Entrepreneur
From espians
When the word entrepreneur (between-taking back) was coined in 1800, it resonated social and system concerns- human relationship truths as to whether better futures compoud. In France, would those who had just taken back Royalty's land-owning assets compound better futures for all the people's productivities (egality and communities). In the UK which emerging industrial sectors would reward/sustain a lifetime of employment as well as being good for the society that hosted them?
Although it was the Frenchman JB Say who coined the E-word he was sandwiched by 2 Scots who mapped economics as a hi-trust discipline. Scots were among the first in Erope to invest in elaring as the right of every child but some bufoons lost nearly half of all Scotand's treasury around 1700 (failed attempt to colonise panama), leading to a hostile takeover by England. Within a century the majority of scots had been forced to sail the 7 seas (be an early worldwide nation as the English had sent up quarterly accountants of that era who valued sheep as beter 90 day retursn than people). So it was natural that any scot who contributed to economics wanted it to be an open source, contextually empowering and most transparent kind of maths.
SAY's 2 SCOTS
Adam Smith which JB Say was an alumni of, and James Wilson who was an alumni of both. James was a successful businessman in Scotland but he came down to London in 1843 to boot all the vested interests out of parliament including the corn law monopolists who were starving people and the rich citizens who were increasingly depriving his worker's families from education etc. He did this in 2 remarkable ways. Becoming an MP and founding The Economist. For the next 140 odd years, the systemic and social compound consequences of entrepreneurship were in very transparent and inquisitive journalists hands. I may be biassed, but my dad who completed 40 years and thousands of hi-trust entrepreneur interviews at The Economist, wrote the Entrepreneurial Revolution Trilogy between 1976 to 1984 - all the sustainability and social challenges we face today were clearly mapped in my dad's language. I therefore find it extremely offensive when the 3rd grade catholic educational curricula on social studies in YSA require my daughter to learn parrot fashion exactly an opposite definition of entrepreneur than that of 1800 - man who makes lots of money by speculating with his money.
So whilst it’s not necessary for Scots, in America these days you need to use an adjective (at least 50 exist) to qualify what type of entrepreneur you are talking about.
Extremely popular in change world cycles of 2005-2010 is the social entrepreneur. In personal correspondence Bill Drayton tells me he - and his organisation http://www.ashoka.org - coined the SE term in 1978. I keep notes on what I learn from Bill at http://changemakers.info. Bill is now in his 30th year of investing in local entrepreneurs. He began in India- his great love as he is a Gandhi an. He now has investments in social entrepreneurial projects in the majority of the world's poorest countries.
Something interesting happened around 2001/2. Ode Grajew set up a world\ social forum to compete on the same days at the world economic forum. Actually Schwab, the founder of the WEF, had always been interested in system changing and socially transparent debates. So one of his responses to the WSF was to start investing in his own choice of social entrepreneurs. Relatively speaking the WEF has had some especially good relations with areas like the Middle east and parts of Africa that Drayton had less coverage in. So I assume the new http://schwabfound.org was viewed by Bill as a positive extension. However, perhaps because of this, he soon made sure that any US billionaire philanthropist who might be interested in social entrepreneurs did so with him. He has done this in at least 3 remarkable but also deeply personal ways. With omidyar.net (ebay owners0 he has formed the virtual competition web http://www.changemakers.net With google.org he shares leading news announcements and eg the annual US awards of new social entrepreneurs (a relatively recent field as until about 2000, 99% of ashoka entrepreneurs were in poor countries only. Both Bill and Larry Brilliant have the same Gandhi a values and have criss-crossed on many paths of life Perhaps the biggest coup is the partnership with Jeff Skoll (also an ebay billionaire). Jeff plays media (scaling issues locally to worldwide) unlike any other social entrepreneur the world has seen with possibly the exception of Muhammad Yunus. He has created the social entrepreneur world championship as a showcase for the latest industry intelligence that he and Bill flow. More than that he invited 5+ world class entrepreneurs to join in calling themselves global social entrepreneurs even through prior to joining this club they had built their own networks as far as I can parallel to social entrepreneurs. These are the 2 greatest entrepreneurs of ending poverty - out of Bangladesh Yunus and Abed. Oded Grajew already mentioned of WSF and beyond corporate responsibility networking depths. Peter Eigen of Transparency Interantional. tapper-marlin who certifies factory conditions around the world. Videos of all of these were grouped together in a boxed set launched around the end of 2005. Other personalities are amplified by Skoll's participant productions studio for films with big cause messages. So it was that Al Gore turned up to keynote at the 2006 Skoll World Championship, and Yunus now Nobel Prize winner was celebrated in 2007 and one of the speakers who has graced the world championship every years since its inception http://oxbridge.tv
One other amazing amplifier is the author David Bernstein. After taking nearly 5 years out to explain Yunus in a book published around 2000 ; he focused next on ashoka's social entrepreneurs between 200-2004 bring out the magnificent book- how to change the world. Whilst the genre has seen a few more entries since two exciting entries are:
a book in the works by Bill Clinton and his editorial\team
A book in the worked with the partnership of Schwab and Mr Triple Bottom Line John Elkington. Interestingly I have had a few email questions with both these two's teams. Elkington first hit the SE limelight when he chaired the Gore day of the World Championship 2006.
