Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship...

Despite the year lag since my last post, I am indeed still alive and kicking - and taking a class on Social Entrepreneurialism and Innovation to boot. Part of my grade for the class is to make two posts to socially 'aware' sights such as http://www.socialedge.com/ etc. every week.

We also have a major load of reading to do, so I read an assigned article "Rediscovering Social Innovation from the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and wrote a comment - which the page would not accept! Argh!

But never fear - I am determined to have my say on this, my global platform. So for your reading pleasure: here is the article,
http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/rediscovering_social_innovation/

And here is my comment:

The article attempts to elevate social innovation and separate it from social entrepreneurialism and social enterprise. But at the same time, the authors endorse tearing down the silos that isolate business, government, and NGO sectors so that shared knowledge and resources can be harnessed to solve our social problems. From my limited view (MBA graduate student with a desire to do good while making a good living) social entrepreneurs and social enterprise are valuable tools that deserve a place in the existing belt of public, private, and not-for-profit agencies. And while it might be ideal to involve all of these tools to improve social issues, each tool is suited for its particular use. It’s easy to identify that problems exist, e.g. poverty, hunger, aids, sexual exploitation, drug addiction, etc. Coming to agreement on the best solution is not so simple. I believe it is in our best interest to unleash, unfetter, promote, provoke if necessary, and support players in any sectors who bring social improvement to bear. And here is a point where I agree wholeheartedly with the authors: hero worship does not contribute to social improvement. Just as there is no one person that can lead every individual toward social innovation, there is not one methodology that will enable every individual to enact social change. So during this classification process, while the field is being defined and classified, I hope that players in all sectors, be you activist, innovator, bean counter, entrepreneur, student, teacher, or volunteer, will continue your efforts to effect change, and not be entangled and slowed by the discussion.

So chew on that for a while. There will be more coming, I'm sure of it...