changing idea. The second is found in the attribute of both goal-setting and problem
solving creativity. The third is the potential for spread of the idea as a model and its
replication for widespread impact. The fourth is specifically the entrepreneurial
quality that is required to engineer large-scale systemic social change. The fifth is
that social entrepreneurs exhibit a strong ethical core because fundamental social
change requires those affected to take many leaps of faith which individuals will not
take if they do not innately trust the proponent of such change. In a business sense,
the role of a social entrepreneur is more related to leadership than to management.
This last feature can be one of the missing elements in traditional developmental
philosophy.
Unless societies can be brought on board and carried along as partners,
implementation of radical economic and social changes have little chance for
success. As a strategy, involving local populations in the solutions to their own
problems allows for the transfer of knowledge in both directions: both towards the
social groups to be affected and back again in the form of feedback and local
knowledge to the change makers. Therefore, we can say that social entrepreneurship
extends the definition of entrepreneurship by its emphasis on ethical integrity and
maximizing social capital rather than private profit.
6.5.1. Social Entrepreneurs: Three Studies in Disruptive Innovation
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man. (GEORGE BERNARD SHAW.)
The disruptive innovation is one of the most important innovation theories of
the last decade developed by Harvard professor CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN in his book
The Innovator’s Dilemma. The central dichotomy of Christensen’s work is that of
sustaining and disruptive innovation. Christensen’s theory, applied to the economic
sphere, can be applied to describe innovation in the social sphere, because social
entrepreneurs appear to use a similar strategy when tackling social/structural change.
They disrupt existing services or invent new services by implementing a new
structural change in society.
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