Impact: The Spark to Ignite a Better Future
By Carter Crockett, Ph.D.
Guest Writer
How do you explain the launch of a “movement”? This conceptual article attempts to outline some of the motivating factors fueling the social enterprise movement in order to demystify the confusing language and logic that have accompanied the growing interest in such activity.
Great Expectations
You may recognize the “law of rising expectations” as a phrase used by your professor of economics or political philosophy. Simply put, this is the notion that human beings are not satisfied today by what may have satisfied our parents’ generation.
In a prior era, a job needed to pay the bills (and avoid breaking any laws), and for much of America’s history, that seemed difficult enough. Today’s workforce seeks something more, and it may be simply because our ancestors succeeded in meeting their goals. They have bought for us the privilege of aiming for something higher. This unwritten law explains why I am not satisfied to work for a mere paycheck, and at the same time it explains why my parents cannot understand why I would want anything more.
Never let it be said that privilege is a pre-requisite for social enterprise, however. Necessity is, after all, the mother of invention. The most noble enterprises will inevitably spring from some of the most dire circumstances.
Great Knowledge Infers Great Responsibility
We live in a time of unprecedented information, reach and change. Never has it been easier to gain visibility to the issues affecting our world, our nation, or our neighborhood. Technology has made it easier to communicate broadly, quickly and to people we had no prior connection to. As a result, people are keenly aware of the need for change, and they are looking for ways to take change in their own hands.
Prior generations placed trust in large institutions to address issues and prevent bad behavior, but according to one recent study, trust in such institutions is collapsing, in America and beyond. Globally, trust in government, non-profit and business institutions has diminished in recent years as global citizens question institutional capacity for doing what is right or adequately address looming problems. At the same time, people seem to expect more of the institutions they interact with directly each day: their place of work. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, employees expect their employer to aim for more than profitability; 67% of employees expect their employer to join them in advocating for social change.
Given these trends, it is not difficult to understand the interest in social enterprise. Thankfully, there are a growing number of grassroots activists seeking to combine the best features of existing institutions with the innovative spark of a startup in order to ignite social change.
Great Hope: Judo for Founders
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” This quote is attributed to both Abraham Lincoln and Peter Drucker, two wise men that encouraged practitioners in different times and spheres of society. Perhaps the most distinctive trait of human beings is our capacity to imagine and build together what had never before been conceived. This is a source of great hope for humanity and it also explains why a growing number of people can imagine an institutional form that explicitly creates a better future for all.
“In the United States, we have a very healthy economy but a very sick society. So perhaps social entrepreneurship is what we need the most — in health care, education, city government, and so on.” — Peter Drucker, Inc Magazine, 1996
An organization’s definition is most apparent at the beginning, when the founder(s) establish the purpose and values to guiding all that will follow. Thus, organizational founders have a profound opportunity to predict the future by creating it, one venture at a time.
The founder of a social enterprise seems to be engaged in a form of judo… absorbing the power of the marketplace in order to make an impact in matters that were once addressed by institutions that have diminishing influence in recent years (government, non-profit, civic and religious organizations).
I believe the young workforce in California possess a rare genius for mashing together disparate models to create new, disruptive solutions. This helps explain why some of the greatest social enterprises of our time (Wikipedia, Patagonia, Homeboy Industries) were launched between San Diego and San Francisco. Californians have a healthy irreverence for “the way things are done”; a disproportionate number of pioneers willing to ditch convention and discard formal boundaries. Exhibit A: where but San Diego could you celebrate such unconventional thinking while washing down a kimchi taco with a Grazias Vienna Cream Ale?
Given these distinctive traits of our region, we should have great hope for the social enterprises that are emerging. Please send me the names of any pioneering individuals you know so we can accelerate this movement together.
Onward and upward!
-Carter
Editor’s Note: “Impact” — a series brought to you by Carter Crockett and Fresh Brewed Tech — features key insights from San Diego’s impact ecosystem, those with the grit to build a better world, one social enterprise at a time.
