Niche vs Kitsch vs Reach

Being back in the Valley revealed several trends of the tech community when it comes to their motivations for social change initiatives. The title of this post lays them all out from my perspective…

Niche-driven
Companies that are trying to segment out a very vertical slice of the market or technology so as to differentiate their brand. They might be the best at what they do, but they also may not be the biggest in the market. Usually the market determines whether or not they remain niche. For example groups like Fitbit (weight loss), IDEO (social impact through design) and InnovaLight (Clean energy) are successful start-ups targeting niche aspects of old problems.

Kitsch-driven
Companies that are eying social entrepreneurship or responsibility as a way to validate something (their service or product) among a certain group (‘people who care about a particular cause’). In other words, they want to appear to be socially responsible more than they probably want to actually be socially responsible. Ning often bills itself as an empowering tool for non-profits and community groups. That may be true, but that’s clearly not the focus of the company. Rather their real focus is simplifying the process of creating small social networks….for any group with almost any motive.

Reach-driven
These tech companies have identified a problem and are attempting to solve it by reaching the most people possible, to have the maximum impact as a solution for an identified problem. This means their efforts are often easily quantifiable (clear goal equals clear results). I’d say that Kiva (MFIs), OLPC (low-cost computing) and FrontlineSMS (emergency messaging) are good examples from various groups that are fundamentally maximizing reach.

Certainly many groups are a little bit of all three but of the groups I learned about this week at SoCap08, they can all be put into one of these categories.