You know, one of the many valuable things that I have learned in this class is the proper spelling of “entrepreneurship” - that’s a toughie. Anyhoo….
There is an interview this month in Inc magazine with Jim Collins on “How to Thrive in 2009”. In the interview, he mentions social entrepreneurship and the new ethos a couple of times. Some excerpts:
What’s the source of your optimism?
A lot of it has to do with the young generation. A general at West Point told me, “This is the most inspired and inspiring generation to come through West Point since 1945.” I see the same thing with the young people who come to work for me. They have a sense of responsibility and service and a lack of cynicism that is remarkable and wonderful. It’s an ethos, and it’s collective. That’s what’s really powerful. It’s connected technologically. It’s not grandiose, but there is a fundamental assumption of being part of a much larger world and a much larger set of aspirations. The world can be a really awful, brutal, turbulent place. And yet I’m hopeful precisely because of this generation of kids. I really think we ought to just give them the keys as soon as we can. Let them run it.
Do you see that ethos manifesting itself in the world of entrepreneurship?
Absolutely. I’ll give you my entrepreneur for this decade: Wendy Kopp of Teach for America. Her organization is truly an entrepreneurial creation that is out to utterly transform education. It’s taking an entrepreneurial, let’s-do-something approach to tackling a massive social problem.
That’s interesting. Of course, it’s a not-for-profit.
Yes, but think about the leading entrepreneurs of the past three decades: Steve Jobs, Ken Iverson, Herb Kelleher, Anita Roddick, Yvon Chouinard, Howard Schultz, Jeff Bezos. What jumps out at you as being consistent across all those people?
The larger purpose of what they were doing.
Right. They defined success on a very big scale. For Steve Jobs, it was about much more than selling computers. For Yvon Chouinard, more than clothing. For Anita Roddick, more than cosmetics. For Howard Schultz, more than coffee. For Jeff Bezos, more than online retailing. Wendy Kopp fits right in. We’re talking big — millions of kids, transforming society. The ambitions are huge.
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I think that, as time goes along, the line between the social sector and the business sector will become increasingly blurred. We tend to think that the business sector will teach the social sector, that the social sector is the less sophisticated cousin. In that, we are wrong. We may actually have more to learn from your friend at High Tech High and from Wendy Kopp than they have to learn from those of us in the business sector.
