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Social Entrepreneur QUOTES

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"When combined with information and communication technologies, microcredit can unleash new opportunities for the world's poorest entrepreneurs and thereby revitalize the village economies they serve." -- Madeleine K. Albright and John Doerr

* "Founded on the principles of private initiative, entrepreneurship and self-employment, underpinned by the values of democracy, equality and solidarity, the co-operative movement can help pave the way to a more just and inclusive economic order"
-- Kofi Annan

"What business entrepreneurs are to the economy, social entrepreneurs are to social change. They are the driven, creative individuals who question the status quo, exploit new opportunities, refuse to give up, and remake the world for the better."
-- David Bornstein

According to the management expert Peter F. Drucker, the term "entrepreneur" (from the French, meaning "one who takes into hand") was introduced two centuries ago by the French economist Jean-Baptiste Say to characterize a special economic actor--not someone who simply opens a business, but someone who "shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield." The twentieth-century growth economist Joseph A. Schumpeter characterized the entrepreneur as the source of the "creative destruction" necessary for major economic advances.
-- David Bornstein

Social entrepreneurs have existed throughout history. St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan Order, would qualify as a social entrepreneur -- having built multiple organizations that advanced pattern changes in his "field." Similarly, Florence Nightingale created the first professional school for nurses and established standards for hygiene and hospital care that have shaped norms worldwide. What is different today is that social entrepreneurship is developing into a mainstream vocation, not only in the United States, Canada, and Europe, but increasingly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In fact, the rise of social entrepreneurship represents the leading edge of a remarkable development that has occurred across the world over the past three decades: the emergence of millions of new citizen organizations.
-- David Bornstein

"Entrepreneurs have a mind-set that sees the possibilities rather than the problems created by change."
-- J Gregory Dees

"Social entrepreneurship describes a set of behaviors that are exceptional. These behaviors should be encouraged and rewarded in those who have the capabilities and temperament for this kind of work. We could use many more of them. Should everyone aspire to be a social entrepreneur? No. Not every social sector leader is well suited to being entrepreneurial. The same is true in business. Not every business leader is an entrepreneur in the sense that Say, Schumpeter, Drucker, and Stevenson had in mind. While we might wish for more entrepreneurial behavior in both sectors, society has a need for different leadership types and styles. Social entrepreneurs are one special breed of leader, and they should be recognized as such. This definition preserves their distinctive status and assures that social entrepreneurship is not treated lightly. We need social entrepreneurs to help us find new avenues toward social improvement as we enter the next century."
-- J Gregory Dees

* "Change starts when someone sees the next step."
-- William Drayton

* "Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry."
-- Bill Drayton

The core psychology of a social entrepreneur is someone who cannot come to rest, in a very deep sense, until he or she has changed the pattern in an area of social concern all across society. Social entrepreneurs are married to a vision of, for example, a better way of helping young people grow up or of delivering global healthcare. They simply will not stop because they cannot be happy until their vision becomes the new pattern. They will persist for decades. And they are as realistic as they are visionary. As a result, they are very good listeners. They have to hear if something isn’t working; and, whenever they do, they just keep changing the idea and/or the environment until their idea works. They are intensely concerned with the how-to’s: How do I get from here to there? How do I solve this problem? How do these pieces fit together?
-- Bill Drayton

The biggest problem is getting beyond the “you can’t” syndrome. The moment you figure that out, you’re on your way to flying. Anyone who cannot see problems around him or herself is utterly blind. All the problems sitting there are an invitation for you to be creative, make use of your skills and resources and find a solution. Of course you can do it. It doesn’t require brilliance. It’s just giving yourself permission and then being persistent. Persistent in seeing the problem or opportunity and persistent in thinking about it until you have come up with some interesting ideas that might change the pattern. It’s really a mindset, not anything in the objective world — that is the problem.
-- Bill Drayton

What is the most powerful lever you can imagine? A big idea, but only if it’s in the hands of a truly outstanding entrepreneur. It starts with the person and the idea, and then grows to the institution. All three are intertwined.
-- Bill Drayton

 

* "What we need is an entrepreneurial society in which innovation and entrepreneurship are normal, steady and continuous."
-- Peter F. Drucker

"the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity."
-- Peter F. Drucker

If they [companies] believe they are in business to serve people, to help solve problems, to use and employ the ingenuity of their workers to improve the lives of people around them by learning from the nature that gives us life, we have a chance.
~ Paul Hawken

“Social entrepreneurship needs to become a mass activity, not just the domain of inspirational mavericks ... Entrepreneurship usually comes from teams, not heroic individuals. Social entrepreneurs thrive on interdependence, learning and borrowing resources from the public and private sectors.”
-- Charles Leadbeater

"Microloans enable the poor to lift themselves out of poverty through entrepreneurship."
-- Pierre Omidyar

* A social entrepreneur is somebody who knows how to make an idea reality, and one of the great ideas of our time is pluralism. Can people from different backgrounds live together in mutual peace and loyalty? And what we need is a generation of young social entrepreneurs who know how to make that great idea reality in an historical moment where religious extremists are, frankly, making their idea reality.
-- Eboo Patel

* "Fair Trade is a market-based, entrepreneurial response to business as usual: it helps third-word farmers developing direct market access as well as the organizational and management capacity to add value to their products and take them directly to the global market. Direct trade, a fair price, access to capital and local capacity-building, which are the core strategies of this model, have been successfully building farmers' incomes and self-reliance for more than 50 years."
~ Paul Rice

"The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield."
-- Jean-Baptiste Say

"the function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production... by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing an industry and so on."
-- Joseph Schumpeter

* "The world must become aware of the fantastic transformational power of social entrepreneurship and the Foundation will work as a catalyst in this effort."
~ Klaus Schwab

Social entrepreneurs are helping to create a more peaceful, just and sustainable world.
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

* Social entrepreneurs come from all levels of society and from communities in nearly every country of the world. They all share the same underlying drive and passion to see their ideas through. Many of them have had a huge effect on the world, yet most people have not even heard of them – a trend we hope to change!
-- Jeffrey Skoll

a little bit of good can turn into a whole lot of good when fueled by the commitment of a social entrepreneur
-- Jeffrey Skoll

Not everyone can be Gandhi, but each of us has the power to make sure our own lives count – and it’s those millions of lives that will ultimately build a better world.
-- Jeffrey Skoll

The developed world has a vast, under-utilized asset that is not being leveraged to its best advantage: idealistic people who want to make the world a better place. For most of a century, idealistic people have been encouraged to use anger, protest, lobbying, and legal action in order to make the world a better place. While most certainly some of these behaviors and activities were necessary, we have reached the point at which the social benefit of such behaviors is decreasing. We have reached the point at which creation, rather than attack, ought to be the first obligation of reformers. The social entrepreneurship movement is the first tip of this iceberg. We want to create a world in which all idealists realize that the creation of new enterprises is the most powerful way to make positive change in the world. If all the energy that is currently invested in zero-sum political conflict was gradually transferred to the committed creation of sustainable enterprises, the cumulative impact on behalf of the good would be extraordinary.
-- Michael Strong

* “Entrepreneurs are risk takers, willing to roll the dice with their money or reputations on the line in support of an idea or enterprise.”
-- Victoria Woodhull

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