[note: this is a reposting of an entry that was inadvertenty deleted]
There’s undoubtedly a lot of energy around the idea of social entrepreneurship, but I do wonder if the discussion is too much skewed towards the business and organizational side of things rather than on what we really want to achieve. So I was interested to receive an email from Paola Grenier, who’s doing a PhD on social entrepreneurship at the London School of Economics, who’s thinking of writing an article ‘challenging the dominance of business schools in the development of research and and education into social entrepreneurship’.
“I wanted to say something”, she writes, “about how issues such as democracy and peace building, amongst others, are not necessarily ones where business schools have the most to offer. And that if we really want to encourage people to bring about social innovation and change for the better they need to know about more than business planning, financing, marketing and typical business topics. They also need to know about different forms of democracy, the nature of reconciliation, political processes, roles and responsibilities of governments, and so on. In other words, social justice needs to be a bit more centre stage in social entrepreneurship.
“Otherwise I have this sense that many promising social entrepreneurial initiatives will end up as large, bureaucratic organizations focused on financing, marketing, growth strategies - remarkably similar to what are often thought the worst characteristics of the existing large development agencies.”
No one disputes that social entrepreneurs need to be ‘businesslike’ and acquire business skills. The question is: are we getting the balance right? Assuming that we really do want to change the world rather than tinkering around.