New Life: Scaling Up Social Enterprise Start-Ups New Life Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association (New Life) was a private organization located in Hong Kong that offered care and rehabilitation to people with psychiatric disabilities. While the organization was quite successful, the biggest challenge facing New Life was finding gainful employment for their clients after training. This was so intrinsic that despite their best efforts, many of their former clients came back to New Life because of the inability to find work. To solve this, New Life started a social enterprise initiative in 1994 that would directly create jobs and training opportunities. This had dual purposes; it would keep clients employed and establish self-sustaining businesses -- like produce stands, etc.

The basic value set for the organization was what struck me as most relevant. Here was a group of individuals committed to helping others overcome a disability and then to give back to society by leveraging social networks, establishing partnerships with governmental and private party agencies, and to...

Certainly, they faced challenges, but the lessons learned seem to be a way to help the socially disenfranchised in numerous ways.
For instance, the model proves that it is indeed possible and even profitable to invest in micro-businesses that can become sustainable. The old adage about teaching someone to feed themselves fits well here -- it is far more useful for these individuals to own their own enterprise, to learn about business, and to contribute to the greater good of society than to be within a safe, but costly, treatment environment. Instead, treatment and capitalism can coexist and the result is then better for both models. This certainly proves what can be done at the individual level -- and then grown to the societal, regional, and even national levels.

Part 2 -- Ilinc -- Case Study of a Start Up

This case study surrounds the formation of a startup operation from the perspective of two MBA students and…