would happen. 

Money is a representation of trade, and trade is a product of people.  Therefore people will always be the true change in the world, though it may take the form of money - money can never replace the actual people. 

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