Copy of SanjayManocha_BVIMR - Practice of Social Entrepreneurship in India[1]

8/6/2019 Copy of SanjayManocha_BVIMR - Practice of Social Entrepreneurship in India[1]

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Introduction

Nature of Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurs are normally considered as agents of change in the socio-economic development of a

country. They are also seen as innovators, risk-takers, decision- makers and people with a definite

vision. They have different characteristics as compared to the people accepting jobs or wage

employment and also managerial functions. Earlier it was believed that entrepreneurs are born and

entrepreneurship is hereditary. But in the last couple of decades, it was confirmed that people could

be identified, trained and developed as entrepreneurs. The misconception that entrepreneurship is a

monopoly of some communities and restricted to certain regions prevailed for a long period of time.

But now it is evident that entrepreneurship does not belong to a particular region, community, sex,

education, age, income level or a specific stratum of community.

Entrepreneurship, generally speaking, refers to the overall course of action undertaken by an owner in starting and managing his enterprise for profit. However, the term entrepreneurship continues to

be used in different ways. One usage relates entrepreneurship to the process leading to the creation

and running of any new business regardless of its size, product, service, potential or form of

ownership. Another viewpoint sees entrepreneurship as being essentially concerned with developing

a new idea, based on which a risk-bearing unique product, service or method is marketed by means

of setting up a new independent unit or by using an already existing unit. The latter notion views

entrepreneurship as the complete process involving conceptualization of an idea of what a newthing should be and eventually starting and running a venture selling the unique product or

providing a service never seen or known before. Both, usages, however, give prominence to the role

of a devoted businessperson played by one who plans, owns, organizes and manages a concern and

bears risks in expectation of good earnings.

Qualities of an Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurial personality is distinct from a common man. An entrepreneur possesses special

qualities, values, skills, attitudes, capacities, capabilities and motivation. By learning these skillsand inculcating the qualities, it is possible to transform the common mans personality into an

entrepreneurial personality. Systematic motivation and training accelerates the process of

transformation. A trainer-motivator plays an important role in equipping people to learn these

qualities and skills. Essential qualities of entrepreneurs are as follows:


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1. Success and Achievement:

Entrepreneurs are determined to achieve high goals in business. This achievement motive gives

them the strength to surmount obstacles, surpass anxieties, overcome misfortune and desire

expedients to run a successful business.

2. Risk Bearer:

Rather than gambling or avoiding risks, entrepreneurs take moderate strategic and financial risks.

3. Confidence

An entrepreneur is a confident person. Confidence develops an edge over the competitors.

Confidence is always impressive and wins others. Entrepreneurial personality demands a high level

of confidence.

4. Clear Perception:

Perception plays a very important role in our life. Perception has a make or a break capacity. Themaking is associated with Positive Perception. The breaking is associated with Negative

Perception. An entrepreneur cannot achieve a desired goal with a set of perception. He has to

develop his perceptions about people (consumers), events, objects, relationships, etc. there are a

number of products and services which are the outcome of the strong developed perceptions of the

entrepreneurs. For example, emergency lamps, mobile phones, transistor radios, audio-visual

cassettes and CDs, computers, etc. are the perceptions of the changing technology. In such cases,

the needs of the different customer groups are perceived by the entrepreneurs and products are

designed with the new techniques and technologies. Perceptions have helped the entrepreneurs to

offer convenience to the buyers.

5. Team-building Capacity

Team-building capacity is a key for entrepreneurial success. An entrepreneur requires a variety of

services and help from a large number of people and institutions including suppliers of raw

materials, machinery, workers, and utilities like electricity, fuel, water supply, transportation,

financial organisations, government personnel, marketing people, advertisers and finally the

consumers. All these people and institutions participating directly or indirectly in differentcapacities in the entrepreneurial venture facilitate the entrepreneur to achieve his ultimate goal,

Success in Business. Therefore, an entrepreneur has to exhibit an excellent team-building ability.


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Entrepreneurship in India

Entrepreneurship in India is on the rise. Here's our take on Indian entrepreneurs and how the

landscape is changing for India and entrepreneurship. Indian entrepreneurship has been around for

ages. Indian society has traditionally been divided into four castes of people: learned priests,warriors, traders, and people doing menial jobs.

The existence of a caste of traders is itself proof of many centuries worth of Indian

entrepreneurship.

Although the Indian caste system dominated societal standards for ages, the trend has changed.

People are bridging the difference between castes to work in fields perhaps untraditional for their

ancestors. The Internet and advances in telecommunications have made it possible for Indian

citizens to sell their services internationally. With the rapid growth of India as an IT power and

business process outsourcing giant, world views of India have also transformed to recognize the

country's entrepreneurial talent and potential.

Classifying Entrepreneurship

Today, Indian society can best be classified into three categories. The first category of people is that

of well-established business families , such as the Mittals, Tatas, Ambanis, Birlas and the like. These

families have a very strong base, with most individuals following the family business tradition

passed on from generation to generation. Most of these companies have a strong management team,

and are now going global. World trust in the Indian corporate sector is increasing like never before.

The second category is dominated by young graduates who are an integral part of Indian business

growth. In fact, India has graduated a huge number of individuals with management degrees over

the past decade. With information technology and multinational corporations on the rise in India,young entrepreneurs serve as the backbone of many flourishing enterprises.

The third category of society would be product-based business entrepreneurs . You will find them in

every big city, town, or village in India. Educational qualifications do not mean much to them;


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rather, they rely on sheer entrepreneurship ability that include training, experience, customer service

skills, networking, hard work, and innovation.

Potential Pitfall

There is an overall shortage of start-up entrepreneurs in India compared to the rest of the world.

One of the most significant deficiencies an Indian entrepreneur may face revolves around capital.

Although there is ample willingness to invest capital in a well-established enterprise, there is little

willingness to fund start-ups. The quality and quantity of venture capital in India is low.

Role of the Government

The role of Indian government has changed over the years. Since India's independence in 1947,

until the early 1990s, India had a planned economy that made the Indian market closed and directly

controlled by the government. The situation is now different. Structural adjustments were made to

simplify and create a rational tax system that removed of a number of controls and regulations.

India has witnessed a period of sustained growth the last three decades, with each decade being

better than the latter.

The average GDP growth was nearly 3.2 percent in the 1970s, which increased to 5.4 and 5.6

percent, respectively, in the following two decades. The present average growth rate is close to

eight percent. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Report 2007, 8.5 percent of India's

working population is in the early stages of entrepreneurial activity, while its overall entrepreneurial

activity is at 13.9 percent.

Owing to the vast talent in IT, management, and R&D, India has managed to make its place for

outsourced services from all around the world; and investors get high quality work for lower costs.

Social Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship is the work of a social entrepreneur. A social entrepreneur is someone who

recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a

venture to make social change. Whereas a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in

profit and return, a social entrepreneur assesses success in terms of the impact s/he has on society.


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While social entrepreneurs often work through nonprofits and citizen groups, many work in the

private and governmental sectors.

The main aim of a social entrepreneurship as well as social enterprise is to further social and

environmental goals. Although social entrepreneurs are often non-profits, this need not beincompatible with making a profit. Social enterprises are for more-than-profit, using blended

value business models that combine a revenue-generating business with a social-value-generating

structure or component.

What a social entrepreneur is

A social entrepreneur identifies practical solutions to social problems by combining innovation,

resourcefulness and opportunity. Committed to producing social value, these entrepreneurs identify

new processes, services and products, or unique ways of combining proven practice with innovation

to address complex social problems. Whether the focus of their work is on enterprise development,

health, education, environment, labour conditions or human rights, social entrepreneurs are people

who seize on the problems created by change as opportunities to transform societies.

The organizations set up by social entrepreneurs defy pigeonholing. They cannot be lumped easily

into the non-profit or for-profit worlds that we cling to. Increasingly, social entrepreneurs are setting

up their organizations as for-profit entities, though most are still constituted as not-for-profits. The point is that the legal form chosen for the entity is simply a strategic decision based on how best to

achieve the mission. They dont shun existing economic models, but most social entrepreneurs are

pragmatic about the limitations of market economics and persistent about finding ways to use

markets to empower the poor. Most experiment with and perfect business models that allow the

poor to have access to the wide variety of technologies that the more fortunate among us take for

granted from information communications technology and health care to ways of ensuring good

housing, clean water, access to energy, decent wages, relevant education and so on.

Social entrepreneurs undertake both public and private sector functions simultaneously. On the one

hand, they work with people that governments have been unable to reach effectively with basic

public goods and services. On the other, they address market failures by providing access to private

goods and services to markets where business does not operate because the risks are too great and


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the financial rewards too few. With little market reward or assistance, social entrepreneurs are

reshaping the architecture for building sustainable and peaceful societies.

Social entrepreneurs are the ultimate scenario planners of our time. They see desirable futures in

present conditions, and act to bring them about, generally in spite of efforts to persuade them to thecontrary. They are disrupters and activists who challenge the notion of incremental, continuous

improvement. Social entrepreneurs dont believe in more of the same, and they appear to relish

what keeps the rest of us awake at night uncertainty and risk.

What a social entrepreneur is not

Social entrepreneurs arent just founders of social enterprises. While some social enterprises are

created by social entrepreneurs, not all of them are. The term social enterprise emerged recently

with reference to non-profit organizations seeking new and different ways to generate the funds

they need to operate. Now social enterprises are being created by governments to catalyse

community renewal and provide excluded groups with income-generating opportunities. The vast

majority of social enterprises focus on the delivery of goods and services. Social transformation and

system change are not their primary drivers, as with social entrepreneurs.

This may seem like a superfluous distinction but it isnt. There is a marked difference between a

social entrepreneur and a manager of a social enterprise. While the latter is essential for the smoothrunning of the operation, the former is a mover and a shaker, the motor of social transformation.

They are not business entrepreneurs. However, the two are sometimes confused, so its useful to

draw some distinctions. For a start, social entrepreneurs are committed to social value creation, so

finance is a means to an end for them, never the end in itself. Personal reward, risk and cost become

secondary concerns; and they typically take little for themselves. They display innovation,

resourcefulness and practicality just like business entrepreneurs, but their products, services, clients

and business methods are dictated by the needs of underserved markets and stakeholders. They areoften more comfortable with the unconventional than with the conventional in reaching beyond the

limits of the marketplace to serve the needy.

By virtue of their social mission, social entrepreneurs are often thrown into the same pot with other

organizations in the citizen sector, those referred to by the misnomer NGO. But here again a


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distinction needs to be made. Social entrepreneurs are practical and focused on outcomes rather than

process, while many in the citizen sector are wedded to the latter. Moreover, social entrepreneurs

tend to shun ideological positions as they prevent one from spotting the opportunities for

transformational social change. Nor do they embrace charitable models that aim to alleviate

suffering and address social issues without changing the conditions that gave rise to that suffering.Social entrepreneurs seek transformation of the status quo.

History of Social Entrepreneurship in India

To understand the contemporary status of social entrepreneurship in India, it is important to

appreciate the socio-cultural and historical context in which it exists. Various studies have

highlighted that in Indian psyche ones place in the society has a moral perspective, in which

ones duty towards the others/ society plays a significant role.

Chakraborty (1987), for instance, found that the orientation of giving and the need to fulfill ones

duty towards the society (as opposed to fulfilling individual needs) is deep-rooted in Indian

social values and identity. Similarly, McClelland (1975) found that Indians have a social

achievement motivation, which is characterised by a desire for contributing to the collective

well-being and achievement of super-ordinate goals.

As long back as in the 19th century, the then government of India had enacted two separate acts the Societies Registration Act, 1860 and the Indian Trusts Act, 1882 which were aimed to

regulate and to provide legal status to not-for-profit entities which existed for the benefit of the

society. The Societies Registration Act of 1860, for instance, was specifically created to provide

legal status to:

societies established for the promotion of science, literature, or the fine arts, for instruction,

the diffusion of useful knowledge, the diffusion of political education, the foundation or

maintenance of libraries or reading rooms for general use among the members or open to the

public, or public museums and galleries of paintings and other works of art, collection of

natural history, mechanical and philosophical inventions, instruments or designs.

Similarly, the Indian Trusts Act, 1882 was created for charitable entities which could have been
http://inspired-pragmatism.blogspot.com/2010/06/social-enterpreneurship-in-india.htmlhttp://inspired-pragmatism.blogspot.com/2010/06/social-enterpreneurship-in-india.html


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established for a number of purposes, including the poverty alleviation, education, medical

relief, provision of facilities for recreation, and any other benefit to the general public. The

enactment of these two acts shows that by that time, such organized efforts had reached a

critical mass which large enough to necessitate creation legal framework to recognize their

existence.Interestingly, the Indian Independence Movement during the first-half of 20th century, led by

leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, also had the idea of social transformation embedded in the very

concept of freedom. It was actually more than just a struggle for political freedom against the

colonization by the British Empire. The notion of freedom promoted by the forefathers of the

country had a strong element of developing an empowered grass-root society (Gandhis gram-

swaraj self-rule which percolates down to remote villages), and a strong focus on developing

social leaders who can facilitate the growth of self-sufficient village-level communityorganization, who can empower their stakeholders. Gandhian doctrine of trusteeship (i.e.,

business is trustee, not the owner, of the wealth of the society) focused on the economic equality

and empowerment of the society. It influenced not only a large number of industrialists of the

time (even large ones such as the GD Birla and Jamunalal Bajaj), but also became a guiding

principle of many large social ventures (e.g., SEWA, Lijjat, etc.) in the post-independence India.

Even after India gained independence in 1947, the idea of developing an empowered society

was carried forward by many of Gandhis followers (Vinoba Bhave, Baba Amte, Jai Prakash

Narain, etc.), and influenced many youth to join the development/social sector.

In the early years of independence too, the developmental policies of government of India

envisaged and invited participation of non-governmental organizations and voluntary agencies

to support the state-sponsored programs through its Central Social Welfare Board, National

Community Development Program, National Extension Service, etc. (ADB, 2009). Over the

years, India witnessed a rapid increase in the voluntary sector grass-root organizations, which

were seen as development partners of the state for grassroots interventions for povertyalleviation, education, livelihoods, civil liberties, environment, health, etc. The Sixth Five-Year

Plan (1980-85), in fact, formally recognized the role and importance of the voluntary non-

governmental organizations, and listed nine areas for their participation in development:


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1. Optimal utilization and development of renewable source of energy, including forestry

through the formation of renewable energy association at the block level

2. Family welfare, health and nutrition, education and relevant community programs in the

field

3. Health for all programs4. Water management and soil conservation

5. Social welfare programs for weaker sections

6. Implementation of minimum needs program

7. Disaster preparedness and management (i.e. for floods, cyclones, etc)

8. Promotion of ecology and tribal development, and

9. Environmental protection and education.

A decade later, in the Eight Five-Year Plan, the participation of voluntary organizations was further

enhanced by envisaging their role in drawing development plans through rural appraisal and by

involving the local community. Since 1991, when structural reforms were implemented under Govt

of Indias New Economic Policy, the partnership of voluntary sector agencies with the state has

become relatively diminished and muted. Nevertheless, the sector continued to play a significant

role broadly in the following:

Policy planning and implementation of government programs. Monitoring the impact of development programs initiated by the government Policy advocacy to influence states development programs, and Capacity building of the grassroots community, and of governmental agencies

A study by Srivastava and Tandon (2002) for the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA)

throws some revealing insights about the nature and magnitude of the proliferation of Non-Profit

voluntary organizations in India. The survey found that:

There are 1.2mn Non-Profit Organisations in India, which engage nearly 20mn people as

paid employees or on volunteer basis.


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However, 73.4% of these organizations were very small with one or no paid employees; in

contrast, only 8.5% had more than 10 paid employees. While 26.5% of these NPOs were religious in nature of their activities, the rest were secular

bodies focusing on social development issues such as education, healthcare, community

development (it must also be noted that in India like elsewhere in the world the religiousinstitutions also work promote social development activities).

The estimated receipts of funds by these NPOs were Rs.179bn (1999-2000). However, 80%

of this was generated from local activities, community contribution and donations; among

these 51% were self-generated, while 12.9% came from donations and 7.1% from loans.

Current Practice of Social Entrepreneurship in India

When Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize awardee and founder of Grameen Bank, wascontacted by the Nobel Foundation for the customary winner interview, he remarked, ...poverty is

an artificial creation. It doesnt belong to human civilisation, and we can change that, we can make

people come out of poverty (sic). The only thing we have to do is to redesign our institutions and

policies.

Thats what social entrepreneurship is about: creating business models revolving around low-cost

products and services to resolve social inequities. And the realisation that social progress and profit

arent mutually exclusive has led to many social ventures taking root in India as well.

Examples of successful social projects like Amul or SEWA were few and far between. However,

with the slowdown taking the shine off urban, higher-income target markets, organisations focusing

on bottom of the pyramid audiences have become a reality. But the days of easy funding are over.

Given the employment squeeze, it would be natural for aspiring social entrepreneurs to stick to their

secure jobs instead. Surprisingly, they continue to launch social enterprises with a vengeance.

In May 2008, 27-year old Rajnish Sinha and his IIM-Kozhikode batchmate Siva Cotipalli started

Bangalore-based DhanaX. A fascination with microfinance and the idea of clubbing it with person

to person (P2P) lending led them to quit their jobs to launch DhanaX, a platform where people

contribute small amounts online as loans. NGOs take up the task of disbursing these loans to needy

communities in their areas of operation.


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Interest is charged at 24%, of which DhanaX keeps approximately 6%. This model has worked in

other countries as well. So far, DhanaX has helped its four partner NGOs acquire loans of Rs 20

lakh. While yet to recover their initial investment of Rs 25 lakh, Sinha is confident of success. In

future, we may partner with wealth management companies or treasury departments of largecorporations to keep the pipeline running, he says.

Richa Pandey, a marketing MBA, was a media sales professional in New Delhi for eight years. But

her calling was rural India, partly because of her rootsher grandfather was a farmer in Uttar

Pradesh. The retail and BPO sectors were creating job opportunities in a big way. I zeroed in on

vocational training for rural youth in these areas, Pandey recalls.

In October 2007, she approached the Rural Technology Business Incubator (RTBI) at IIT-Madras

with a business plan outline. The RTBI platform helped add magnitude to my plan, Pandey says,

adding, Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala assisted me in launching a pilot programme in three districts of

Tamil Nadu under the banner of eJeevika. Around the same time, she got a lucrative offer to head

the marketing division of a large media firm. Pandey turned it down and continued focusing on

designing course content and online training programmes in three areas: retail sales, data entry and

security services.

eJeevika subjects candidates to psychometric tests to determine where theyd fit in best and trains

them accordingly. But Pandeys chosen path hasnt been easy. She currently doesnt take home a

salary, preferring instead to plough everything back into the business. In the past year, eJeevika

trained 160 people, is on the verge of signing up four BPOs as partners and is growing both in terms

of scale and size, aiming to train 1,500 people by March-end. If the slowdown has affected

companies like ours, Im yet to see evidence of it, she says, Our team consists of eight highly-

experienced people and we still get enquiries from people who want to work with us.

Eminent scientist and former chairman of the University Grants Commission Professor Yash Pal

said that Indian industry and the education system lacked "creativity" and did not promote

innovations that happen at local level within the country. Innovations happen in India too. He

applauded National Innovation Foundation for scouting more than 51,000 innovations during the


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past five years from over 400 different places of which 15 technologies have been commercialized.

He said that practical knowledge was not imparted to the students who were tested only on their

cramming or memorizing skills, students are taught from some text-books and are not to think out

of it. Creativity is not stressed in the curriculum and so the students do not think differently. Ability

to think differently is an important factor that leads to future innovations.

The 21 st century favours knowledge, ideas and creativity. This century is about young, restless

minds pushing the digital age forward. This will require creative companies, quality educational

institutions, and ideas pouring forth in all forms and an innovation system. Knowledge remains key

to India's position in the world. IT services, jewelry, pharmaceuticals, handicrafts have powered

India's recent economic performance. As in the past, our soft infrastructure (creativity, ideas and

open borders) far exceeds our hard infrastructure (highways, ports, power and so on) in global

competitiveness.

In Trichhirapalli, J.K. Tripathy led the transformation of the police force from an image of

'extortionist' to 'anna' (elder brother). Subsequently, the crime rate dropped by 40 percent and that

too in a communally sensitive town. With an innovative concept called 'community policing',

wherein a group of four policemen took ownership for the law and order of a community, was

adopted. They won their trust by engaging with them proactively, and preventing law and order

problems rather than merely, reacting to them. Now 'community policing' is being exercisedeverywhere. Tripathy demonstrated that the real issue is absence of creative leadership and the

capacity to lead change.

India's voluntary sector has been known for its creativity and innovation. Innovative and creative

efforts have been recognized from time to time. Now, with this result few programmes are being

implemented exclusively by NGOs. People living in islands dotting Assam's Brahmaputra river no

longer worry about isolation as a hospital floats up to them at least twice a month to check on their

health. Akha a boat with medical personnel and supplies is a unique door-to-door service for the poor inhabitants of the state's islands. Akha, which means 'hope' in Assamese, is the brainchild of

the Association for India's Development (AID) and Centre for North East Studies and Policy

Research (C-NES). The NGO was sensitive to the vulnerability of those who lived in the rural

islands, for away from hospitals and communication. The boat has space for on-board treatment of

basic health problems and also provides referral services. It accommodates health professionals and


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can be turned into a training centre. This was funded by prize money from a World Bank

competition won by C-NES volunteers and a group of grass-root boat-builders in 2004. With the

India Country-level Development Market Place award of $20,000 (Rs. 9,00,000), volunteers could

realize their dream of treating the unreachable under-privileged sections. This creative thought is a

true and successful example of public-private partnership under which Assam Medical College,Dibrugarh provides the medical facilitation while district administration supplies the fuel for vessel.

The benefits of working with social entrepreneurs

The greatest challenge for social entrepreneurs lies in persuading all other actors to reinforce and

support them. Neither governments, businesses, multilateral and bilateral institutions, foundations,

philanthropists, and academia nor the civil sector have yet caught up with this emerging field, and

they too often stand in its way.

Yet all these groups stand to gain tremendously from stimulating and supporting social

entrepreneurship. And social entrepreneurs need them. In fact, social entrepreneurs will be the first

to say that alone they cannot undertake their critical work of social and economic change. They

need the support of imaginative, compassionate and talented people from all sectors who can help

social entrepreneurship live up to its promise.

The public sector Government has a critical role to play in supporting social entrepreneurs. However, with few

exceptions, governments and government bodies have yet to recognize social entrepreneurship as a

legitimate field of endeavour. This recognition is crucial if governments are to provide a better

fiscal and legislative environment for social entrepreneurs, including the review of tax laws and the

elimination of burdensome regulations, arbitrary decision-making and other requirements and

practices that hamper them. More often than not, social entrepreneurs find themselves shunning

collaboration with governments for reasons ranging from corruption to inefficiency and indifference

on the part of government bureaucrats. Where government-social entrepreneur collaboration has

been effective, the benefits have been manifold for both, but such examples are rare.

Companies

Increasingly, companies are beginning to appreciate the merits of working with social

entrepreneurs, mainly for three reasons, all related to competitiveness.


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From a financial perspective, reaching untapped markets can be greatly facilitated by

working with social entrepreneurs who have spent decades designing, implementing and

refining innovative ways of bringing previously excluded groups into the marketplace. Increasingly, companies are discovering that consumers expect them to pay some heed to

the social effects of their operation. Companies are discovering that they can outsource thesocial innovation element to social entrepreneurs in the same way they have done with

product innovation and business entrepreneurs. From a human resources perspective, the ability to attract top talent is a major challenge for

companies. But the best and brightest today are looking for more than impressive salaries

and stock options. They want something that gives meaning to their work and their lives.

Supporting social entrepreneurs in different ways shows that companies care about more

than the bottom line.

Foundations and philanthropists

These are best placed to support social innovators, as they are free of the voting booth and the

financial bottom line, the forces that dominate the decisions of government and business

respectively. But too many foundations and philanthropists seem content to fund demonstration

projects that they hope will produce dramatic results in a very limited time. This is unrealistic,

misplaced and costly. As so many successful social entrepreneurs can vouch, it often takes years

before their idea takes shape into a viable and scalable solution. Even then, the approach must beconstantly modified to respond to unforeseen obstacles or dynamics along the way.

A social entrepreneur continuously adapts. As Ela BhattMirai Chatterjee, founder member of the

ground-breaking Self-Employed Womens Association (SEWA) in India, put it, The biggest thing

we have learned after 30 years of existence is that there are no definite victories or defeats. The

most important thing is to keep on going. Foundations need to rethink their focus on supporting

demonstration projects. They can have much greater impact by scaling up demonstrably successful

social innovations initiated and implemented by social entrepreneurs. The wheel does not need to be

reinvented, just adapted to travel in new train.

Multilateral and bilateral development organizations

It is evident that multilateral and bilateral development organizations, to a greater or lesser degree,

have all increased their collaboration with non-state actors, including social entrepreneurs. Much of


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this change has occurred in the last decade in response to general calls for reform to make these

organizations better equipped to respond to the challenges of the 21st century. In particular, strong

criticism has been made of those multilateral institutions responsible for finance, development and

trade for their failure to consult civil society and interest groups on their policies. Some institutions

have responded by devoting time and energy to dialogue with non-state actors. But more needs to be done.

We are in an interesting phase of new thinking and experimentation, and these institutions have a

vital and catalytic role. They should make it a priority to spot and legitimize social entrepreneurs

who have the capacity to imagine and the ability to implement what they imagine through

disciplined innovation.

Academia

Finally, the academic sector has a key role to play in fostering social entrepreneurship and

advancing knowledge about it. Important strides have been made, particularly at university level,

but we have barely begun to instill entrepreneurial thinking in younger students. And while we all

know that entrepreneurship is not something to be learned out of a book, it must be cultivated. The

entrepreneurial mindset has been described in terms of the following characteristics: commitment

and determination; leadership; obsession with opportunity; tolerance of risk, ambiguity and

uncertainty; creativity; self-reliance; ability to adapt; and motivation to excel. Primary andsecondary schools across the globe should be supported in their efforts to develop a curriculum that

instills these characteristics in future global citizens, whether they become social entrepreneurs or

not.

Summing up

Perhaps the most important qualities of social entrepreneurs are courage and resilience. Their

courage allows them to champion a cause and to take risks others wouldnt dare to take. Their

resilience enables them to endure the obstacles and setbacks along the way to achievingtransformational social change for as many as possible, as soon as possible.

We cannot expect the systems and structures that created the problems we face to come up with

solutions to those problems. Too many of us have lived within those systems for too long, blinding

us to other possibilities. As historian Barbara Tuckman noted, men and woman will not believe


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what does not fit in with their plans or suit their prearrangements. Social entrepreneurs, with their

hybrid approaches derived from inspired pragmatism, can work with any and all sectors, offering

new and very different approaches to what many of us say we want to do change the world.

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http://inspired-pragmatism.blogspot.com/2010/06/social-enterpreneurship-in-india.html

http://www.indianmba.com/Faculty_Column/FC947/fc947.html

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-company/corporate-trends/Social-entrepreneurship-in-India/articleshow/4157842.cms

http://www.alliancemagazine.org/en/content/social-entrepreneurship-overview
http://www.indianmba.com/Faculty_Column/FC947/fc947.htmlhttp://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-company/corporate-trends/Social-entrepreneurship-in-India/articleshow/4157842.cmshttp://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-company/corporate-trends/Social-entrepreneurship-in-India/articleshow/4157842.cmshttp://www.alliancemagazine.org/en/content/social-entrepreneurship-overviewhttp://www.indianmba.com/Faculty_Column/FC947/fc947.htmlhttp://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-company/corporate-trends/Social-entrepreneurship-in-India/articleshow/4157842.cmshttp://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-company/corporate-trends/Social-entrepreneurship-in-India/articleshow/4157842.cmshttp://www.alliancemagazine.org/en/content/social-entrepreneurship-overview

Documents

Copy of SanjayManocha_BVIMR - Practice of Social Entrepreneurship in India[1]