According to Wikipedia, a social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change.
Whereas a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur assesses success in terms of the impact s/he has on society.
While social entrepreneurs often work through nonprofits and citizen groups, many work in the private and governmental sectors. With this definition in mind, your professional and personal contribution to social entrepreneurial initiatives can be extremely fulfilling both professionally and personally.
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| Many leading universities are increasing their involvement with social innovation |
A biblical reference says to give and it will be given back to you pressed down and running over. Of course, in this case, giving come in form of professional contribution not monetary.
The beauty of social entrepreneurship as opposed to what may be considered a traditional non-profit is the fact that social entrepreneurs deploy innovative entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change.
So, in addition to providing for the social good, the solutions are normally innovative and far-reaching thus providing social entrepreneurs with many follow-on private sector venture opportunities after the social entrepreneurial project is finished.
This is why, as you contribute professionally to social entrepreneurial initiatives, you can tap into this innovation or innovative professional setting and address your personal and professional concerns many time over.
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| Organisations like Skoll Foundation promote social entrepreneurship to solve global challenges |
For example, social entrepreneurial initiatives often require you to interact and collaborate outside of a traditional corporate work environment or a traditional business development environment.
This creates immediate opportunities for social, professional and personal growth. Think about it.
Most people only interact professionally under the roof of a traditional company or employer and under the direction of a boss.
What happens when you interact outside of these traditional confines?
You learn, grow, expand your thinking, develop new socialization and professional skills sets and, most of all, help drive the development of new technology innovations and applications.
Another benefit comes from the fact that you position yourself to benefit from the global economy.
Although many organizations and businesses focus on being the lowest cost producer, innovation is really the key to prospering long term in a global economy and, as noted above, social entrepreneurial initiative drive the development of new innovations and applications.
To get better feel for this, consider the following example from Business Week quote:
"Think of the world economy as a ladder. On the bottom rungs are the countries producing mainly textiles and other low-tech goods. Toward the top are the U.S. and other leading economies, which make sophisticated electronics, software, and pharmaceuticals.
Up and down the middle rungs are all the other nations, manufacturing everything from still to autos to memory chips."
Viewed in this way, economic development is simple: Everyone tries to climb the next rung. This works well if the topmost countries can create new industries and products. Such invention allows older industries to move overseas while fresh jobs are generated at home.
But, if innovation stalls at the highest rung -- well, that's bad news for Americans, who must compete with lower-wage workers elsewhere (Business Week columnist, Michael J. Mandel)
Now, from this, it's clear that the solution is to innovate, innovate and innovate in order to stay at the top rung of the ladder. However, innovation is not necessarily linked to producing the next high tech gadget.
"The killer apps of tomorrow will not be hardware or software, but social practices. To make a real difference, ultimately, technologies must transcend gadgetry and become part of social fabric."
With this quote in mind, todays social entrepreneurial initiatives underwrite the very essence of weaving the benefit of technology into the social fabric of society or targeted groups of society.
The bottom line: you win by either originating social entrepreneurial initiatives or contributing professionally (part time, spare time, etc) to initiatives put forth by other entrepreneurs.
Some initiatives are large scale or global in scope and some are local. Its very easy to do a Google search under the search term social entrepreneurship or social innovation to research both global and local initiatives.
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About the author: Dwight Chestnut is a business consultant
who specializes in virtual enterprise building,
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and entrepreneurs at M.I.N.D.S.
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