Social entrepreneurship is free enterprise’s answer to social issues and injustices, which, ironically, are largely a result of the failures of that very system. According to economists, a true free enterprise system is the efficient allocation of goods and services from producers to consumers. The problem is that many of these goods and services are allocated very efficiently to only a privileged few, rather than the masses. I’m not pushing a socialist agenda. I’m all for capitalism and free enterprise. I don’t have a problem with one person owning three homes while another owns one. But why should a child have to starve while I’m enjoying steak and shrimp on an expense account 800 miles from home?
Just yesterday a teacher friend of mine told me she saw a young couple across the street pushing two cats in a specially designed cat stroller. What does it mean when our educators are struggling to eat while others can cart around their feline friends in a stroller? Now, I have no problem with how you choose to spend your money, but what does it say about our value system when it’s okay, even expected, to put in sixty hours a week to make enough money only to make it back to work?
Social entrepreneurship brings business intelligence and socially conscious ingenuity together to effectively bring solutions to human and environmental issues that have thus far been largely ignored or have been ineffectively addressed, such as education gaps, health care, poverty, economic disparity, prejudice, and access to clean water and safety.