Nominet Trust has curated the annual NT100 for the past five years to amass evidence that helps answer these questions. Regardless of geography, social challenge and available resources, we’ve seen social tech ventures flourish, achieving social impact across the world. Here we share five insights into how tech ventures are transforming lives:
- Collaboration breeds success – Many of today’s technological advances owe their success to collective effort. When it comes to socially motivated tech, collaboration between individuals and communities in need and tech developers is a powerful force, enabling some of the most transformative ventures to achieve significant impact.
- Social missions and commercial models are not mutually exclusive – Many successful ventures – although socially motivated – are structured around a commercial revenue model. This doesn’t mean they’re driven only by profit-making, but see financial sustainability as vital to achieving long-term social goals.
- Innovation needs infrastructure to thrive – While tech innovation is often what grabs headlines and attention, many social entrepreneurs stress the need for systems, infrastructure and logistics to support developments in tech.
- The need for ecosystems – Socially motivated tech projects developed in countries with an advanced ecosystem benefit from the expertise, capital and infrastructure available. However, addressing this global imbalance would enrich the diversity of socially transformative tech even further.
- Many founders of socially transformative tech projects do not have a technical background – Rather than tech experts applying their skills to solve problems, it’s often the people who want to solve social problems who are turning to tech experts for help.
Our vision is a world where social transformation drives tech development. That’s why we’re sparking a global conversation about tech and its impact on society. But we can’t do this alone; collaborative effort across all sectors is needed.
Join the conversation by listening to our podcast series Our Lives + Tech where we discuss the future of tech and its impact on society.