Last month we introduced the term "social entrepreneur", so it seems appropriate that we should elaborate a bit on what that term means - AND what it means to US.

Let's look first at an "entrepreneur". The term originated as being someone who "undertakes an enterprise", but it's come to mean much more than that. There are a myriad of definitions available, but I'm going to synthesize them into one of our own and say that an entrepreneur is someone who effects a fundamental change in the way things are done. A great example is Ray Kroc. Ray didn't invent the hamburger or the fast food restaurant. He didn't even create the system of making hamburgers quickly and consistently. Ray developed a system that made it possible to replicate the McDonald's "experience" anywhere from Boise to Beijing. Ray fundamentally changed the face of "fast food" world-wide. THAT is what makes him an entrepreneur.

So what is that "secret ingredient" that makes someone a SOCIAL entrepreneur? It lies in that world "social". A SOCIAL entrepreneur is someone who sees a seemingly unsolvable problem in society and sets out to implement an innovative way to solve it. One of the best examples of this has to do with micro-finance. Starting in the 1970s a number of individuals and organizations began to demonstrate that the cycle of poverty in the Third World could be broken by the use of "micro-loans" that people would use to start businesses that could provide income to their families. This was a radically different approach to attacking poverty than large "development" or "charity" projects because it was locally directed by people who understood their culture and their community needs. This is attacking a SOCIAL problem (poverty) with an ENTREPRENEURIAL (fundamentally different) approach.