markets; in some cases, entrepreneurs may act directly to enhance human capabilities, increase freedom, or build levels of trust. The Aravind Eye Care System provides a striking example. The gift of sight is an end in itself. In this way, Aravind creates social value directly, in a manner not mediated through a market transaction, and captured only indirectly through market-based measures of societal progress such as GDP.
Sen’s work fundamentally broadens the scope of information on which determinations of social value can be based, suggesting potential metrics for value creation that go beyond dollar-denomi- nated consumer value and producer value. The restoration of sight is the restoration of a basic human capability in a way that the sale of an ice cream cone simply is not. Such enterprises, and the social entrepreneurs who create them, derive their impacts not from mar- ket exchange, but rather from the inherent value of the human lives that their actions help to preserve or enhance.