In week ten, I learned about Hybrids and Social Business. This week's readings and video were very enlightening in my opinion. I went through In Search of the Hybrid Idea, Introducing Yunus Social Business, Chapter One: Why Social Business? in the book titled Building Social Business by Muhammed Yunus, 22 Awesome Social Enterprise Ideas and Examples, and Peter Singer: The Why and How of Effective Altruism. One of the key takeaways is a hybrid business can be very successful. The Hot Bread Kitchen was used as an example in several of the resources for this week's study. As low-income immigrant women bake bread, they learn job skills which could lead them onto more successful paths in the future. Selling the baked bread funds the social mission, reduces dependence on donations, grants, and subsidies, and even increase the size of the organization over time.
I absolutely love the story about the bakery. Maybe it is because I am a foodie at heart and enjoy nearly all kinds of food throughout the world. The fact someone was able to create a hybrid business to help uplift the community and also have part of it be a social business by making the bread affordable so anyone could purchase some is a beautiful move. I wish there were more businesses like that, especially in the United States. I would gladly pay patronage to such places, especially if the products are affordable and within my monthly budget.
I think the thing about hybrids that make them so successful is the money flow. The money goes back into the business itself and helps build it up from within. Meanwhile, the employees gain experience from the bottom up. I am going to use the bakery as an example here again. The bakers gain experience and could eventually obtain higher-ranking job titles such as manager. There can be a high turnover rate of employees as time goes on. As employees gain enough experience to obtain a better job in another place, more people get hired and easily take over the old positions to keep the hybrid business going.
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