What is Social Entrepreneurship?

Cory Ames

What is Social Entrepreneurship? And, who is a Social Entrepreneur?

  Madeleine Shaw

I love that question. And obviously, it’s subjective.

I’m not positing an absolute definition. In fact, I see my definition as being very expansive and very democratic. 

Let’s break it down. So, the word entrepreneur is a very long word with lots of vowels. It’s derived from the French verb [entreprendre] meaning to undertake. So to me, by definition, an entrepreneur is somebody who undertakes something; an action or an initiative. 

It can be for-profit, it could be non-profit, it doesn’t need to be incorporated at all. 

Actually, it could just be a project or something that you love.

But the point is, you are taking action.

  Madeleine Shaw

The social part, which precedes the word entrepreneur, importantly, comes first, right?

Social is a kind of shorthand for some form of positive social or environmental impact. 

That can be anything, honestly, whatever matters to the entrepreneur. But the point is that it’s what motivates and inspires, it’s the central purpose of why the undertaking is being undertaken. 

It’s why you do what you do, right? It’s what gets you out of bed in the morning. 

As opposed to traditional notions, in a traditional business sense, people are looking to make a profit or capture a certain market segment. 

But, it’s not necessarily coming from a primary desire or motivation to make the world a better place in some way.

  Madeleine Shaw

Well, it’s to encourage more people to see themselves in that kind of construct or profile.

When I do speaking gigs, one of the things I’ll do is ask the audience. “When I say the word entrepreneur, tell me who you think of, who is the first person who pops into your mind?” 

Invariably it is Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or Richard Branson.

It’s those guys with their big, massive, scalable, tech, blow-it-up, disrupt things, Silicon Valley spaceship, whatever…

That’s a really hard kind of paradigm to relate to if you don’t look like that. 

If your project, if your idea is not that big, unicorn sort of thing, then it’s pretty easy to go, “I don’t think I’m that.

And the reason for wanting to broaden that [definition of social entrepreneurship] is because I want more people from diverse backgrounds with really amazing social change ideas to feel that they too, can take action and should be celebrated for doing that.

Cory Ames

What are some examples of social entrepreneurs or social entrepreneurship in action out in the world?

  Madeleine Shaw

One of the groups of people that really struck me the most are people that I called “Lemonade-Makers” in [The Greater Good], and they’re folks who have drawn on experiences of adversity, frankly, to create change in the world.

  Madeleine Shaw

So a friend of mine, for example, was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago and had a rough ride. This is a very familiar journey to all too many of us.

But, she really found that through her experience, having the benefit of community support, the sort of extra things and getting massage therapy or getting somebody to come and cut her hair, or various forms of additional support. 

That type of thing really made a huge difference in her healing journey. 

And so when she came out of it, the other end…she started a community distanced swim in the ocean to raise funds for other folks on [her] island going through cancer treatment and needing that type of community support. 

So, it was born of a personal experience where something made a difference to her that she wanted other people to have and [she] started a project. 

I believe it’s a registered non-profit society, but I don’t think it really matters. The point is that it was somebody who had something hard touch their lives, bounced back, and sought to make a difference for others based on her own experience.

  Madeleine Shaw

My friend, BE Alink who came up with The Alinker walking bike is a really fascinating example. The Alinker is basically an alternative to a wheelchair for lots of people who have difficulty walking and with their mobility.

Basically, her mother said to her, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend my elder years in a wheelchair.” 

And here was the daughter who had an experience. She was an architect by training, a builder, and an industrial designer. She came up with the idea of this amazing, elevated, grown-up, design-savvy tricycle that allows someone to walk.

So when you speak to them, they’re at eye level. Most people in wheelchairs can actually walk, the wheelchair design is what actually disables the person from walking. 

So to me, these are examples of people just drawing on their personal experience, number one. And number two, they’re going outside [their personal experience]. 

My friend Mary, in the first example, was a personal fitness trainer. She wasn’t an entrepreneur. 

Same with my friend BE Alink. They were a designer, they were an architect. Now BE leads this wonderful business, it’s a B Corp, with this really innovative product. 

People see something that bugs them, and they do something, they start something.

Cory Ames

Why does social entrepreneurship matter?

  Madeleine Shaw

Look at the times that we’re in…Climate change has accelerated, and we’ve got an urgent need to achieve racial justice. We’ve so many things…not to mention COVID. 

It really is an all-hands-on-deck kind of situation. So what the book [The Greater Good] is, is to encourage all those hands of whatever size, wherever they’re from, whatever they look like, to feel they their ideas are needed and that they’re empowered and resourced to take action on any scale. 

And they don’t need to be the next Jeff Bezos to do that