Social Entrepreneurship – How do you change the world?  A little or a lot? 

All of the entrepreneurs that I love and am excited about have 2 things in common:

• They love what they do
• They believe what they do will change the world

I happened across an article the other day posted on Forbes.com by the Ashoka Marketing Team: ‘Be More Than Your Job’, which touched on both of these sentiments as important and integral to social entrepreneurship.  Yet, to hold the title of ‘social entrepreneur’, one must change the world in a great scope – change thousands of lives, solve the most pressing social problems, tackling major social issues.

I’ll have a few blogs coming up soon on the issue of social entrepreneurship, B-Corps (socially beneficial corporations) and why all of this is important, but I wanted to begin with the idea of the grandiosity of the current title of social entrepreneurship, which I feel is limiting.  Many entrepreneurs who ‘love what they do’ and ‘believe that they will change the world’ are NOT working to cure disease, feed millions, or save the planet – they are working to bring the joy of play into children’s lives; develop a better/more philosophical role playing option to game players, or helping to expand people’s minds in some way or another.  I believe these ventures have social consideration as well, and while not distinctly ‘social entrepreneurism’ – they are important ventures and should receive the same kudos, attention, and benefits (as they come into being!) as the more dramatic social entrepreneurship ventures.

Take a look at the idea of ‘creation’.  There is a similar rift in the belief of what makes an achievement an actual creation:  Some definitions dictate that true creation must have vast historical (social) significance; others hold a more generous perspective.

In writing on the History of Technology, Peter Marsh for the Financial Times recently (2012) noted that “scientists and technologists rarely discover anything completely new; they generally build on what is already known.” He goes on to identify three general types of creations: Product (ex: Railway), Process (ex: Writing), or Organization (ex: Factory System).  In this tight view, creation is rare and must achieve massive historical significance.

The US Patent system is a bit more generous, providing protection for “new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.”[1]  Copyright, on the other hand, protects creations that are unique in form (rather than unique in idea), regardless of historical merit.[2]  Thus a copyright protects the idea of creation as something having a personal benefit.

Using these guidelines of legal definitions of creation, and conferring with mainstream definitions, it is not irresponsible to conclude that something created must hold value for either oneself or others.  There are 2 intriguing points here, first: that creation of ‘something’ is necessarily the fruit of creativity.  One can not be truly creative unless they produce something.  Secondly, that the product of creativity is a contribution – to ourselves or humanity as a whole.

I pose that a discussion of social entrepreneurship is quite similar to a discussion of creation – that if an entrepreneurial venture transforms any part of society – including the self or one or two people – then it is validly a social entrepreneurial venture.  And that’s an important sentiment as the face of entrepreneurship changes to benefit those who are contributing to society and moving it forward.  B-Corps and start-up organizations that seek out and support ventures that benefit society are becoming more prominent – the way of the future – and as such they are helping to shape the future of our world by supporting which ventures succeed.  Money and profit is always the bottom line, but by these supportive ventures pouring money into socially responsible ventures over other endeavors, it is important to define social benefit.

Is it possible for a contribution or creation to benefit our self or just a few others, and would that really transfer to a social entrepreneurship venture? To benefit just one person, it must impact us, change, or transform us – for the better.  Perhaps such betterment of that person must transform the world a bit in kind.

I’m intrigued by the idea of the historical benefit (from creation) or social benefit (from social entrepreneurship): who decides if one’s work is historically or socially relevant? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of ‘Flow’ and ‘Creativity’, has written extensively on the subject in describing ‘flow’ as designing, discovering, or creating something new, in a manner enjoyable to the person in ‘flow’, but also, with a historical impact.   I believe this sentiment can also transfer to a look at social relevance.

Are there commonalities among creators and socially responsible entrepreneurs, then? Csikszentmihalyi proffers a succinct answer in The Flow of Creativity: creative persons are unanimous in one respect: “they all love what they do”. And what people like most about what they love to do is to design, discover, or create something new.   It’s a feedback loop.  I love what I do, which is to create something new, and that causes me to love what I do.  (Yet, loving what you do may not necessitate that you create, or create something socially relevant.)

Csikszentmihalyi notes the major elements of enjoyable experiences which feed this process of creation: notably, there is no worry of failure, and self-consciousness disappears — basically, we do not care what others think of our output. Or, to put it another way, we can’t create anything good unless we’re not thinking about creating something good. We have to love the process. We have to love and enjoy the transformation. Not the output, not the product.

We might view social entrepreneurs as world builders, so the connection with creation is paramount.  Creators have to focus on what they love and build a process that they are in love with; they cannot worry about the output or the reception, or the impact, be it quarterly revenues or some quantification of social impact.  They have to trust their gut that what they’re doing will help, eventually, but to muddle them with defining just how they’ll do that is handicapping them.

Venture capitalists and BCorps and all sorts of social-responsibility mavens must give the entrepreneur breathing room and trust that even the little guy with a little idea might change the world just a little bit, whether they’re opening minds, helping people play, discover their strengths, or learning how to help others.  That’s important too.