Joint efforts in the (New) Social Market Economy
“We need a new Cooperative Innovation and Solution Culture in the (New) Social Market Economy to really profit from innovation and our work, both as individuals and society. Where Crowd-Founding goes far bejond financing a company (cp. crowdfunding) as it is about a broad cooperative approach.” (Franz Wenzel)
Crowd Founding offers an opportunity to start and do business in a new way (also see Eingründung). In my book section “xyz” I introduced my ideas on a conceptual approach towards founding a company in a (social) group of people. Together the group of founders addresses an issue it wants to solve.
Basics of founding and funding
To put things as simple, let’s look at some basic thoughts first. Founding a company holds quite a number of risks. Usually people do not have the money to start a company or they get the needed budgets at awfully high interest rates. The same is true for venure money with uncertainty at the horizon of usual investments. On the other hand one never knows about the success of the new company. Will there be any suitable demand from the market, will you be able to sell any goods or services?
There are a couple of other reasons why not to start a company. Most of them are risks, others are related to the personal comfort zone of the potential entrepreneur. After all many ideas fail before they hit the market.
Crowd-Founding
What is Crowd-Founding and what is it good for? Let’s use an example: Imagine a small town, maybe it is better named a village, and it only has a few hundred residents. They have many positive things, such as a beautiful landscape or familiar traditions. But they lack public transport and the town is sufering. Many people already moved away.
Now there comes Crowd-Founding. People meet in a town hall meeting and discuss their lack of transport. They decide to crowd-found a transport company. First they find out what they really need (bus transport for the children to the close by next bigger city, various other transport solutions for the elderly people and the people working in the bigger city offices, etc.) and what options might bring the town forward (maybe public transport for tourists as the village landscape is really a potetial must see and tourists might bring some extra money to the village, to the village inn and the small farmers shop). Second they check the budget, decide what they really need (exactly which bus fits the needs the best, how many rides they really need each day, etc.), recheck the budget and evaluate if they can fund themselves (300 people multiplied by 100 Euro each can bring in the starting budget). Third they check if the village can also bring up the requested work force. Is there a potential bus driver and an accountant? How about someone who can produce a website? Finally how about the local bank – can they do the professional finances?
And there it is, a really big potential for a new social market economy, powered by joint efforts and cooperation. So many more options exist within the fields of student housing, cooperative farmers markets, etc.
Application field Cooperative Spin-In
Crowd-Founding (cooperative founding) has to be distinguished from Cooperative Spin-In. Crowd-Founding means users of a potential appplication founding a company together. Cooperative Spin-In uses the thoughts on Cooperative Innovation to bring together two or more comanies to combine complementing know-how in a joint effort.
