Zara Khan, the Beyond Profit DC representative, reports from Leadership for a Better World.
In a world of SuperCorps and Honest Teas, it is clear that greed is no longer good on Wall Street. This trend is no recent phenomena – the Body Shop in the mid-seventies was a pioneer in establishing and adhering to core social values. And the socially-conscious consumer is increasingly becoming a major force in business and capitalism as we know it. Did we reach the tipping point because of the technological innovations like the internet which have increased our awareness of the other half that lives on less than $2/day? Or was it because of the need to find more meaning in life while facing the worst recession in modern history? Regardless of the source, social entrepreneurship is here to stay.
Consumers are willing to pay a premium for organic, but how do you know that you get what you pay for? How organic is organic? Is “free-range” just a euphemism for Alice-in-Wonderland-esque miniature cage doors? Our current market system allows us to quantify the bottom-line, but not the higher purpose. Our economic system has not adapted yet to quantify the value of social entrepreneurship. How do we know which companies are really doing “good?” The infamous dolphin-safe tuna fish example illustrates a commonly occurring dilemma – we cannot measure the success of social entrepreneurship.
However, despite these shortcomings, consumers and corporations are still willing to pay a premium for a higher purpose. Are we moving towards a more formal system of recognizing the value of social entrepreneurship – towards a social stock exchange?
