Zara Khan, the Beyond Profit DC representative, reports from Leadership for a Better World.
With the recession still looming in the background, many recent graduates are looking towards “socially responsible” businesses rather than Wall Street. If job security is widespread across industries, then why not do something “good?” But what happens when everybody wants to do something good?
Socially responsible businesses are receiving record applications from often times overly-qualified individuals. It is becoming more difficult to land the less risky job with an established, socially responsible blue-chip firm. And thus the opportunity cost social entrepreneurship has decreased. But does that mean that there will be more social entrepreneurs? Not necessarily, because it is not willingness to take risk is that separates a social entrepreneur from an overachiever, but rather optimism according to Professor Paul C. Light, Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Servie, Wagner School at NYU.
He defines social entrepreneurship as “innovative activity designed to solve an intractable problem.” So is one born with this entrepreneurial ethic, or does it develop over time? “Sometimes you just know it when you see it. Sometimes it comes from being oppressed within an organization,” says Light. Regardless of where it comes from, social entrepreneurship is a continuing battle. “The trick isn’t to innovate once, but twice, three times and continue onward adapting and changing.”
Social Enterprise Alliance Said,
October 4, 2009 @ 12:29 am
As to whether the “entrepreneurial ethic” is something you’re born with or is cultivated, let’s look at the private sector. Business entrepreneurship has been enormously important to the success and competitiveness of our economy. We have an ecosystem of support working for business entrepreneurs, from MBA programs to networks and associations, chambers of commerce, and ongoing professional development. We at the Social Enterprise Alliance look forward to the day when we have the same culture of support for social entrepreneurship. Such support is on the rise as more schools and universities develop programs in social entrepreneurship. This is a great trend.
And a much-needed one.
Cultivating social entrepreneurship is essential to our future, because it’s key to the success of our society over the long haul: if we don’t find ways to address intractable problems like poverty and global warming, these problems will continue to affect everybody, regardless of class, and affect the effectiveness and well-being of our society and economy.