<p>We are glad to join the opening of the Social Business Summit 2013 at the GK Enchanted Farm in Angat, Bulacan. This is a meaningful summit, the objectives of which transcend beyond regular business goals, and cover as well the other bottomlines on helping solve social issues and environment. What we call the triple bottomline.</p><p>During the opening program, I was given the chance to share my insights on how we can really promote more social enterprises and how they can really scale up to be more sustainable. My talk centered on the importance of a business idea and the business model that one would start, whether it is a social enterprise or a mainstream business. The danger to some social enterprise is the tendency to mainly focus on the social concerns while probably missing on the viability of the business model.</p><p>As an example, we have over 800,000 sari-sari stores today, and many of them have been and will remain sari sari stores for a long time unless there is a better idea in their business model that will enable them to grow bigger, say, to become a grocery or supermarket. Otherwise, their growth may not be in sight. It is competitive enough to fight it out among themselves in a particular street or area. More so when they are one day challenged by the big guys like SM, Puregold, Robinsons or 7-11.</p><p>These sari-sari store entrepreneurs are usually what we call survival entrepreneurs who are in it because they cannot get a job or it allows the wife the opportunity to work from home while attending to the children. So programs on training and mentorship, on how to manage their finances, how to have medium and long term business goals, how else to widen their revenue base would be very important. I stressed that successful entrepreneurs and the 600 entrepreneurs in the Go Negosyo community should help in mentoring their own value chain. I know that a Puregold program like Aling Puring promotes partnership with sari-sari stores to help them grow their business, which translates to bigger business as well for Puregold. Our solution to poverty rests on big businesses helping micro and small to move up beyond just a survival entrepreneur.</p><p><a href="http://www.philstar.com/business/2013/10/03/1240732/social-business-ease-doing-business">Keep reading...</a></p>