Stakeholder Journey Mapping: An Educational Tool for Social Entrepreneurs

While social entrepreneurship is a promising model for addressing social challenges, the success and sustainability of a venture is reliant on an entire stakeholder structure external to the entrepreneurial team. Across academic and professional programs, social entrepreneurship curriculum spends a great deal of time stressing this point; however thoroughly understanding a venture's stakeholder structure is difficult. Especially for novice teams in the early stages of venture development, current methods for collecting critical data points on the identities, needs, and motivations that shape a venture's stakeholder structure can be prohibitively difficult and expensive in terms of time and money. Programs need tools that empower aspiring social entrepreneurs by accounting for their unique needs and constraints without compromising results. In this article, Stakeholder Journey Mapping is presented as an adaptation of current customer journey mapping methods, capable of being an educational tool that lowers barriers and costs for new social entrepreneurs. A methodology for creating Stakeholder Journey Maps is presented in the form of a workshop plan, and is followed by a case study.