Social Entrepreneurs
are Critical
But what can be said of the unforgiving logic of scale? Given the
magnitude of 21st-century challenges—bringing an end to large- scale poverty, dealing with global climate change, and coping with emergent global threats to public health—what role can entrepre- neurs of any type play in realistic strategies? The skeptic may still maintain that a handful of small enterprises and nongovernmen- tal organizations, however well intentioned, will never make more than a dent in such immense problems. Whatever solutions exist will have at their center national governments, international orga- nizations, and multinational corporations.
Such a view has the veneer of realism, without the substance. If any- thing is more naive than an unquestioning belief in the transformative power of social entrepreneurs, it is an unquestioning belief in the trans- formative power of national governments, international organizations, and multinational corporations. As already indicated, in many parts of the world where change is most urgently needed, governments are as likely to be part of the problem as part of the solution. In such envi- ronments, all institutions structured to work through national govern- ments face serious handicaps. The 21st-century relevance of the United Nations and the World Bank—the two institutions most clearly tasked in the post-World War II order with addressing global challenges—is no more assured than that of social entrepreneurs.
Indeed, a somewhat paradoxical characteristic of our age is that even as technological and organizational changes occur on ever- compressing timescales, they increasingly lie beyond the direct control or influence of any single organization or coalition of orga- nizations. Many institutions that not long ago had the power to be globally dominant through scale, scope, and closed system devel- opment are now seeking to reinvent themselves by participating in global networks built on shared, often open, standards.
Such global trends provide the final piece to the puzzle of entre- preneurship and social value. In a highly networked world, small- scale actors have the capability to achieve large-scale impacts in ways achievable in the past only through raw institutional growth. As Elkington and Hartigan write in their aforementioned book,