Social Entrepreneurs: these Unreasonable People
Many things have been already said about Social Entrepreneurship, and what fascinates me the most are the characteristics of a Social Entrepreneur.
First of all, the Social Entrepreneur distinguish him/herself from traditional entrepreneurs because he/she is not motivated by the possibility of making money or being better than their competitors. The Social Entrepreneur is passion-driven. He/she recognizes the issues in the world and, propelled by emotion, tries to find alternatives to addressing the issue about which he/she is most passionate.
The Social Entrepreneur has the ability to create solutions that other people considered as impossible. He/she is capable of finding
practical and usually simple solutions to social and environmental issues which may represent immense challenges. The solutions are so simple that can be easily replicated, but the social entrepreneur is not worried about it. He/she is incredibly ambitious, not about money or status (or self-ambition), but about being a transformative force. As a result, the social entrepreneur is opened to sharing best practices in order to provoke reforms or revolutions in dysfunctional systems and industries.
The Social Entrepreneur sees profit in unprofitable activities. This is because he/she is not pursuing just a financial profit. He/she is looking for another kind of profit which has been defined as blended value which focus on creation of not only financial, but mainly social and environmental values.
For the reason that the Social Entrepreneur is seeking alternatives to maximize SROI (Social Return on Investment), he/she may be obsessed about measuring the sometimes unmeasurable impacts of his/her solutions. The Social Entrepreneur knows that great impacts are very strong in mobilizing other change-markers. Considering the fact that he/she aims to scale up his/her venture in order to promote more change, it is really important to measure progress. As the social capitalism advances, more and more Social Entrepreneurs are now looking for and developing new forms to measure social and environmental impacts.
It was John Elkington though, who provided me with the most perfect description: a Social Entrepreneur implements a new approach and finds an innovative solution to a social problem which other people considered as unsolvable. A Social Entrepreneur doesn’t take the world for granted, but doesn’t take No for an answer either. A Social Entrepreneurs may be called crazy. A Social Entrepreneur may be defined as unreasonable.
In the words of the Irish playwright and co-founder of the London School of Economics:
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29 May 2013
por
Andrea Mara Hanai
IMSD /
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