The following article is based
on the luncheon keynote speech that was delivered by
the author at the pre-conference symposium, "Working
Convergences: Liberal Education, Creativity, and the
Entrepreneurial Spirit," at the 2005 annual meeting
of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
We are our parents' children but we're also very much
the children of the schools and the universities we
attend. As such, our commitment to liberal education
must include a commitment to shaping the "whole" person.
A liberally educated person is more than knowledgeable.
A liberally educated person is ready and confident to
deal with all dimensions in life.
There has been a profound historical change recently,
and it happened so quickly that perceptions about social
entrepreneurship are lagging way behind. The "social"
half of the world--health, environment, human rights,
rural development, literally half of the world's operations--in
a mere two and a half decades has become as entrepreneurial
and competitive as business. As a result of this change,
the citizen sector is rapidly closing the productivity
gap and the field is growing very fast. This affects
the strategic environment for business, government,
and universities, and it's opening up major new career
opportunities for everyone--students, donors, alumni
and alumnae, and other constituents. Most people have
not seen this change. However, this move toward entrepreneurship
greatly leverages the position of those committed to
liberal education.
The facts presented in Figure 1 are familiar but no
less staggering for that. It is profoundly troubling
that 50 percent of the world's people have 5 percent
of the world's income. This is not fair, sustainable,
or safe. But this is the reality. And this reality is
really where the Ashoka idea begins. After reading about
and loving Asia for years, I went to India as a nineteen-year-old
college student. Those statistics became people. As
the need to act became ever more pressing, the idea
for Ashoka was born and its heart began to beat. That
this happened while I was an undergraduate at Harvard
College is no accident. Being part of a culture steeped
in the liberal arts led me both to ask the right questions
and to feel empowered to question the status quo. The
origin of Ashoka illustrates how students can be encouraged
to be proactive, critical thinkers.
However, young people are the last large group of people
in the world we treat the way we used to treat women,
older people, people with disabilities, African Americans,
and colonialized peoples. We say to them, "We are in
charge of everything--the classroom, the workplace,
extracurricular activities where they still exist, and
sports--and we don't think you young people are very
competent or responsible." This is bizarre because what
young people are trying to do when they leave the world
of play is to learn how to be powerful contributors,
and have an impact on human society. For the most part,
adults discourage these efforts. So by the time young
people turn twenty or twenty-one, they have come to
see themselves as powerless and they haven't had the
opportunity to practice teamwork or leadership. Nor
have they practiced putting themselves in other people's
shoes. It is too late when people reach the ages of
twenty-five or forty to expect them to become confident
and ethical leaders.
Thus, we perpetuate a world in which only 2 or 3 percent
of the population are so-called "natural" leaders. What
a difference it would make for this society if we went
from 2 to 3 percent to 50 percent in the next generation.
Educators can play a big role in building our leadership
base by promoting in students the development of the
whole person. Everybody should see him or herself as
a changemaker. Once so empowered, a person can do anything--and
will be richly satisfied in life. Perhaps one can learn
computer science later in life, but it is incredibly
difficult to redefine oneself as a confident, powerful
person and leader without having previously experienced
being powerful or having practiced the necessary underlying
skills.
Ashoka's core objective is "everyone a changemaker"--to
help create a world where everyone has the freedom,
confidence, and skills to turn challenges into solutions.
This is the fullest, richest life. A society of such
people will evolve and adapt faster and more surely
than any other: each person, rather better than the
body's white blood "attack" cells, courses through society
spotting challenges and then conceiving and putting
in place the next, better solution.
The Social Entrepreneur
The job of a social entrepreneur is to recognize when
a part of society is not working and to solve the problem
by changing the system, spreading solutions, and persuading
entire societies to take new leaps. Social entrepreneurs
are not content just to give a fish or to teach how
to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized
the fishing industry. Identifying and solving large-scale
social problems requires social entrepreneurs because
only entrepreneurs have the committed vision and inexhaustible
determination to persist until they have transformed
an entire system. The scholar comes to rest when he
expresses an idea. The professional succeeds when she
solves a client's problem. The manager calls it quits
when he has enabled his organization to succeed. Social
entrepreneurs can only come to rest when their vision
has become the new pattern all across society.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to solve the
world's problems at the national level. We now must
also work at the global level. We can no longer create
a safe financial regulatory system other than at the
global level. The same holds for the environment and
many other areas. So ours is the first field that has
to be operationally integrated globally. To the degree
that we succeed, we will be building a web of trust
that will help support institutions that will ultimately
pull the world together. To succeed, many of the laws
and frames of mind that today divide the world will
have to change. There is tremendous work here for the
law schools and many scholarly departments. However,
the most powerful integrative force, which is just now
becoming visible, will be the competition between social
entrepreneurs as our field moves rapidly onto the global
stage. As entrepreneurs attack problems that cannot
be solved without solutions that are at least in part
global, their first successes will be quickly copied;
and competitors instantly will be looking for the next
step.
This same competition between entrepreneurs will drive
the reintegration of the business and social halves
of society. These halves drifted apart into a condition
of mutual incomprehension over the last three centuries
as business became even more entrepreneurial and competitive,
and therefore productive, and the citizen sector lagged.
Over the last two and a half decades, the citizen sector
across the continents adopted the same competitive,
entrepreneurial approach and raced to catch up in productivity.
As the two sectors draw closer to one another, both
groups of entrepreneurs are beginning to seek out mutually
profitable collaborations. One early example: a deal
between Ashoka fellows serving small farmers in Mexico
and the leading irrigation equipment company is now
allowing small farmers to get drip irrigation for the
first time, and has opened a huge new market for the
company.
Entrepreneurial Quality
Because entrepreneurial quality is so much the heart
of the matter, let's explore it further. Again, from
deep within, these people are compelled to change the
whole society. From childhood, an entrepreneur intuitively
seeks out an area of interest, for example, health,
and then begins the long search for an idea that will
be his or her vehicle for leaving a scratch on history.
Ashoka does in-depth life histories of every candidate.
These interviews leave little doubt that successful
entrepreneurs have a strong and long-term internal compass
that guides them. Such entrepreneurs study the field--its
people, its institutions, its technology, its anthropology,
the whole thing. Only after they have done this is it
possible for them to reach the moment when they know
they have an idea that really is the next step for the
field. They also have to have learned how to cause major
structural social change. Once they have reached this
magic moment in their lives, all they want to do is
pursue their idea. This is the moment when Ashoka first
steps in, a moment when a little means the world.
Once one understands the centrality of changing the
whole society to the entrepreneur, entrepreneurs are
easy to spot--even long before they have made their
mark. They are married to their vision--and will stick
with it for decades if needed. They are equally focused
on the "how to" questions. They ask themselves: How
do I get from here to my goal fifteen years from now?
How do the pieces fit together? How do I solve this
and the next problem? Each such entrepreneur encourages
many others to care for society's well-being and to
champion changes they feel are needed. The multiplication
of such decentralized concern and effective action is,
of course, the essence of the democratic revolution.
What qualities define an effective social entrepreneur?
First, the person must be creative in both goal-setting
and problem solving. Second--and this is the toughest
screen--is entrepreneurial quality. This is not leadership,
or the ability to administer, or the ability to get
things done. The driving force here is the fact that
such a person is emotionally, deeply committed to making
change throughout the whole of society. Once one understands
that this commitment itself is the driving force, then
everything else follows. The final quality essential
to success as a social entrepreneur is ethical fiber.
People will not make significant changes in their lives
if they do not trust the person asking them to do so.
Nor can anyone build a collegial fellowship or community
if there are even a small number of people whom the
rest intuit they cannot trust. We certainly do not need
any more untrustworthy public leaders.
Some of your students will become entrepreneurs. All
of them will be profoundly affected by the entrepreneurial/
competitive transformation of the citizen half of society.
Indeed, so will business, government, the universities,
and scholars and journalists who must understand and
interpret the forces at work in society. The citizen
sector offers new and very attractive career opportunities
for people at every stage of life. It is generating
jobs at roughly three times the rate of the rest of
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) economies. The work is important, meaningful,
and a good fit with a person's values. One's colleagues
are value-driven. There are fewer glass ceilings--and
none for the entrepreneur. Salaries are gaining ground
on business for the first time in centuries as the citizen
sector closes the productivity gap. The sector now needs
all types of people--graphic artists and CFOs as well
as entrepreneurs. Someone from our sector is now more
likely to be more interesting to the other guests at
dinner than the investment banker seated across the
table. This transformation is just as relevant to institutions.
Business or government strategists could ignore the
citizen sector five years ago reasonably safely. In
five years to do so would constitute malpractice.
A huge, fast-growing sector with high élan,
low costs, and great savvy is the elephant in the room.
Colleges and universities can do a great service to
their students, society, and scholarship by introducing
and explaining the elephant. This change has come with
extraordinary historical rapidity, leaving understanding
lagging way behind. The resulting perception gap is
so great that it has become in itself a drag. If people
do not see opportunities, they cannot take them.
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