There are some issues that are too big for social entrepreneurs to take on alone. Some problems require complementary legislation or regulation in order for entrepreneurs to find them tractable. Citing climate change as one example, Gergen pointed out that entrepreneurs can't put a price on carbon by themselves.

What are the areas that government needs to get involved in, and where do they need to stay out? What might be fruitful? What can we learn from each other? What should we be wary of? What are the new frontiers? In truth, social entrepreneurs and civil servants are both pursuing the same goal -- the betterment of society.

The Panelists

The first panelist, Vera Cordeiro, is the founder of the Saúde Criança Renascer Association, an inspiring health care program which began at a single hospital in Rio de Janeiro, and is now in the process of expanding to the 5,000 other public hospitals in Brazil. In order to accomplish this expansion, governmental cooperation has been essential, but it was not easy to get. Ms. Cordeiro went as far as chasing down Brazilian president Lula at the Davos World Economic Forum, and telling him about Renascer's programme. He was delighted by it, and asked her to follow up with his ministers, but nothing ever came from these discussions. One particular obstacle she highlighted was that government ministers were unaware of social entrepreneurialism as a phenomena, lumping it in with NGOs in general.

Renascer finally got its break when it partnered with Avina, a large Latin American sustainable development organisation. Avina's clout gave Renascer the connections it needed, and expansion has been relatively easy since then, at least as far as governmental relations go. Cordeiro said that fostering a culture of volunteerism in Brazilian society has been the bigger challenge; her parting advice vis-à-vis governments was to "be humble, and talk to people in the right position."

The next panelist, Yves Cabannes Spoke about Participatory Budgeting, a new form of local financial governance of which I had been previously unaware. Participatory budgeting, as the name implies, is a way of letting citizens participate directly in budgetary decisions. Sometimes this can be a token gesture – 2%-3% of the municipal budget – while in other cases it can account for 100% of the local budget. From its beginnings in Latin America (most notably Peru), it is now spreading through the rest of the world.

While Cabannes highlighted some of the ways in which community-based budgeting had fostered the development of social enterprises that might otherwise be excluded from the budgeting process, he said that it is still very difficult to work with government money. Priorities are constantly shifting, and the rules of the game change every year. Nonetheless, he clearly felt that it was an important and beneficial process, stating that participatory budgeting had “re-opened the agora” in communities which had embraced it.