Entrepreneurship, sustainability, and innovation. These terms are commonly
associated with a successful business executive or a young and energetic
business team. They also embody an exciting movement sweeping the globe, one
centered around identifying and resourcefully solving social problems on a large
scale. A social entrepreneur recognizes society’s most pressing problems and
adopts entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to
make social change. They are ambitious and persistent in tackling major
social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change. Sustainability
is of the utmost importance for a social entrepreneur, as they rely little on
donations and develop diverse sources of funding in order to be viable in the
long-term.
Social entrepreneurship as a term first became mainstream in the 1980s,
promoted by trailblazers such as Bill Drayton, a member of PARSA’s advisory
board and the founder of Ashoka, a leading nonprofit dedicated towards promoting
sustainable and replicable solutions for the citizen sector. Since then, social
entrepreneurs such as 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Grameen Bank founder
Muhammad Yunus have gone on to attract international headlines.
What exactly distinguishes a social entrepreneur from others devoted towards
social change?
Social entrepreneurs apply inventive approaches to benefit society on a large
scale, working in diverse areas including education, health, welfare reform,
human rights, workers’ rights, environment, economic development and
agriculture. They pursue three fundamental goals:
- Finding innovative solutions to social ills;
- Addressing root causes of problems; and
- Developing sustainable business models.
Social entrepreneurs highlight the synergies and benefits that result from
applying business strategies to social ventures, strategies such as efficiency,
durability, and scalability. Yet social entrepreneurs are by no means limited to
the nonprofit sector – they also work with governments and the private sector.
Regardless of their focus area, they believe in the innate capacity of all
people to contribute to economic and social development and initiate change
themselves, refusing to sit back and wait for it to happen on its own.
As Victor Hugo once wrote, “Nothing is as powerful as idea whose time has
come.” In our fast-moving world today, nothing is as powerful as a new idea in
the hands of a dedicated social entrepreneur. Whether they are improving
the quality of life in a desolate village or increasing access to higher
education for inner-city youth, social entrepreneurs are solution-minded leaders
unafraid to take on and resolve some of society’s most challenging problems. In
the words of Bill Drayton, “Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give
fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the
fishing industry.”
