Top Five Controversies in Social Entrepreneurship

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published October 05, 2008 @ 09:14PM PST

As is the case with every field, not everyone working in the social entrepreneurship realm agrees about everything. In fact with the field so young, many of the core questions – who is and who isn’t a social entrepreneur? How relevant are definitions? can organizations scale and continue to meet local needs? – have not even settled around a standard orthodoxy yet. In other words, the field is wide open for interpretation and discussion, so join in.

1. Do visionary individuals or collective action drive social change?

Most of the talk about social entrepreneurship focuses on the hard work of individuals working to get projects off the ground. But some see a tension between the idea of collective action and the unique importance of visionary individuals. If we focus only on lauding Paul Farmer, do we forget the thousands upon thousands of local community health workers who implement the programs of Partners in Health?

The problem is embodied in Ashoka, an organization of social entrepreneurs which purports that individuals willing to take risks are  “the most critical single factor in…engineering…transformation,” yet the organization’s tagline: “everyone a change maker,” would suggest a more community focused sensibility. The question of individual vs. collective action is at the core not only of social entrepreneurship, but the larger debate about new forms of creative capitalism.

2. How narrowly should “social entrepreneurship” be defined and to whom should the term be applied?

As the term “social entrepreneurship” has gained media attention (not to mention financial opportunity), it's become fashionable to describe one's work as a “social entrepreneurship” project.  For some, this is an attempt to capitalize on the fundraising power of the term; others truly recognize the innovation and entrepreneurialism in their efforts.

There are questions, however, about who counts as a social entrepreneur? At this year’s Skoll World Forum, one of the honorees reminded the audience that poor were social entrepreneurs in their own right and needed to be recognized as such. But some field leaders such as the Sally Osberg and Roger Martin have started to worry that a blurrier, more inclusive definition of social entrepreneurship threatens to undermine the uniqueness of the field – a quality which has been a driving force in making  so many people interested in the first place.

3. Can an organization grow and still meet the local community needs?

Social entrepreneurship-focused grants tend to require that a program have the capacity (and desire) to expand to a variety of contexts – or “scale.” As Echoing Green puts it, their fellows’ programs must have “potential for replication and growth.” This is the “systemic” change social entrepreneurship can promise.

Yet this begs two questions: does a social entrepreneurship venture needs to be able to scale to be considered as such?  And, if it does scale, can it retain the local understanding necessary to serve the communities it aims to help? In a recent discussion with a group of student social entrepreneurs, Free the Children chief executive director Mark Kielburger said that retaining respect for culture – both organization culture and local culture – was the greatest challenge of scaling their efforts.

Organization face this question all time. Much of the later part of Greg Moretenson’s book Three Cups of Tea focuses on the practical challenges and trade-offs of of expanding his Central Asia Institute’s school building operations to include Afghanistan after developing such a coherent model in Pakistan.

The conclusion of Mortenson and organizations such as Room to Read and Free the Children that have faced similar questions is to move slowly and make sure you have the proper local infrastructure such as knowledgeable local staff. Still, the lure of scale can be hard to resist.

4. Do social entrepreneurs address root causes or just symptoms of social problems?

One of the central questions brought up in a recent critique of “philanthrocapitalism” by Michael Edwards is whether social entrepreneurship can ever address the root causes of social problems and deliver the systemic changes it promises, or whether it’s simply addressing symptoms rather than causes.

Movement leaders such as Ashoka point to examples in which social enterprises have impacted national policy and, arguably believe that social entrepreneurship can truly affect the roots of social problems.

Sometimes the lines get blurry, as is demonstrated by Teach for America. Teach for America places high achieving college students in troubled schools for two years, leading some to say that their impact is limited to the students they reach. Teach for America believes, however, that the two-year experience creates systemic impact by creating a generation of advocates for broader education reform.

5. Is the growing relationship between the nonprofit and for-profit sector a good thing?

Many of the leading proponents of social entrepreneurship, such as Jeff Skoll, Bill Gates, and Bill Clinton see great positive potential in the growing blurriness between the money-making world and the social change world. In their estimation, new forms of “creative capitalism,” and “blended value creation,” are perhaps just what the poor – particularly the “bottom of the pyramid” living on less than $2 a day – need to break the cycle of poverty.

Others worry that the profit imperative will always reign supreme in for-profit enterprises, turning social change into nothing more than a marketing technique; that business methods can sometimes exclude people who should have rights to access products like life-saving medicine; and finally that civil society serves as an important counterweight to business in impacting public policy.

Finally, while many social entrepreneurs tout how their organizations use “business strategies” to remain efficient, others reject the “magic bullet” of business solutions to their problems. As business author Jim Collins put it, “We must reject the idea—well-intentioned, but dead wrong—that the primary path to greatness in the social sectors is to become “more like a business.””