Social Innovation Goes Mainstream
Ten years ago, social enterprise pioneer Linda Rottenberg wasn’t taken seriously when she pitched established foundations to fund her upstart organization, Endeavor, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting high-impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets. But defiant persis-tence paid off. A much-needed early infusion of funding allowed Endeavor to prove that its concept worked, and a decade later Rottenberg is at the forefront of a social enterprise movement whose time has finally come.
Rottenberg recounted her struggle for recognition to an attentive student audience that filled Burden Auditorium for her opening address at the tenth anniversary Social Enterprise Conference on March 1. The daylong event, heralded in advance by Forbes as one of the top business gatherings for 2009, was organized by students from HBS and the Harvard Kennedy School and drew nearly 1,100 participants.
The tipping point for social enterprise legitimacy arrived in 2006 with the confluence of two events, said Rottenberg. First, Bono morphed from rock star to social entrepreneur, making it cool to care and get involved. Second, Muhammad Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize for his life’s work in microfinance. Two years later at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Microsoft’s Bill Gates announced his own commitment to social change through “creative capitalism.” “With these three events, the movement moved into the mainstream,” she said.
Mainstream hit the big time with the election of President Obama, explained Professor David Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, and one of four members of an afternoon keynote panel. While social enterprise organizations once viewed government as the enemy, “the moment has arrived for an alignment of government and social entrepreneurship,” said Gergen. He noted that Obama has pledged to open an office of social innovation, is an advocate of community service, and has proposed $650 million for the Department of Education to work with nonprofits to improve the nation’s public schools.
Addressing the theme of the panel discussion, “Taking Social Innovation to Scale,” Gergen added that the anticipated infusion of federal funds puts pressure on social enterprise organizations to deliver results. “It’s going to be a huge deal for social entrepreneurs to demonstrate that they can do it.”
By deft use of the bully pulpit, President Obama should educate the public about the benefits of government partnerships with social enterprise organizations, said Jonathan Greenblatt, cofounder of Ethos Water and lecturer at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. “Obama should promote change makers and advocate using capital as a source of leverage for social benefit,” he said.
Acknowledging his optimism about the future, Greenblatt declared, “Young people are looking for ways to engage. Service is the new greed.”
2009 Leadership fellows: Twenty-one graduating MBAs have taken positions with nonprofit and public-sector organizations with support of the School’s Leadership Fellows program — the largest group since the program started eight years ago. The program provides key management positions for one year with competitive salaries. This yea’'s fellows are (front row) Elizabeth Mallow, Jessica Stannard-Friel, Alice Lin, Jessica Schmidt, Nicola Leahy, Alla Jezmir, and Tiffany Singleton; (second row) Aaron Rudenstine, Marlene Ngoyi, Rosita Najmi, and Karibu Nyaggah; (third row) Kaveesh Nath, Mark Angelo, Andrew Van Pelt, and Andrew Feinberg; (back row) Brian Elliot, Benjamin Kennedy, and Carter Romansky. Not pictured: Stephen Chan, Shilla Kim-Parker, and Aarti Maheshwari.
Photo by Neal Hamberg
