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Global Voices on Social Entrepreneurship – Pamela Hartigan

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Pamela Hartigan at the Skoll World Forum 2009 - Image Credit www.skollfoundation.org

Pamela Hartigan at the Skoll World Forum 2009 – Image Credit www.skollfoundation.org

GRASP asks successful social entrepreneurs and opinion leaders from different parts of the world about their thoughts on the future of social entrepreneurship. Here you can read Pamela Hartigan’s reflections.

What are the most interesting tendencies in social entrepreneurship?

What I see is that social entrepreneurship is one aspect of the economic eco-system, that I think is influencing business models and ways of thinking about the role of business in society, but also the role of charities in society.  Because I think that some social enterprises are not constructed for profits and they are using market based approaches to drive social change, but because they are addressing a market failure they need to be subsidized in some way. They might be earning revenues, but it is not enough to keep them going. It is getting philanthropic to begin to think about what kinds of investments they want to make in a way that is going to have the biggest impact, rather than just waiting for a check.

The answer doesn’t lie in social entrepreneurship the answer lies in completely reframing the way the citizen sector, the business sector, the public sector all interact together to create sustainable opportunities for people and for a sustainable planet. I think, the really cool thing about some social entrepreneurs is that they have been successful in coming up with how to create a venture that is going to combine environmental, financial and social sustainability. Without prioritizing finances over everything and that is the real lesson. They are the ones taking the risks. The social entrepreneur is the mad scientist in the social innovation lab, who comes up with new ways of doing things. Then it is up to the corporate sector and the government to help grow these organizations. It’s their job to take the models and expand them.

What will be the biggest challenges for social entrepreneurship?

A major issue for them is, first of all, the idea of letting go. All entrepreneurs, and especially social entrepreneurs, are too focused on planning. Starting up a company takes one kind of entrepreneur, but growing a company may take a different kind of individual. Many times what you find is that the entrepreneur that had the idea and started it up actually interferes with the company’s growth, and I think that is a major, major challenge for social entrepreneurs. The challenge is this fear of letting go and letting it grow.

Capital is always the one referred to, but I really think it is an enormous challenge to hire the right people. Especially because of the nature of what social entrepreneurs do, which is more and more”we need business people to help us run this.” It really takes a special kind of business person to understand the priorities of a social venture. I have often seen the case, where they bring in someone from the business world that just doesn’t understand the very fine line between running a social enterprise and a business enterprise. The social enterprise community has to be wary about how they identify those resources. In social enterprises it is really a commitment to put society first. Many will say:”Yes, but I’m creating a lot of jobs.” But it’s not enough to create jobs. It’s about appropriate payment and getting them committed to environmental sustainability etc. It’s about much more than money.

Pamela Hartigan is the founding partner of Volans Ventures and the founding managing director of the Schwab foundation. She has served as director of several programs and departments for the World Health Organization including the Women, Health, and Development Program, the Department of Health Promotion, and the Department for Violence and Injury Prevention.

This is part of the Global Voices on Social Entrepreneurship theme.

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