Increasingly, small groups of people use multiple kinds of leverage to drive change on a disproportionate scale.”
Of course, the impacts of such leverage to drive change can be positive or negative. The Economist wryly directs readers’ attention to the name Osama bin Laden, which Elkington and Hartigan “tucked away” in a footnote associated with this assertion. The juxtaposition is apt, and significant. Just as terrorism is the ultimate in antisocial behavior, so might social entrepreneurship turn out to be the ulti- mate in terrorist preemption.
The essence of terrorism is to employ any means to achieve soci- etal change; the essence of social entrepreneurship is to link ends and means inextricably. The most powerfully viral idea inherent in social entrepreneurship is the oft-quoted Gandhian message: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” The message is not only a personal exhortation, but also a challenge to the old model in which private efficiencies are first maximized without regard to the social costs or benefits, and then resultant societal problems are fixed through the actions of governments or private foundations.
Whoever the agents of change turn out to be, it is clear that ad- dressing 21st-century challenges will require the creative initiatives of many. “Civilization becomes more complex and difficult in propor- tion as it advances,” the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset observed more than 70 years ago. “Of course, as problems become more complex, the means of solving them become more perfect. But each new generation must master these perfected means.” 5 As this century unfolds, existing institutions and incentives may or may not be able to cope with new complexities. As, and when, new approaches are required, thanks will be due to those exceptional entrepreneurs who have sought practical solutions to societal challenges. To para- phrase the great Alfred Marshall,6 “a score of Tatas” might thus do more to address global challenges than any government or other incumbent organization, whether corporate or not.