The top moments of the decade in Social Entrepreneurship. By Nathaniel Whittemore (Contagious ideas by PSST : spreading 2.0 innovation (editor = jérémy dumont, strategic planner, france))

17 February 2010

The top moments of the decade in Social Entrepreneurship. By Nathaniel Whittemore

My final list of the year, and this is the big one: the top moments in social entrepreneurship of the decade.

As any list, this is subjective, and reflects my biases. That said, I've tried to look across a pretty wide scope of happenings and chose key moments that reflected larger movements and shifts that have shaped the field. As you'll see, and following the pattern of this blog, I haven't defined the field strictly, and have included events that I think have, are, or will shift the boundaries of how we define ourselves. In true historian form, I haven't even defined the decade in strict terms.

The ordering isn't random, but it reflects an attempt to balance the impact that an event already had to the impact it will have in the coming years. One regret is that the list is largely US-centric. This is a matter of my failings to know the whole world far more than the lack of the world's impact on social entrepreneurship. Finally, there is almost no doubt that I've forgotten important things, and for an incredibly complete history of our field, please download and read this chronology of social enterprise.

Without further ado:

#10: Launch of the Office of Social Innovation (April 2009) - While it is muddled through the messy business of reforming health care and cleaning up foreign wars, this administration has also quietly put into motion the most high level collaboration between social enterprise and government the US has seen. With $50 million in approved funding, the forthcoming Social Innovation Fund provides a chance to live up to the promise of the office. Other notable moments for government collaboration with social entrepreneurs include the Fall 2006 launch of the Louisiana Office of Social Entrepreneurship - the first state level office of it's type, and the UK's May 2006 commissioning of the Cabinet Office of the Third Sector.

#9: First Issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review (Spring 2003) - The 2000s saw a huge number of academic programs based around social entrepreneurship and innovation. Indeed, it's increasingly a prerequisite that MBA programs have significant social innovation offerings. I've chosen the publishing of the first issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review as the moment to capture this movement because, as any good academic will tell you, every field needs a journal. Since 2003, SSIR has been the place to get into the real research and scholarship behind our field.

#8: Andrew Zolli Joins Pop!Tech (2003) and TED Talks Move Online (June 2006) - As I argued in my #3 Trends Shaping Social Entrepreneurship in 2010 prediction, social innovation is an increasingly bigger bucket and actors and institutions from other fields like design are pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a social entrepreneur. Pop!Tech and TED are perhaps the two most important public faces of this broader world of creative social innovation. Both networks are anchored in conferences that bring together big thinkers from across the spectrum, and both networks have used the incredibly distribution power of the internet to help make the world safe for smart. Although they have their roots in earlier decades, there are a number of identifiable moments in the last ten years that stand out. For Pop!Tech, the emotional and intellectual force of curator Andrew Zolli has taken the network into a new league that continues to evolve at an incredible pace. For TED, the decision in 2006 to begin giving away the talks for free online has allowed anyone with an internet connection to be inspired, and with 100+ million views, that impact can hardly be calculated. I am totally convinced that these communities will continue to bring new people to social entrepreneurship as well as push those of us in the field to think differently about who and what we are and do.

#7: Unilever's Acquisiton of Ben & Jerry's (April 2000) and Cadbury's Shift To Fair Trade (March 2009) - These twin events are something of the Yin and Yang of corporate involvement with social good. Ben & Jerry's sold itself to European conglomerate Unilever in early 2000 with the promise that Unilever would keep its myriad social good programs in tact. Unfortunately, they didn't, and the fallout has had a profound impact on how investors like the folks at Good Capital think about structuring their investments to "bake social good into the DNA" as GoodCap founder Kevin Jones is fond of saying. On the flip side, the Fair Trade movement - a subsection or related cousin of social enterprise, depending on your perspective - has become increasingly mainstream - particularly in Europe. In March of this year, famous UK Chocolate maker Cadbury announced that its entire Dairymilk line would subsequently be produced with exclusively Fair Trade certified chocolate. A few months later, as Kraft circled for a Cadbury acquisition, many wondered if it would be Ben & Jerry's all over again. Exits for social enterprise will be a major factor in determining how far the field advances in the next decade.

#6: The Launch of the iPhone (June 2007) - Bear with me. Regardless of how you feel about Apple or social media, it is pretty inarguable that the iPhone is the first consumer electronic device to truly put the power of the computer in your pocket. It is truly the modern Swiss Army Knife, with 100,000+ applications that allow you to do everything from find parks that kids can play in to post status updates on Facebook to perform microtasks that help give work to refugees in Kenya. The iPhone is the first device that actualized the potential of the social communication revolution wrought on by instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook, and now geolocation services like Foursquare and Gowalla. In doing so, it is accelerating the shift in how we self organize, and I believe that we're only seeing the beginning of how the devices we carry in our pockets will allow us to shift how we act collectively and individually for the common good. The iPhone may eventually be disrupted itself, but its importance as the device that launched the revolution will stick.