Think Globally, Act Locally

How to Change the World:  Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas

Lady Godiva story

Bornstein, David.  2004.  How to Change the World:  Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press.

Social Entrepreneurs

What are they?

Restless people.

People who solve problems on a large scale.

Social innovators.

“…transformative forces:  people with new ideas to address major problems who are relentless in the pursuit of their visions, people who simply will not take “no” for an answer, who will not give up until they have spread their ideas as far as they possibly can” (Bornstein, 2004:  1).

Entrepreneur

Origins of word:  French for “one who takes into hand” (2)

First used by French economist Jean-Baptiste Say

“to characterize a special economic actor – not someone who simply opens a business, but someone who “shifts economic resources out of an area of lower (productivity) and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield” (Bornstein, quoting Say, 2)

20^th C economist Joseph Shumpeter

called entrepreneurs a source of “creative destruction”

Famous Examples in Economy:

Henry Ford and Steve Jobs

**”they REIMAGINED cars and computers as mass-market goods, `destroyed’ the patterns in their industries, paving the way for leaps in productivity and triggering waves of change” (2)

Thus, social entrepreneurs

Advance systemic change

Shift behavior patterns and perceptions (2)

“one obsessive individual who sees a problem and envisions a new solution, who takes the initiative to act on that vision, who gathers resources and builds organizations to protect and market that vision, who provides the energy and sustained focus to overcome the inevitable resistance, and who—decade after decade—keeps improving, strengthening, and broadening that vision until what was once a marginal idea has become the new norm” (3)

Examples:

St. Francis of Assisi, founds the Franciscan Order

St. Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of the Society of Jesus

Others?

Global Explosion of the Citizen Sector

Central Europe (post-communist countries)

1988-1995 100,000 citizen groups form

France

1990s 70,000 new groups each year

Canada

Groups grew by 50% since 1987 – close to 500,0000

Brazil

1990s – a 60% increase – to 400,000 groups

US

Public service groups registered with IRS jumped 60% between 1989 and 1998

734,000

estimated there are 2 mln citizen groups in US

International citizen groups

leapt from 6,000 to 26,000 during 1990s (4)

Why the explosion?

1) 1960s-1990s global wave of democratization

Africa

Southern Europe

Latin America

Central/Eastern Europe

2)over longer cycle – 20th Century

people living longer

3)increased literacy

4)women’s movements, decline of racial barriers

(rise of identity politics)

5) technology – esp. communication, transportation

What’s different about the growth of citizen groups today?

1. Occurring on scale never before seen

2. Orgs more globally dispersed and diverse

3. Increasingly moving beyond stop-gap solutions to more systemic approaches – offering new recipes, not just cooking.

4. Less encumbered by church and state – in fact, exert considerable influence on governments – e.g., Int’l Campaign to Ban Landmines

Other examples?

What about religious or quasi-state institutions? 

Can these be founded by or staffed by “social entrepreneurs”?

5.  Forging partnerships with business, academic institutions, and governments

**refining government’s representational function???

How??  Do you agree?

6.  “open entry” increased competition, jostling for position, heightened attention to performance

How do we square Bornstein’s account of this explosion and the proliferation of social entrepreneurs with Putnam’s argument that civic engagement is declining in the US??

Can they both be right?