Jan
22
Social Entrepreneurship ASB - Class Three
January 22, 2008 |
“Social entrepreneurship isn’t giving someone a fish or even teaching someone to fish. It is revolutionizing the fishing industry.” - Bill Drayton
Bill Drayton, the founder of Ashoka, is playing an extremely prominent role in our class thus far. Not only are we researching his organization and those organizations affiliated with his, but we are also researching his beliefs and thoughts on social entrepreneurship. In fact, I believe I could reasonably argue that he is either the most prominent individual in the realm of social entrepreneurship or definitely in the top five. Most of the class today revolved around the definition of social entrepreneurship, and Mr. Drayton came up multiple times in multiple contexts.
What is Social Entrepreneurship?
From catalyzing social change to harnessing the markets to solve issues like global warming, we came up with a ton of definitions for social entrepreneurship. We talked about different characteristics of social entrepreneurs, what they do, how they do it, what kind of impact they make, etc. Ultimately, we came to the conclusion that there are many definitions/characteristics of social entrepreneurship, and not all of which have to be present. My favorite is the one by Bill Drayton at the beginning of this article, and I would like to extend it by saying that the social entrepreneur’s goal should be to put themselves out of business (by eliminating the problem.)
Social Entrepreneurship Articles
We have been doing a lot of reading for this class, and most of the articles are easy to find online. A few have been from the Kauffman Foundation, a couple in random magazines, like this one from Fast Company, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and the Harvard Business Review. A quick Google search and random blogs seem to comprise efficient methods of getting involved in the area, and this makes the research process very organic (and fun!).
Speed Dating
The activity we participated in today was “speed dating” in which each person spent two minutes talking to another person and just getting to know them. Each person only got to talk to three individuals, but after the speed dating activity we highlighted things we learned about each individual. Another nice little get-to-know-you game and worked well with the small amount of time we spent on it.
Infinite Vision Video
The video we watched today was about Aravind Eye Care, which was founded by Dr. G. Venkataswamy (Dr. V.) in 1976, and has a mission of eliminating needless blindness. It was very inspirational (as most have the videos have been), especially considering Dr. V. started his organization when he was much older than most. Over 1.4 million people are served every year by his clinics, and the video can be viewed here.
Conclusion
Today’s class was extremely fruitful in discussion, but not much of that is easily translated into a blog post. I think the main take-away is that social entrepreneurship is an emerging field/idea with a lot of energy and potential. While there are a few key leaders out there, we will see many, many more in the coming decades. Also, one of the greatest ways to explore a topic is to find similarly passionate individuals with different backgrounds and perspectives. The dialogue is rich with perspective and depth, and definitely led me to reconsider the idea of social entrepreneurship and what it entailed.