Here at Raízes, we understand and defend entrepreneurship as a way to achieve autonomy, especially for women and vulnerable populations. Having your own business can allow you greater flexibility and creativity – especially in today’s world, where there is a lot of work but few employment opportunities. Therefore, one of our main fields of activity is business modeling.
How we do it
We start by identifying the purpose of the business. The methodology that we use is the Golden Circle. Created by leadership specialist Simon Sinek, this aims to improve the performance of companies in the segment in which they operate, by way of thinking, acting, and communicating. It seeks to answer three key questions: what, how, and why?
With this strategy in mind, we are able to find out why people are motivated to work, for example, if they believe in a cause or because of personal taste, or individual talents. And it is precisely the people who benefit from social projects that are included in the business modeling stage that brings us these pieces of information. From there onwards, we develop the next steps – always starting with ‘why’ and looking for businesses that are connected to people’s talents and desires.
Beyond the Golden Circle
After this initial Golden Circle step, we use the Business Model Canvas to develop the required business modeling. We choose to use this methodology because it allows for the creation of a much faster business plan. What we mean by this is that business plans have traditionally meant very long, tedious tasks in the past, which even included thorough market research – which was sometimes extremely time-consuming – and this often leads to translated into a great delay in actually starting acting on a particular business’s more pressing needs. Therefore, we currently work with prototyping.
Prototyping can be done with Canvas, which helps business modeling visualize how different areas are interconnected, including their target audience and different stakeholders. In this way, it is possible to understand the viability of the business plan and have a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to generate immediate prototyping, in order to carry out necessary market tests, etc.
From this stage onwards, the business idea can be quickly started and gradually improved as it goes.
The profile of the people benefited from the projects in which Raízes operates
Having said all of the above, we have specificity in our social business: we aim to serve especially the most vulnerable communities, many of which have little access to this type of technical information.
Moreover, there are many social businesses too, which ‘seek to have a positive impact on a community, expand the perspectives of people who are marginalized by society, in addition to generating shared income and financial autonomy for lower-class individuals’ (business definition of social impact by SEBRAE).
For these reasons, we seek strategies to respond to the ever-growing need of making efficient and faster business designs for different areas.
What is the profile of the businesses covered?
They can be individual, family, and even collective businesses. We do quite believe in the power of ‘achieving collectively’, and of networks, and a large portion of our work happens with small businesses working together.
And who can hire Raizes to make an entrepreneurial qualification and business modeling project of their own?
A foundation, a corporation, a network or association (of entrepreneurs, for example), an organization, etc.
Find out more about each of the projects we work on in this special section on our website!
