Who will drive Social Change? Answer: Entrepreneurs

I have to agree. Entrepreneurs have always led change. In fact, one of the world’s foremost thinkers, Malcom Gladwell, thinks so.

Malcom Gladwell, a writer for The New Yorker but best known for his two number one best selling books “Blink” and “The Tipping Point” discussed Social Change with another respected thinker Mark Kingwell, a philosophy professor from the University of Toronto.

I attended the seminar that was held on May 13, 2008 at Convocation Hall, in Toronto, Canada. The one point I came out with was that nothing beats doing, and best doers are entrepreneurs.

Gladwell argued that social change is brought about action and not so much about knowing. As an example, he asked the question: What has Al Gore accomplished in the last 8 years of creating awareness for climate change? Gladwell argued that not much. Sure he has created awareness of a problem, but where are the results.

The hope for action lies in entrepreneurs and technical experts, Gladwell said. True enough, a clear example would be organizations like kiva.org and International Development Enterprise (IDE).

Kiva.org is the online micro lender that has helped thousands of poor people connect with lenders to start businesses. Everyone told founders’ Matt and Jessica Flannery that their idea would not work. That making small loans of $25 to entrepreneurs in developing countries would not work. Yet today, Kiva.org has a welcomed problem any organization would have; They have too much money and not enough entrepreneurs to lend to. Maclean’s wrote about it last year in an article entitled “No more Cash please we are drowning in it”

Through IDE, Paul Polak has been fighting poverty for the past 25 years and is the author of new book entitled “Out of Poverty”. Watch Paul Polak on The Hour where Paul Polak discusses how he has helped 17 million people out of poverty and his plan to continue to help the 1.2 billion impoverished people around the world who live on less than $1 a day.

The model for successful social change as shown by entrepreneurs according to Gladwell, Doing first, small Goals second, Focus third and finally, fourth, create awareness.