Harvard Social Enterprise Conference 2009 | Part 1

Forbes.com recently named the Harvard SEC 2009 one of the big 12 conferences of 2009, the only student-run conference to make it on that list along with TED2009 and the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, to name a few.

Linda Rottenberg of Endeavor kicked off this year’s conference with an opening keynote that helped to paint the picture of where the movement of social enterprise has been, highlighting the people who helped to bring the movement to the mainstream, discussing the times we are living in now where innovative solutions to intractable social problems are needed more than ever, as well as the opportunities and threats that social entrepreneurs face when trying to deliver some of these innovative solutions – solutions that sometimes draw on (limited) resources, yet have the potential to impact hundreds of millions of lives in a positive way, most especially in the developing world.

To highlight some of the challenges that social entrepreneurs have faced in the past, Rottenberg told the story of sitting on a panel with Pamela Hartigan, Muhammad Yunus and Bill Drayton at the World Economic Forum in early 2000. Nowadays, each of these people are familiar names in the world of social enterprise and social change. However, back then, they were ‘unwelcome’ and were treated as ‘gate-crashers’ to the party, with no one showing any interest in their business solutions to development for the world’s poor.

But things have changed, and Rottenberg, weaving the story of the social entrepreneurship movement with Endeavor’s own story as an organization, posited three key developments that collectively, were the tipping point for the movement to enter into the mainstream. She calls this the ‘Great Man’ theory of social entrepreneurship.

1. In early 2006, Bono launched Product (RED) and in the process, he morphed from rock star to social entrepreneur. All of a sudden, social marketing and social entrepreneurship became cool.

   

2. In late 2006, Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Grameen Bank and the field of micro-credit. The movement now had a leader recognizable on the world stage.

 

3. And finally, in January 2008, Bill Gates used the Davos forum to launch his vision for creative capitalism, “where business and non-profits work together to create a market system that eases the world’s inequities”. Gates also used this opportunity to announce his decision to step down from Microsoft in order to devote himself full-time to global health, development and education through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Because of these developments, it seems to Rottenberg that we have moved beyond having to explain what social entrepreneurship is to the general public.

However, I still find myself having to explain what social entrepreneurship is, and this includes social innovation and systems thinking as well, whenever I explain to a friend what it is that I do as a profession. And even then, I find that there are still many, many different definitions of social enterprise out there used by people from markedly different perspectives and backgrounds.

One thing to note however, is that at the heart of the social enterprise movement, are people driven by the vision of a world that is better than the one that already exists – harnessing the full potential of human capital, if you will. It seems to be that social entrepreneurs are problem-solvers and not idealists; are driven by innovation and not charity; and do not believe in hand-outs but rather, use entrepreneurial strategies to achieve social change.

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Download You can download and read the full text of Linda Rottenberg’s speech here.

Coming soon Harvard SEC 2009 – Part 2 – Recap of breakout panel discussions on micro-finance, building capital markets in the developing world, and social media that matters, as well as the 10th anniversary keynote panel.

Posted via web from Renjie Butalid

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