社會企業的商業模式之探索研究

Abstract

社會企業近年來成為社會企業責任或公益以外的第三種選擇，被視為解決社會問題的可行方案。然而，社會企業在台灣的發展才正在起步中，尚有許多待學習的空間。因此，本研究選擇醫療與微型貸款兩個領域中的社會企業，針對其商業模式與可發展空間進行探索性的研究，期能提供社會創業家未來在商業模式設計上的參考。 本研究先以組織「關注的對象」以及「對於市場造成的影響」兩個構面來定位營利企業和社會企業的不同。營利企業屬於高股東權益導向、高經濟影響；而社會企業屬於高利益攸關人導向、高社會影響。接著，本研究針對醫療和微型貸款領域各兩個個案，用商業模式架構來分析個案的商業模式，並比較彼此異同。 本研究發現：一、社會企業會因所面對的社會問題不同，導致在商業模式的設計邏輯和首要考慮因子上有根本上的不同：當社會企業的目標顧客須解決問題是支付能力不足時，商業模式的設計邏輯需以降低成本為核心，故獲利模式是首要考慮的因子，社會企業需先對目標顧客的支付能力定價，再重整成本結構來設計關鍵流程與定義關鍵資源；當社會企業的目標顧客需解決的問題是交易成本太高時，商業模式的設計邏輯須以降低交易成本為核心，故關鍵營運流程是首要考慮因子，亦即需透過關鍵流程的設計和運用關鍵資源來降低交易成本，最後再透過已知成本結構來對目標顧客定價。 二、關於兩個領域商業模式的創新空間，兩者都可以透過建立雙邊平台的方式來解決社會問題，主要有兩個方向：(1) 發掘潛在網絡效應來建構雙邊平台：在既有消費者的基礎上，找到具有潛在間接網絡效應的另一群消費者成為付費端，來補貼其原來的消費者，如媒體或是Google；(2) 將傳統的產業鏈平台化，也就是讓原本的上游供應商直接和消費者進行交易，如亞馬遜。

The development of social enterprises (SEs) in Taiwan is just at the beginning. The purpose of this research is trying to search the potential business model (BM) in healthcare and microfinance as a reference for future social entrepreneurs. This research starts from differentiating the SEs from ordinary for-profit organizations by two dimensions, namely shareholder/stakeholder-orientation and economic/social impact. Under these two dimensions, for-profit businesses are characterized by high shareholder-orientation with high economic impact while the SEs are positioned as high stakeholder-orientation with high social impact. We then identify two categories of social problems, from which two cases in each category are purposively selected for exploratory studies on their business models. We found that : (1) The design logic of BM will hinge upon the characteristics of social problems the SE is going to solve. When customers have limited purchasing power, the central task of BM design is to lower product costs and hence profit model becomes the first thing to work out and followed by key processes and resources. On the other hand, when the issue is too high of transaction costs, the central task is to reduce the transaction costs by designing right processes, then followed by setting the price. (2) Both categories of SEs can apply platform concept to improve their existing BM: (a) Pursue potential network effect to build up a two-sided platform; based on the customers SEs have, to find out another customers with indirect network effect and make them pay the bill, just like the case of Google; (b) Make traditional value chain platform, which makes suppliers interact with customers directly, like Amazon.