Exquisite Safaris Philanthropic Travel Social Entrepreneurship

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Exquisite Safaris Philanthropic Travel Social Entrepreneurship

Friday, May 02, 2008

Most companies today generally fall into one of two buckets, for-profit and non-profit. However, a third kind of company is growing in popularity with entrepreneurs, like myself, that threatens to change the paradigm of what it means to be in business. We call ourselves Social Entrepreneurs.

What it means to be a Social Entrepreneur is evolving, but a simple definition is engaging in social value-creating activity that can occur within or across the nonprofit, government, or business sectors. While virtually all enterprises, commercial and social, generate social value (e.g. jobs, equity, etc.), fundamental to this definition is that Social Entrepreneurship give equal weight to creating social value as well as personal or shareholder wealth.

Social Entrepreneurship extends beyond the more narrow scope of corporate responsibility that Wikipedia defines as, "a concept whereby organizations consider the interests of society by taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, communities and other stakeholders, as well as the environment." Social Entrepreneurs, by contrast, structure their business models to have a net positive effect on most, or all, of the aforementioned stakeholders through the normal course of business. Don't get me wrong, I applaud the efforts and good work companies accomplish with their CSR initiatives. My intention is simply to highlight the differences between the two.

The next logical question is, "Why don't Social Entrepreneurs just create nonprofit organizations?" Nonprofits are indispensable in that they help address inequity in the world in a way that socially responsible companies and/or governments are not. But the reality is, despite their best intentions and monumental efforts, nonprofits have not and cannot solve the issues they target. The resources are too limited and the problems too big.

Traditional approaches are still falling short, especially as the intensity and complexity of social problems have grown. These persistent problems seem to demand new models and new ways of thinking to crack them.

An entrepreneurial approach allows social organizations not only to maximize value from limited resources, but also to reallocate resources that would not otherwise be used to address inequity.