Giving social entrepreneurship a fair go

First to the business community. For those of you who think running a social enterprise is easy, think again. I think if more business people understood what it is like to manage a social enterprise with a double bottom line they would be more humble.

Turning to those in the management consulting world, there is much talk of unleashing the metrics, methods and talent pool of the private sector as the panacea to end problems of poverty and unemployment. But the private sector has a lot to learn about delivering better outcomes for customers. For example, social entrepreneurs in education are trying to change the performance of their customers – children - in vital skill areas. Finding different ways of helping them be better writers, better critical thinkers, able to attend university. When is the last time anyone asked Nike or Reebok if its shoes actually make anyone run faster or jump higher?

To the charity sector. It is no secret that many of you bristle at the mere term, "social entrepreneurship". Charity is still strongly suspicious of the business community, and has had good reason to be. But something very important is happening around the world, and it will happen in Australia as well. More and more in the business community are serious about addressing social issues. Businesses, large and small, are having to redefine their value proposition to include social and environmental as well as financial bottom lines. But if that does not convince you, then one thing should: poverty elimination will never be achieved if what your bottom line boils down to the number of grants or dollars you give away every year. Feeling good about giving money away is not a product. Welfare is not only disempowering, it is the reason why people remain poor.

To those in who think that using the tag of "social entrepreneur" may access new funds, think again. You can’t wake up one morning and decide you are going to be a social entrepreneur. Sit around with a group of social entrepreneurs and you will quickly realize that they can’t help being the way they are. They are born that way.

Similarly, for business school academics, I don’t believe you can teach someone to be a social entrepreneur. Of course, a social entrepreneur can learn to be better at management, financial accountability, human resource development … and there are courses to help them. But the continuous energy to imagine, innovate, implement, improve on innovation, scale up, diversify, defy the usual, break the patterns, move in a new direction … that exhausting and exhilarating quality of what makes a social entrepreneur … no training course will ever teach that.

Finally, to those of you in government. Don’t be fooled into thinking that a manager of a social enterprise and a social entrepreneur are the same. This will be a great temptation for governments in particularly. They are increasingly unable to deliver public services and the route to privatize those same services has a corrosive effect on equity. So, a confused idea of social entrepreneurs that equates them with people who run social enterprises has emerged. But social entrepreneurs tend to be less managers than they are practical visionaries that innovate because they have a thorough understanding of their field and the context in which they develop their innovation. One does not qualify as a social entrepreneur by getting a degree in the subject.

Social entrepreneurs are the flame that ignites the fire of social transformation. This is not business as usual. That flame must be fanned and nurtured by those who understand what social entrepreneurship is about and delight in its promise to achieve social transformation.