Social Entrepreneurs and Kai Johan Jiang

This Friday, I shall be one of the judges for final of the national Social Entrepreneurship Business Competition. MBA students from across China have been through preliminary finals which have included training programmes on launching how they can launch their social enterprises. The seven finalist teams have planned ventures that include food waste recycling, two senior citizen support programmes (the The Zanbazanma community and the "Orchid & Day-lily Love Plan"), LED street lighting, and a Tartary Buckwheat enterprise to produce a product that helps people relieve pressure caused by Hypertension, Hyperglycemia, and Hyperlipidemia - an increase in stress levels is regularly reported in China. The winning team will attract venture capital investment to develop their enterprise. Bayer are again an active supporter although the lead sponsor is Tencent, China's largest and most used internet service portal. L&S Venture Capital are also involved and I look forward to seeing whether they make some socially enterprising investments following the Competition.

These are the budding social entrepreneurs but there are those who have already established businesses which are "more than profit" enterprises. One is Dragon Power, a biomass business founded by Kai Johan Jiang in 2004. He is now on the brink of seeing the first stage of his dream realised. In February, China Construction Bank agreed to provide €227,000 of credit to National Bio Energy Company, a subsidiary of Dragon Power, to construct biomass plants across the country. In a recent interview his motivation is more about the social impact that he could make for farmers through biomass energy:

"I don’t care that much about personal wealth. I was born in rural Shandong province, and I’m more proud of the fact that Dragon Power has become one of the largest non-governmental subsidy systems for farmers in China. We have paid RMB 1.9 billion of cash to procure straw, an amount that will increase every year. This has improved the lives of millions of farmers....The vision that one plant can create thousands of jobs and benefit tens of thousands of farmers is incredibly inspiring."

True to the Chinese classical virtues of diligence and hard work, Jiang says that he rarely takes weekends off and works hard every day. "I’m passionate about what I am doing, and my colleagues share this enthusiasm, " he says.

And true to the spirit of social entrepreneurship, Jiang's philosophy is that "if a business benefits both society and the environment, that business will be successful eventually."

Source: http://www.knowledgeatwharton.com.cn/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&articleID=...