The popularity of social enterprise—business with a social mission—is surging. MBA courses on the subject are oversubscribed and the number of social enterprises is growing around the world.
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An estimated 200 million children work in developing countries. Another 25 million people are enslaved in factories, farms, mines, and homes.
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Thirty-four years ago, Muhammad Yunus had a very good idea: he made a collateral-free loan of $27 to a group of 42 families in rural Bangladesh, to be used as working capital for home-based basket-weaving businesses. When that loan generated a profit for the families and was repaid in full, he demonstrated not only that the working poor could be credit-worthy, but that even a small loan could make a major difference to their economic situation.
Working in the private sector early in my career, I gained an appreciation for commerce as a powerful force for meeting economic and social challenges and, for that reason, naturally thought in commercial terms when attempting to bring affordable mobile telephony to Bangladesh. In fact, when I conceived what is now Grameenphone, I made a conscious decision to organize it as a for-profit company.
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When asked by journalists and donors just how many lives Partners in Health has saved in Haiti, to say nothing of the additional 12 countries where the organization also works, PIH founder Paul Farmer defaults to medical shorthand: TNTC, too numerous to count. To the question, then, of whether social entrepreneurs can create “large-scale change,” my answer is an unqualified yes.
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This year’s Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University’s Said School of Business comes at a moment of both great celebration and great disquiet.
On the one hand, the United States has finally taken a significant step forward on health care reform, the war in Iraq seems to be ending, and there seems to be a hint of progress on global climate change.
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The world can no longer afford business as usual. Our global economy faces unprecedented challenges, whether from climate change, ever-increasing food and water shortages, surging populations, or myopic financial markets obsessed with short-term gains and growth at all costs.
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The world’s oceans are in trouble. According to the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), half of the world’s fisheries are now fully exploited.
Welcome to my blog from the Skoll World Forum, which brings together social entrepreneurs from around the world. The Forum runs from April 14 to April 16 in Oxford, England, and I’ll am filing daily reports with the latest news and views from Oxford.
To question whether social entrepreneurs can achieve large-scale change is to doubt the existence of Florence Nightingale, Maria Montessori, William Wilberforce, Fazle Abed, Jimmy Wales, or the 2,700 Ashoka Fellows!
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Skeptics of social entrepreneurship often comment, “Sure, social entrepreneurs are doing good things, but can they ever scale their impact sufficiently to put a dent in the enormous and persistent problems we face?” Scaling impact is a very serious and challenging issue, but we need a better way of framing the conversation.
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One of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the coming decades is to heal the relationship between industrial civilization and the environment that sustains us. In the context of this larger healing, the role of healthcare needs to be transformed and enlarged.
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In an MBA world, I remain an unreconstructed, unrepentant MPhil. And that degree was in city planning in the last century, not business management in this one.
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In March 2010, Craig Kielburger of Free The Children spoke with McKinsey’s Mary Kuntz about his organization’s work in Haiti after the earthquake in January.
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- A grassroots approach to emerging-market consumers
- Audio interview with Paul Farmer
- BBC: Alvin's Guide To Good Business
- CASE on Scaling Social Impact
- Clinton's Cure For Capitalism
- Developing entrepreneurship among the world’s poorest
- Developing the field of social entrepreneurship [PDF]
- How companies manage sustainability: McKinsey Global Survey results
- Innovative business models for the poor
- NPR: Protecting Companies that Mix Profitability, Values
- Nurturing entrepreneurship in India’s villages
- Social Entrepreneurship in the Middle East
- The Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs
02 Jun 2010 · 04:37:10 AM GMT
Networks are the glue that increasingly bind us together (rather than class or geography). I think this is important to note because it is a new type of glue for a new type of business. For those looking to complement networking with a physical p...—Jason Conner
In response to Social enterprise: It takes a network
28 May 2010 · 03:31:44 PM GMT
Thanks Raj for an interesting perspective. I disagree that social enterprises are at a comparative disadvantage to business. I think this is an old-fashioned, 20th century view. My favourite definition of a social enterprise is that they are...—Garry Smith
In response to Social enterprise: It takes a network
28 May 2010 · 07:26:22 AM GMT
Social Enterprise can be a much better success if the participating entities share the same pain, have same vision and vow to work together—Puneesh
In response to Social enterprise: It takes a network
26 May 2010 · 01:02:17 PM GMT
Congratulation on the first note of good topic. The topic coin like MBA oversubscribed agreed. “must compete in the marketplace and create social impact is an even taller order.” yes indeed it tough. but somewhere I must tell ...—Ankur Sen
In response to Social enterprise: It takes a network
24 May 2010 · 11:02:22 AM GMT
I found this fascinating from the perspective that for a business to have a social mission, it must be presumed to handicapped in some way that must be overcome. Any business run with the welfare of employees and customers as paramount has a soci...—Joan McClusky
In response to Social enterprise: It takes a network
24 May 2010 · 04:10:52 AM GMT
Great article: I like the use of Paul Farmer as an example (and how powerful is “TNTC” as a term?) and the impact in Haiti, and also on policy. For me, this is a welcome focus on ‘scale of impact’, rather than on ‘sc...—Nick Temple