social entrepreneurs are often held up
as today’s heroes. They are feted at the Clinton Global Initiative conference, grace the cover of
Fast Company, draw adoring crowds at Harvard Business School confabs, and even appear on
The Oprah Winfrey Show. Yet for all of the adulation, our understanding of the value that social
entrepreneurs bring to society remains fuzzy, and in some instances, even controversial.
Many of those who believe that social entrepreneurs play a vital role say that the evidence
supporting their views is straightforward and compelling. Social entrepreneurs matter for the
same reason that other entrepreneurs matter: because they generate new, disruptive models for
organizing human activity. The diff erence is simply, and importantly, that conventional entrepreneurs
focus on creating fi nancial value, whereas social entrepreneurs focus on creating social value.
Without initiatives undertaken by social entrepreneurs, the status quo would stand uncontested
and critical societal challenges would remain unresolved.
Those who question the importance of social entrepreneurs, however, say they are simply being
realistic. While entrepreneurs capture imaginations and tug at heartstrings, large fi rms are
quietly doing the work of creating stable jobs for workers and low-cost products for consumers.
“The greatest agents for sustainable change are unlikely to be [social entrepreneurs], interesting
though they are,” opined the Jan. 31, 2008, issue of The Economist in its review of John Elkington
and Pamela Hartigan’s book, The Power of Unreasonable People.