For some, entrepreneurship is foreign. And tangible change is unimaginable.

Colleen Wong
Aug 25, 2017 · 3 min read

Riding the subway train home, my mind got lost in a cloud of deeply unpleasant thoughts. Despite being packed inside a car with tens of people, I felt lonely. “I am nobody.”

I was heading home from an event hosted by Bard MBA in Sustainability about “Entrepreneuring with Purpose.” The panelists, professors and social entrepreneurs Hunter Lovins and Alejandro Crawford, asked us to think about what should work differently in this world, a key question that sparks social change. Innovation is then asking what obstacles exist and figuring out what resources are needed to make those changes.

Although the event was meant to inspire, I left the event feeling lowly about myself. As a young woman of color, several things in the world make me angry. Discrimination. Inequality. Injustice. Inequitable distribution of resources… I often feel powerless to change these things. I’m too softspoken. I’m too young. I don’t know enough. I don’t understand any of the jargon those big shots are using. It’s too risky. I’m a woman. I’m the only Asian American in the room. I’m too idealistic. My family doesn’t think I should do it. I can’t change things.

Those at the bottom rungs of the ladder of society bear the brunt of all the things that make this world a twisted place and carry all these types of thoughts in their conscience every second of the day. Many of these people know, experience, and understand exactly what make their lives miserable, but are not equipped with the resources to change those things (a sense of agency, information, social capital, financial capital, etc.). Furthermore, some are unable to even conceive of better lives. Our imagination is confined to what we’ve been exposed to. No, our imagination is not confined to what is possible, but it is confined to previous sensory perceptions from memory. In other words, if you’ve never been exposed to other ways of being, you may not be able to build upon and stretch your conceptions of what can be.

For those who have had the courage and privilege to imagine better, we need to enable them to make these visions come alive. We must go beyond asking them what they want and what they need. We must provide them with the mentorship, skills, and resources they need to change their realities in a nonpaternalistic way. This ecosystem of support is exactly what we need to broaden access to entrepreneurship so that the benefits of innovation truly reach us all. “Without an ecosystem to support them, and the prospect of bouncing back if they fail, too few can attempt the scalable enterprises that drive job growth” and change for the betterment of society.

We need to be in love with the people we hope to serve, not the ideas or change itself. We need to pay attention to people’s problems and support them in coming up with solutions. This means partnering with people from historically disadvantaged communities, working together, and providing these communities with the mentorship and capital (educational, social, and financial) to help them create these solutions. Most importantly, we have to learn how and when to pass over the baton and take ourselves out of the equation.

Ask what should work differently. Ask yourselves and others why those things are not working differently already. Believe in people. Help them believe in themselves. Support them. Work together. Thrive together.

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