Expert’s Advice: How to Evaluate SBM -Merry Year Social Company

Hi everyone my name is Jeongtae Kim a social innovator and social entrepreneurs in Korea I’m the CEO of Merry Year Social Company We’re intrapreneurs empowering entrepreneurs and innovators, working together toward the best for the world! Since 2011, we’ve been a pioneer in the field of social innovation consultancy and impact investing. Our main service areas include acceleration of start-ups/social ventures, corporate impact venturing through open innovation, and impact investing.

our company aims to address all kinds of social inequality through social entrepreneurship. Supporting this mission is our values that include human-centered approach innovation, tri-sector collaboration innovation, and hybrid-value creation innovation. We see ourselves as “an innovation lab” that experiments with various social innovation for partners, and with partners.

Our role in the impact ecosystem is to provide four types of resources for social innovation: first of all innovation experience second of all innovation journey third of all innovation culture and lastly and innovation capital. We believe in the power of innovation, and we believe it must come from inside out. What differentiates us from others in the field is we view ourselves as social intrapreneurs. We could not empower and support social entrepreneurs outside or social innovators around us unless we are also thinking acting and living just like them as intrapreneurs.

All the MYSC members intrapreneurs value intrapreneurial skills and they are very much encouraged to further grow as impact over intrapreneurs If you come across intrapreneurs, Like us you will notice them immediately because they are so different Also we’re powered by our strong corporate culture based on the principles such as ‘Everyone-is-a-leader’ and ‘Self-discipline’. with this human centered corporate culture for the last two years our retention rate has been 100% except just one member having left for pursuing an external career development opportunity. As a CEO of the company, I am very proud of this outcome.

We look at several factors: whether a certain social issue will be deteriorating over time without an intervention, Or, whether currently existing solutions  are not functioning, and whether the process toward its impact is healthy.

We think there are two drivers of growth for social enterprises, that is, capital and second revenue. When we’re running acceleration programs, therefore, we do our best to provide “capital growth” and “revenue growth” all together. Gaining just one of them would not make social enterprises sustainable enough become competitive in the market. For capital growth, we design and customize what we call ‘impact capital structure model’ to each social enterprise. The Impact Capital Structure Model refers to a virtual layers of capital from multiple sources. First layer is filled with grant from government or corporations. Second layer is with impact loan from intermediaries.

and third layer is an impact investing like the one we are offering Such hybrid financing model gives social enterprise flexibility and capability as well to optimize the use of capitals. For revenue growth, on the other hand, we design open innovation model of social enterprises and help them match with multinational company. Through this B2B partnership, social enterprises can explore revenue generating opportunities and actually generate cash flows as needed for achieving financial sustainability.

I think the market size matters. Indeed many social enterprises are facing the yet small size of conscious potential customers in Korea. but it’s a still a demand driven industry in many cases I think. we may need more time as Millennials you may heard about Millennials Millennials who care about social issues more than any other generations they are actually coming to the central stage of society. However, for the time being, social enterprises should do their job well. in other words they should make their product and services strong not only in meaning but also in quality

My personal dream is to help social innovation becomes prevalent in Korea. I also like to prove that becoming a social innovator here in Korea is a good career opportunity that has both purpose and profit. and at the organization level we strive to showcase with partners and clients that social innovation is actually working meaning that it is commercially viable and socially impactful