Social Entrepreneurship

Social Entrepreneurship is a book on the specialty of social entrepreneurs, how they differ from a regular business entrepreneur and leader, and the massive long-term self-sustaining change they bring despite often being outcasted for being odd. This book has several great points that I enjoyed. However, there were several parts that seemed very prideful despite not needing so, especially on how prestigious the organization Ashoka is. The pride aside, this book does have great suggestions.

I have included the page number where the notes are from; this is for the physical book.

• 10 Combine visions with down-to-earth realisms and showcase total commitment to idea of social change
• 17 New ideas are important, but more so new ideas that work
• 23 Look for underutilized, discarded resources, and find ways to utilize them
• 31 Social entrepreneurs use relatively small interventions to have disproportionately significant results
• 40 Conflicts help change often, but sometimes can be destructive
• 42 People like those they help
• 43 Behavior is dependent on situation. If you slyly put people in situation they have a stigma against, it thwarts the stigma. Social entrepreneurs actively use this on people.
• 46 Find ways to awaken latent drives in people
• 50 Don’t fight against resistance; instead find ways to catalyze things
• 53 Easier to make changes to things that are not at a good equilibrium, and then to have it go to a better equilibrium
• 55 Probability of two individuals talking about matters important to them decreases by a square of the distance between their respective distances
• 81 Concept of social capital
• 83 Bonding relates to in-group, bridging to out-group
• 89 Small successes should reinforce group’s desire to do something more, to sustain efforts
• 94 Social entrepreneurs have networks that reach thousands
  • How do they manage so many contacts?
• 97 Important to know who knows who: 5 degree of separation applies only if you actually can find the shortest path
• 97 Most valuable connections is lose ones, who most often help get jobs: power of weak ties
• 98 Scale-free networks are more resilient: “robustness”. But also risk spreading malice
• 99 Enhance person-to-person interaction and group formation: to prevent spreading too thin
• 99 Stages of vibrant network development:
  1. Start off with close-knit ties, high density, low distance: makes people dropout proof. Then, do scale-free network as it starts to get large (power of weak ties)
  2. Offer rewarding content such as media coverage or benevolence
  3. Formation of identity
  4. Social capital: enough trust where people are the capital
• 107 social entrepreneurs often characterized as ‘crazy’ by family and friends because they go after hard problems, take big risks, and force people to stretch limits
• 109 for creative solutions, consider the following
  • look at the situation from different angle and accept new opportunities and possibilities
  • reframe the problem to enable new problem solving
  • relinquish rigidity in the way we perceive things if needed
• 111 for entrepreneurs, internal locus of control is very important
• 112 social empathy needed for weaving social networks
• 113 the social entrepreneurs seem to have high optimism and capacity of trust
• 114 social entrepreneurs jump in before having adequate resources. Often leave families and financial resources
• 115 believe that people can change
• 117 “they are equipped with a higher ability to cope with adversity, which allows them to overcome the many natural obstacles usually associated with a social mission”
• 117 social entrepreneurs and social leaders both differ from general public by having more risk taking, optimism, and trust in others. But social entrepreneurs, when compared with other social leaders, have much higher risk taking and deeper belief in people and change
• 123 “exude passion, commitment, and energy”
• 124 act as catalyst, not an activist
• 134 social entrepreneurs start with very little monetary capital; typically pool it from interested community partners
• 135 social networks increase the likelihood of mobilizing resources and social capital
• 144 transformational leadership is best at empowering leadership: needs to create far-reaching vision that does not depend on charisma of leader nor submission of followers
• 149 approaches used by social entrepreneurs:
  • social empathy:
    • understanding (latent) potential in groups/societies
    • understanding needs, frustrations, and hidden dreams
    • understanding where groups might go
    • identifying areas where groups would most likely cooperate
  • empowering groups
    • ensuring others fully realize the reality of their success
    • avoiding top-down teaching style; look for internal educational mechanisms
    • diminish your own role
  • modify trust, optimism, hope, and cooperation to have groups naturally do things
  • identify the best starting point that gets the ball rolling. This could be different from the real goal.
• 153 modify control parameters
• 160 negative relationships have effects that can cause those relationships to become more negative: creates cycle of intractable conflict
• 162 use a secondary tangible activity be the vehicle to pursue the secretive primary goal
• 178 highly dense social networks have less social capital because the connections are redundant while simultaneously putting more at stake
• 179 “The Strength of Weak Ties” 1973 by Granovetter seems pretty darn important: loose distant connections aid a lot in gaining opportunities and experiences we otherwise would not get
• 182 social entrepreneurs may tend to think symbolically about insurmountable problems, which helps in outside-the-box thinking
• 193 social entrepreneurs often are lonely in the beginning phase and treated as strange
• 194 do haikus when trying to think outside the box, but the haiku should be anything but the work or difficulties
• 194 try to predict future trends
• 195 ensure the project is self-sustaining