Ashoka founder and CEO Bill Drayton first used the term "social entrepreneurship" in the early 1980s, and it continues to inspire images of audacious social change -- the kind that sweeps away the old approaches to solving intractable social problems such as disease, hunger, and poverty. Like business entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship involves a wave of creative destruction that remakes society. Although we will always need traditional social services -- even more during times of great economic turmoil -- social entrepreneurship focuses on changing the underlying dynamics that create the demand for services in the first place. Although people generally agree on this broad definition of social entrepreneurship, confusion reigns over the specifics. This article from the Stanford Social Innovation Review offers an in-depth look at common assumptions and truths in this realm.
