How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 15 No. 2 (2005) ISSN: 1546-2250 How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas Bornstein, David (2004). New York: Oxford University Press; 256 pages. $30. ISBN 0195138058. This engaging and insightful book introduces the notion of social entrepreneurs, illustrates it with remarkable examples from all over the world, and sets out the patterns distinguishing effective social entrepreneurs. Clearly, the deliberate nomenclature of social entrepreneur—which some might think is an oxymoron—is meant to separate these activities from traditional voluntary efforts and what Bornstein calls the “romanticism” of many charitable ventures. One of the most interesting themes centers on the parallels between social entrepreneurs and business entrepreneurs. The tolerance of risk, the passion for new ideas, the integrative strategies, the creation of value and marketing of products, the ability to think outside the box are all similar; but where the conventional entrepreneur is focused on the bottom line and the potential for profit, the social entrepreneur seeks to create public goods that would not happen but for their efforts. This effort to delineate and highlight the role of social entrepreneurs leads to some confusion. Although Bornstein and leading social entrepreneurs want to advance the professionalization of socially entrepreneurial roles and make these activities more “scientific,” i.e. 402 systematic, evidence-based, and amenable to generalization, the book’s characterizations veer towards the personalistic rather than analytic. The book is sprinkled with references to “specific and rare personality types,” “obsessive individuals,” “idea champions,” and other labels that defy any effort to understand the motivations driving social entrepreneurs. Bornstein in fact rejects the argument that social entrepreneurs are defined by their use of business acumen for social ends, arguing instead that they are distinguished as transformative forces for systemic change. This blurring of individuals and impacts complicates these definitional efforts. The conflation of the citizen sector with civil society, voluntary associations, nonprofit sector, nongovernmental organizations and other non-market and non-state entities further weakens the argument. As a result, the boundaries of the concept are not clearly established: while we understand Bornstein is portraying something important and distinctive, we are not sure how to decide who fits the social entrepreneur category and who does not. Attendant to these definitional dilemmas, Bornstein tends to emphasize the personal character and agency of the individuals he studies as the definitive factors bringing about change. As a result, the very real infrastructure of government regulations and programs and business investment and expertise shaping and supporting social entrepreneurs is slighted even though his accounts often note how the government changes the rules of the game, funds projects, and so on. Although Bornstein traces the development of the citizen sector to major historical changes, that sector is shaped by government policies and sustained by government decisions on tax policy, service delivery and other mundane matters. This analysis excels at bringing the politics of ideas to the foreground in analyzing social change and innovation but too often the link between ideas and institutional contexts is neglected. There is a certain urgency underlying the quest to determine how to build frameworks and infrastructure that will support the development of more social entrepreneurs and sustain their efforts. In an effort to develop a systematic analysis of social entrepreneurs, there is a tendency to slap organizational theories and concepts on top of the field material rather than using these tools to organize 403 the findings and suggest new questions. As a result, some arguments are disconnected, with insufficient consideration of their implications. The blueprint argument is one of the more egregious examples: it describes the harvesting of “pattern setting ideas” and promising practices but the purposes and mechanisms are unclear— is it about transferability, or policy learning, or diffusion, or prototype construction, or even replication and testing of different practices? The emphasis on “building the mosaics,” with frequent references to the Grameen Bank “blueprint” for microcredit programs, highlights the issue of how context-specific these practices are and the limits on the extent to which they can be transferred. Even the emphasis on system design rather than problem-solving strategies begs the question of how this differs from policy analysis...