Quotes about Social entrepreneurs

The developed world has a vast, under-utilized asset that is not being leveraged to its best advantage: idealistic people who want to make the world a better place.  For most of a century, idealistic people have been encouraged to use anger, protest, lobbying, and legal action in order to make the world a better place.  While most certainly some of these behaviors and activities were necessary, we have reached the point at which the social benefit of such behaviors is decreasing.  We have reached the point at which creation, rather than attack, ought to be the first obligation of reformers.  The social entrepreneurship movement is the first tip of this iceberg.  We want to create a world in which all idealists realize that the creation of new enterprises is the most powerful way to make positive change in the world.  If all the energy that is currently invested in zero-sum political conflict was gradually transferred to the committed creation of sustainable enterprises, the cumulative impact on behalf of the good would be extraordinary.

What does an entrepreneur do? The first thing is they've given themselves permission to see a problem. Most people don't want to see problems ... Once you see a problem and you keep looking at it you'll find an answer.

The core psychology of a social entrepreneur is someone who cannot come to rest, in a very deep sense, until he or she has changed the pattern in an area of social concern all across society. Social entrepreneurs are married to a vision of, for example, a better way of helping young people grow up or of delivering global healthcare. They simply will not stop because they cannot be happy until their vision becomes the new pattern. They will persist for decades. And they are as realistic as they are visionary. As a result, they are very good listeners. They have to hear if something isn’t working; and, whenever they do, they just keep changing the idea and/or the environment until their idea works. They are intensely concerned with the how-to’s: How do I get from here to there? How do I solve this problem? How do these pieces fit together?

What does an entrepreneur do? The first thing is they've given themselves permission to see a problem. Most people don't want to see problems ... Once you see a problem and you keep looking at it you'll find an answer.

"You are to become a creator, not a competitor; you are going to get what you want, but in such a way that when you get it every other man will have more than he has now. "

What is entrepreneurship, after all? Bigness is not the issue. Poor people are the ones who take challenges every day. The guy who sells a hot dog on the street is as much an entrepreneur as anyone else. Getting his $50 loan to start could be as difficult as finding $50 million for someone else. All people are entrepreneurs.

Social entrepreneurs have existed throughout history. St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan Order, would qualify as a social entrepreneur -- having built multiple organizations that advanced pattern changes in his "field." Similarly, Florence Nightingale created the first professional school for nurses and established standards for hygiene and hospital care that have shaped norms worldwide. What is different today is that social entrepreneurship is developing into a mainstream vocation, not only in the United States, Canada, and Europe, but increasingly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In fact, the rise of social entrepreneurship represents the leading edge of a remarkable development that has occurred across the world over the past three decades: the emergence of millions of new citizen organizations.