Entrepreneurship vs. Social Entrepreneurship: What’s the Difference?
First — An Analogy
By the grace of Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver, food has become sexy in the eyes of the world. We fawn over the perfectly poached egg, plot road trips based on Guy Fieri’s escapades, and plug our PVR’s to record MasterChef like clockwork. We live in the dichotomy of being alienated by our lack of ability to mimic Bobby Flay, and our obsession to try anyways. The profession of cooking has been around since, well, forever — not unlike entrepreneurship. Not too long ago, however, becoming a chef or pursuing an entrepreneurial career path was undesirable, uncertain, and uncanny. Though still wrought with uncertainty, chefs are now heralded as geniuses and entertainers; and if you throw a stone in a city like Vancouver, New York, or San Francisco, you’re probably going to hit a startup founder or ten.
Now take one of my personal favourite shows on the ever-reliable Food Network — Chopped. If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably thought of how you’re going to handle yourself when Ted Allen tells you there are 20 minutes to cook an entree with sockeye salmon, plantains, barbecue sauce, and rainbow chard. But enough about me ordering a pizza — let’s imagine a scenario where there are two chefs, Chef A and Chef B, competing to make that delicious entree. Chef A has the basket I described above and all of the resources to complete the task; but Chef B’s plantains are very underripe, the sauce is too salty, the salmon has yet to be filleted, and the chard is half gone bad— not to mention they have less kitchen utensils and resources than Chef A. To most this is a disadvantage, but here is the kicker- Chef B chose this box. Oversimplified as this analogy may be, Chef A is the entrepreneur in this scenario, and Chef B is the social entrepreneur. Both are talented and have a vision, but Chef B chooses to work with what many others would not. They choose to cook because there is an unfair equilibrium- the ingredients must be used in spite of the extra layer of challenges he/she faces.
The victor in this scenario is an unknown; but maybe there’s more learning from choosing the “bad” box and winning with it. There is no blueprint for Chef B, no predecessor, no previous episode to draw from — and that’s how they want it to be. The key difference between these two people isn’t their abilities: it is their motivations. Chef A is motivated to create something that elevates his ingredients to a new level; Chef B is motivated by the ingredients, period — they exist in tandem.
Definition
If you’ve googled the term ‘social entrepreneurship’, you’ll find your head spinning with buzz words: “a burgeoning and disruptive space”, “innovative solutions”, and “the future of business”. It’s harder to find the real meat behind the fluff. As said in A Quiet Revolution, though the idea of social enterprise is trending worldwide, the days of mass adoption of this idea are still far out.
How is the world supposed to jump on board with social entrepreneurship if its definition isn’t clear in the minds of most?
Firstly, the best way to begin to understand is to see how the principles of entrepreneurship in general apply to both social entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs — cousins cut from a similar cloth, if you will. Both have the ability to identify and act on an opportunity, both embrace risk, and both are driven to follow through with their actions. In my opinion this mindset, despite the outcome of whether a new startup is the next unicorn or joins the droves of failures, is what distinguishes an entrepreneur from the rest of the world.
“Social” is the differentiating word between these two. In a 2007 Stanford Social Innovation Review article by Sally Osberg and Roger L Martin (a longer read for those who want to dig deeper), the authors outline that social entrepreneurship is directly tied to “mission-related impact.” The key distinction lies in a fundamental element of the venture; the value proposition directly targets an otherwise neglected market and creates a transformative social benefit. Plainly, there is a problem that affects a group of underserved people who do not have the financial/political/social means in which to solve it themselves, and the current traditional methods are failing. In all my nerd-ing out on this topic as a result of reading countless articles and falling into the TED Talk vortex, I defined social entrepreneurship as:
Mass Adoption
Business tools employed to work for society; not just the markets — too good to be true? Not at all, but it definitely comes with an uphill battle.
Some call this diagram the Diffusion of Innovation, but I just like to call it: ‘How the World Starts to Care about Something.’ It takes time, grit and determination from a few crazy innovators to get the rest of the world on board with a new normal. Innovators like Julia Child or Wolfgang Puck who undoubtedly inspired the work of the Food Networks celebrity chefs who now run the culinary world; leading to a new phenomenon of people loving their kitchen again. Trailblazing entrepreneurs from Henry Ford, to Richard Branson, down to Mark Zuckerberg, who have now made becoming an entrepreneur a viable career path. And then we have social entrepreneurship — still nestled in that small 2.5% range. There is Bill Drayton of Ashoka, Jacqueline Novogratz of Acumen and Mohammed Yunus of the Grameen Bank, but the time it will take for the world to know their names the way they know Steve Jobs or Bill Gates is unknown.
My hope? That the word ‘social’ doesn’t need to be something you tack onto the word ‘entrepreneurship’ for the world to understand.