Dienstag, 28. Mai 2013

An Idiot's Guide To Social Entrepreneurship

Muhammed Yunus is a 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and the founder of Grameen Bank, and he sparked a movement with the simple question: “If you are a socially conscious person, why don’t you run your business in a way that will help achieve social objectives?”

Today, entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley — and increasingly in tech hubs around the world — have taken this mission to heart. The trend is often referred to as “social entrepreneurship” or “impact investing,” and the goal is to use business process to drive positive change.

But social entrepreneurship has its critics. Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank quipped in a recent interview that it’s a “a bit of a fad” and startups that “confuse social good with being in business usually end up as 501(c)(3)s”. Likewise, Clay Johnson, author of the Information Diet, accused Change.org (the poster child for social entrepreneurship that just pulled in $15 million) in a story for the Wall Street Journal for being a “lead-generation business disguised as a social-change organization for whoever is willing to pay them for the email addresses”. Read more





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