Fifty years from now, by most forecasts, the population of the world will have grown by two-thirds, bringing the total humans on the planet to ten billion. People of different skin colors, ethnicities, religions and ideologies will share more crowded societies around the globe. Scientific and ethical challenges will sprint through the coming decades side by side, each competing to beat the other in a race that has no finish line. Never before has humankind faced the veritable hemorrhage of knowledge, ideas, beliefs, conflicts, deprivation and possibilities—from sublime to monstrous—it faces now. This is an unexplored world. It will not survive and sustain a civilization with leadership that merely addresses these many challenges one by one, relying on the principles and practices that carried us across the twentieth century. We are entering a new land now; we need a new style of leadership. No current leadership style meets this challenge. Social entrepreneurship comes close. How do we as social entrepreneurs take a more global view? And how do the leaders with global influence recognize and adopt a long term global vision?

I feel a new world order free of all tensions is required, if humanity is to survive for the long term. This can be achieved only by social entrepreneurs.

We have to create a world, where every transaction of every individual, organization and government is transparent to the whole world, so as to make everyone accountable for every action or inaction.

This is certainly possible if we shed our egos and superiority complex as individuals, communities and nations. We need to cerate a truly borderless world, where all are treated equal and all have equal opportunities made available.

We need to ban currency circulation and make all transactions transparent using biometric smart cards.

Thanks to advancement in ICT now we can create a truly global village where everyone can know everyone else through the internet.

We have created a transparency e-Platform for all to act and react openly, thereby eliminating possibilities of community / state sponsored terrorism, arms trade, drugs trade, nuclear trade, etc. The viel of secrecy and corruption should become a thing of the past worldover.

We must create all round peace and prosperity for now and for ever, to enjoy the fruits of advancement of science and technology and not create dissent, discord and dangers.

Socail Entrepreneurship can be the mantra for saving the world, in the 21st century.

Zurick raises THE crucial issue for social entrepreneurs in the coming decade.

You wouldn't run a corporation with no CEO or Board of Directors. You wouldn't run a city without a Mayor and city council. Why do we think we can run so complex a system as a planet with no central governing mechanism?

All we have is the UN, which is a committee of sovereign states. Imagine if shipping, marketing, R&D, were all sovereign parts of a company - trying to negotiate some coordinated action, but shooting each other if that failed? Would it be any wonder such a company were failing?

The Earth is failing. An Inconvenient Truth, the academy-award winning movie funded by Skoll, begins to raise the crucial issue of the peril faced by the Earth's fragile environment - the environment which makes life possible. Wars rage around the planet draining resources and causing poverty, hunger and disease.

How can we social entrepreneurs begin developing innovative systems for governing this small blue marble drifting through space?

John, you say:

"Never before has humankind faced the veritable hemorrhage of knowledge, ideas, beliefs, conflicts, deprivation and possibilities—from sublime to monstrous—it faces now. This is an unexplored world. It will not survive and sustain a civilization with leadership that merely addresses these many challenges one by one, relying on the principles and practices that carried us across the twentieth century."

You go on to ask:

"We are entering a new land now; we need a new style of leadership. No current leadership style meets this challenge. Social entrepreneurship comes close. How do we as social entrepreneurs take a more global view? And how do the leaders with global influence recognize and adopt a long term global vision?"

Social entrepreneurship is a structural means to deliver a solution. It cannot be expected to provide a solution to a problem that doesn't originate in poor or wrong structures.

Before we concern ourselves with structures, we must concern ourselves with the development of a wholesystem understanding of the problem: "the veritable hemorrhage of knowledge, ideas, beliefs, conflicts, deprivation and possibilities — from sublime to monstrous."

In short, John, we need to understand what causes the sublime, and what causes the monstrous. Then we can design the structures we need to dismantle the factors that advance the monstrous, and to enhance the factors that advance the sublime.

While the challenges seem to be growing more severe the tools for understanding complex problems are becoming more available. We can visualize information. We can engage in discussions with people from every part of the world. Individuals can mobilize armys of other individuals in ways that was never possible in the past.

I'm a greybeard, so don't know if I'll be here in 30 to 40 years to see how this conversation unfolds, however, I'm optimistic that the tools social entrepreneurs can use to network, learn from each other, and collaborate across continents, and across disciplines gives us hope for the future.

I maintain a section of links in the http://www.tutormentorconnection.org web site that point to sites that demonstrate mind mapping, GIS data systems, innovation and creativity so that people who visit the T/MC site might learn to harness these tools in our efforts to help kids from poverty be starting jobs by the time they are in their mid twenties. These sites can be used by anyone seeking to innovate new ways to solve problems.

I hope that during the next 10 or 20 years we can innovate ways to harness these new tools and set in motion innovation practices that give those who follow us greater momentum for solving the problems that they will face.

Krisdev's comments paint an idealized and inspiring picture (call it "point B"). Dan Bassill has built a network that can help save the world from the ground up, and rightly points out that we now have the means to reach and mobilize masses of people efficiently (call it "point A"). Thank you both for your comments.

My question is: Where are the leaders who can take us from point A to point B?

Over the decades ahead our leaders will need to embody and express the noblest hopes and dreams of their followers. The leaders who navigate the new frontier will need to be ambitious, inventive, competitive, strong like bulls and as pure as the driven snow. How they lead and how they are expected to lead must follow a moral compass calibrated by both the societies they serve and civilization as a whole. Our leaders must be what we know as social entrepreneurs, but social entrepreneurs of a higher calling. They must expand their hearts to encompass a global vision, serving the greater good of our worldwide civilization.

Who are they? Where are they? How do we empower them to save the world?

Or, as Ted Turner says, either lead, follow or get out of the way.

Or as Hemmingway said with an assist from John Donne, Ask not for whom the bell tolls...it tolls for thee.

I agree with Patrick Heffernan. No point waiting for the great leader(s). Time is awasting. While a global network of social entrepreneurs can achieve much across our planet, most individuals can only focus on one meaningful project at a time, and probably locally.

I agree with Patrick O'Heffernan. No point waiting for the great leader(s). Time is awasting. While a global network of social entrepreneurs can achieve much across our planet, most individuals can only focus on one meaningful project at a time, and probably locally.

I like your definition. What if I fit that definition. Shit! Please pray for me.

I'm not sure leadership is really going to take us where we want to go--especially not if you are talking about leadership in the narrow sense of the word, where it means individuals who take great ideas and run with them in inspired ways. I want to throw two new words into the mix: education and revolution. The first is a long-term solution, and, I agree, it's a little frightening to think that we might need to wait for the next generation to make large-scale change. The latter is a loaded word, but I think it might be a good paradigm to think about, given that we are all so worried about tipping in the wrong direction.

Eve C., I very much agree with you that we need education, but I would substitute "evolution" for revolution. Rather than look to leadership today, it appears to me that we must become "co-learners" because we are facing challenges that have never been encountered in previous recorded history. Where I feel we have to go is into our "inner awareness", into our "intuitive self" for wisdom. And I feel where a large part of that is going to come from is through a reconnection to nature.

There is currently a large movement going on toward "relocalization" as small communities mobilize efforts to become secure in the face of dwindling jobs and resources; and, in particular with regard to food supplies.

We are really being challenged to "think outside the box" in the face of these new and unprecedented challenges.

We are the people we have been waiting for. Large-scale change in teh 21st century is leder-drfiven, it is social network driven. We live in an global interconnected society in which information and direction is viral, not top-down. We all need to write, blog, video, speak. Most important we need to be movement entrpreneurs as well as social entrepeneurs - we need to stgart instituions that spread the SE virus, turn them over to managers, and take our knowledge capital with us and start more. Jeff Skoll and Pam Omidyar are examples; so are Jerr Boschee and Jim Fructerman and many others who invest in organizations and media and education that spreads the SE virus.

One of the reasons social entrepreneurs are successful is because we focus on solving real problems with real communities. We may be very ambitious, but we need to stay focused. Scale without focus leads to huge waste of resources.

My approach to saving the world right now, beyond Benetech's work, is on encouraging more people to become social entrepreneurs. Horizontal growth of the movement in addition to vertical growth.

I have created a few short essays on my web site that describe roles leaders can take. Such people can be highly visible people, or very invisible people. They can even be kids. They are people who connect the people they know with each others, with ideas, and with people who they know need help. This role was described in the recent book titled The Spider and the Starfish.

Here are links: Role of leaders: http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/Partner/CC/Presentations/Leaders/Role%20of%20Leaders.pdf

Connecting those who can help with those who need help: http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/Partner/CC/Presentations/TMC_Role/Connecting%20those%20who%20need%20help.pdf

While I demonstrate this with a focus on helping kids, I think the same role is required of leaders in any social sector channel.

I feel that we have very few public leaders who take this role consistently. The "volunteer" and "donate" buttons on a polititian's web site ask people to help them get elected. They don't ask people to help others solve problems.

We can change that if we'd just vote for people who demonstrate these habits.

Hi John,

Where we must go from here in order to adequately address the complexity of the challenges we face today is to another level of consciousness. The frightening thing about this is that few of us know or understand human consciousness and how to manage it effectively in order to maximize our personal power and reach our "full potential".

And, in this respect, I am talking about individual consciousness. But, both Jung and Freud recognized that we also manifest a "collective consciousness" as a group

or as a nation -- and this largely dictates our "group behavior".

Today, we are coming face to face with the knowledge that our collective behavior is severly threatening the survival of the human family;and has already killed off thousands of other species as well as depleted much of our natural resources in an astoundingly short period of time given the thousands of years it took to produce them.

In order to reverse this trend and conserve our life support system, we are faced with executing a major transformation of the collective consciousness.

For quite a few years I have been working with several transformational psychologists. One that I would like to introduce this group to is Dr. Jay Earley, author of "Transforming Human Culture -Social Evolution and the Planetary Crisis".

In the book, Dr. Earley develops a theoretical model for social (consciousness)evolution. Written in easy to understand, non-technical language, complete with graphics on many pages, Dr. Earley explains how the present crisis emerged through the natural flow of historical trends, and how these trends can now help to shape a healthier world. In nuturing the transition, if we understand the social forces that served to foment the crisis, we can then understand the personal changes we must make and use this understanding to become "change agents" and influence others so as to foment change in the collective consciousness. www.earley.org

It is imperative that we do this, for as you state, John, it cannot be accomplished "one by one".

I am currently involved in an effort, as one individual, to put up a website mapping human consciousness from a biological point of view so that we can begin to understand who we are as the human family. However, there is not only "biological consciousness" but social and cultural consciousness as well. The website, entitled "Pathways to Consciousness" will explore all of the different manifestations of consciousness and their effects on human behavior.

Hi Marguerite, many thanks for your comment. Normally I don´t do that, but in this case I must correct you. I am very happy, that I have a conciousness of my own, but what you mean, is the collective unconciousness, which is in Jungian psychology the elements of unconscious they are theoretically common to all mankind like the sunlight or the air( his words)

Life and its synchronicities are an interesting phenomenon … John you started this discussion by saying how disillusioned you are about the world today as we got to know it … your viewpoint was further supported by Krisdev and Daniel.

You have all posed certain viewpoints and wishes, some of them impossible to ever be realised. Utopia doesn’t exist and will never exist because neither the current situation confronting us in the world nor utopia is the solution.

The solution is a world that is in balance. If one takes lessons from nature, one learns that in nature there is always balance … but mankind is unbalanced.

In nature there is polarity (negatives and positives), unfortunately the mankind balance that exists today is currently heavily swayed towards negativity, driven primarily by three factors … FEAR, GREED and POWER.

The solution as I see it is not to create UTOPIA but to bring balance back into mankind. Utopia in itself is also not a good thing because it is also out of balance .

We can learn from the past … communism versus capitalism … both had their good points and their bad points. Unfortunately both systems were based on extremes and both out of balance. But if nothing else, we can learn from it.

And we must not forget that both systems failed, why? Because of FEAR, GREED and POWER! Because they were competition and fear driven rather than creating a spirit of cooperation.

You ask how can we not only change the world but save it from self-destruction?

Agree that we need real LEADERS! We don’t have them, they are seriously lacking everywhere in every country in the world! The question that should be posed is why are they lacking?

Let’s start with the hierarchy of life and humans:

We are born, and the first thing that we are taught is to compete, to WIN! That is the ultimate goal and it should be the primary reason for being alive … and we are faced with it from the first day that we have some basic understanding until the day that we die!

We live in a time when competition and a successful life are seen as one and the same, where the spirit of superiority is breed from pre-school days, where, what we are is measured by your assets rather than your deeds, by your position in society, by religious beliefs that teaches you that each religion is the one that is right and the others wrong.

We cannot ignore the fact that it does breed dissension … we have leaders that are totally driven, by POWER, GREED and FEAR of loosing who they are and what they have. (And am not just talking about governments, am also talking about big business, churches and religions)

They design systems and laws that foster their self-interest. Our kids and all of us are schooled that unless we compete, unless we WIN we are nothing! The primary goal that is taught is to WIN at any cost. But there can only be one winner, everyone else is then a looser … and nobody likes being losers.

… and then we are surprised that the result is what we have in the world today.

To answer your question what can we do to change and save the world in time!

Start in our homes by teaching our kids our own value system … and work hard in our communities, walk the talk, do rather than just philosophise. Be an example for others and one that others will want to follow … let’s us ourselves be the leaders, starting in our own homes, in our own communities, in our own countries.

… let’s teach our kids, and all around us to develop a spirit of cooperation rather than a spirit of competition! …

Can we do it in time? Who knows, but if we don’t start, what I do know is that there will not be a world in the future!

Hello, everyone.

I thank everyone for his or her post. I hope that somebody provide an answer to the question at the end of this post.

A friend who teaches social entrepreneurship at a California university had his 2007 spring course canceled by the interim dean. Not enough student interest. (By the way, when, in September, 2005, I asked some sixty MBA students at this university for a show of hands by those who knew what the Millennium Development Goals were, not one hand went up, not even from the Net Impact officers in the class.)

Another friend, who has a successful, global youth entrepreneurship program, had his proposal to teach social entrepreneurship at a different California university rejected.

There are a few university programs in the US for social entrepreneurship, but, compared with the number of university students, these programs reach very few students.

Service-learning at universities and high schools is not the solution. Service-learning is optional at most universities, tied to courses instead of graduation, and the phrase is not even known in many school districts, my own included. Even if students take service-learning, there is no guarantee that they would receive a grounding in self-reliance, social responsibility, and sustainable solutions, which could be considered three elements of social entrepreneurship.

And does anybody have to be told that there is an urgency with regard to addressing global warming, if not an urgency with regard to reducing extreme poverty?

1. We have far too few "natural born" social entrepreneurs.
2. We need to cultivate far more social entrepreneurs.
3. We would advance social entrepreneurship, hopefully at an accelerated pace, by implementing mass education about social entrepreneurship and related subjects, through an innovative curriculum which includes innovative practicum. This supports EveC's "education and revolution", with the revolution of which we speak being innovation in thinking.
4. There is a proprietary concept for such mass education. ("Proprietary" in the sense that I am serving as the custodian until ownership be transferred to a governing assembly of stakeholders.) Without interfering with faculty syllabi, without taking class time, and without requiring that institutions budget, we offer students online lessons with incentives. Socially- and environmentally-responsible employers ("SEREs") provide material for the lessons, as do innovative community organizations. A content team converts the material into brief, yet poignant, lessons delivered three times a week.

By the way, the same or similar incentives are meant to draw high schoolers to the online lessons.

1. A survey was done on three campuses of the California State University in October, 2006. 201 (80%) of 251 students said "yes" to participation. Notably, all the respondents at CSU San Diego were from India, and 70% of them said "yes". There is a probability that the concept would be applicable domestically and abroad. There is a probability that, just in the U.S., several million high schoolers and university students would participate every year within a few years. Perhaps this would help us reach the tipping point in social entrepreneurship which we need.
2. Additionally, the concept is meant to generate considerable surplus income. That income becomes the fuel for the "practicum" side of the concept. For example, instead of spending money on telling youth that they should vote when eighteen, money goes into a community chest so that the youth and their parents and neighbors do vote to improve their communities, using pioneering practices in democracy which, hopefully, would help democratize American democracy. Like having an open board of grant-making directors of a foundation.
3. Thus, the concept is meant to be a very useful tool to inculcate social and environmental responsibility and cultivate social entrepreneurs.

So, if it is that good, why is it not public yet?

Because every social entrepreneur has her / his project and, consequently, is not looking to collaborate. The concept is like a heavy Thor's hammer. If we lifted it together, we could use its power. None of us alone could tap the power by herself / himself.

1. The concept needs a preparations team, one of whose first activities would be to identify a network to announce the concept to a large number of university students and high schoolers, so that a test be done. Such a network might be the offices of career services on university campuses and the counseling offices at high schools. Or an organization like Net Impact. Or a SERE with a reach to a large number of educational institutions. That network has not yet been identified.

Suggestions for a preparations team? No "Hail, Mary" please, as I have tried to catch enough of those.

Thank you.

Van Ajemian vanajemian@yahoo.com 323.720.1022, office and voice mail, Pacific time Montebello, California 90640

It's gratifying that this discussion has reached the level of thinking and candor I had hoped for but wasn't sure we would see. Just a few comments on what's been written up to this point:

1. I admire Benetech and Jim Fruchterman greatly. His is an organization, at the core of its existence, practicing and promoting the principles and promise of both social entrepreneurship and social enterprise. If the world had a dozen Benetech's spread across the planet we might start to see international for-profits catch the Benetech draft and ride the wave to a new level of enlightened enterprise. My perspective, however, is that time is of the essence. We could be one wacky world leader away from global meltdown. What Jim models is social enterprise at its finest. What I see a need for is a higher level of leadership--one that moves entire societies forward toward an improved world purpose.
2. Marguerite's point is precisely where I think civilization needs to move--to a level of "collective conscienciousness." We all need to look beyond the many embarrassments history will remember this era for--the Iraq War, genocide in Africa, terrorism, astronomical corporate profits and abject poverty, state-facilitated homophobia, religious zealotry, and the like, to name a few--to a world where all of civilization shares a consciousness for the vital importance of acceptance and peaceful coexistence. I will get Dr. Earley's book.
3. Thank you, Laurinda, for pealing another layer of varnish off this discussion. We will never achieve utopia. I don't think that would be my choice...maybe in another life. It's human nature to evolve through our innate capacities for ambition, invention, ego and competition. Life would be boring in a perfect world, I think. This doesn't mean, to your point though, that we can't move toward a better balance. Alot less killing. Alot less starvation. Alot less disparity in rights and privileges. Alot less hatred and mistrust. And alot more nobility in leadership at the highest levels. The energy that will move us to a better balance, not with one worthy social enterprise at a time but in giant steps, is the energy of leaders who look beyond their personal rewards to the rewards their influence enables them to endow to humankind.
4. We all see a similar "greater good." We're each passionate about our own ways of achieving it. Van Ajemian and Eve touch on the need to instill young people, through education, with the knowledge and principles, to appreciate social entrepreneurship.

This is all tasty food for thought. How do we cook it into something we can feed up the leadership food chain?

I'm reading William Easterly's reasonably controversial book, The White Man's Burden, at the moment. He focuses in on some of these issues. While not using the social entrepreneur language, he divides those working for social change into "Planners" and "Searchers." Planners are the foreign aid establishment, which Easterly feels in general delivers very little for a great deal of money. Searchers are the people who search for solutions to the actual needs of people, and of course these tend to be the social entrepreneurs:.

My concern is that if we focus on big change and lose touch with the real world, we'll fall into the trap of big plans and fail to actually deliver real benefits to the people we are supposed to be working with. I think we make a bigger impact on changing the world by creating an environment that encourages social entrepreneurs to make bottom-up change instead of another top-down plan.

An example might be Ashoka Fellow Anil Chitrakar. One of his wins was convincing the World Bank to not build a mega-hydro project in Nepal, which would be built by big multi-national. Instead, they built the same amount of power capacity, more quickly, by relying on Nepalese groups to build much smaller (and environmentally less disruptive) hydro projects.

Let's keep striving to build an environment where social entrepreneurs who are being successful can scale up to achieve maximum impact, instead of making a big plans for their own sake. It's not inconsistent with impatience or ambition to make big change.

a country Constituion states for example:

"discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, fun, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth. ... is unfair unless it is established that the discrimination is fair. (extract from the South African Constitution)" ... enabling a country legal system to declare via precedent law any discrimination against anyone irrespective of color, creed, language ... et ...al.

John, going back to saving the world ...

Above does not only apply to the South African constitution, it is also found in other countries constitutions around the world.

My question is how do we as Social Entrepeneurs facilitate the REAL aleviation of poverty? Do goverments, political parties, churches and BIG business really want to see REAL change? I am begenning to doubt it, (must be my old age creep in ...)

if we take out blinkers out of our eyes what do we see? - poverty is a fertile ground for unrest, people are starving, desperate and hungry ... they want to survive, most live in appoling conditions but they make easy prey for corrupt or power hungry polititians ... because people in poverty live in the hope of having their situation changed and Polititians sees them as an easy reacheable VOTE! ...

• Some of the BIG businesses today have income that far exceeds some countries total income, so they are in a position to influence Polititians ...

and I can go on!

so back to my question:

How do we facilitate change when we have to operate in these type of environments? How can we ever change the world for the better? How can we save the world from self-destruction?

Until we can facilitate real Constitutions in all the countries in the world we will not see much of a change!

Until we can facilitate real distribution of resources we will not see much change neither!

Until individuals stop looking just at the I, ME and MY, and start caring and loving, there will not be real change!

So where can we really start? We can only start by influencing change on an "individual", one-by-one basis, and hopefully still in our time facilitate heart-change to acheive a mind-change!

Like you, I look at the world and all I see is the scale tipping towards destruction ... and it saddens me! I just trust that I will have the strenght and wisdom to continue on my path! ... that I will have the support needed ...

and when I think like this I realise how invaluable places like this are (talking about Social Edge), how having people who share the same values and vision can meet and support each other ...

May we never despair and may we always be able to support one another ...

Laurinda's comments ring from the heart, with compassion and a yearning for simple truths. What can we do about a world that condones starvation and state-sanctioned discrimination? How do face the dirty truth that civilization as we know it today has been drawn, largely, by thousands of years of murderous conquest, that the world is still driven by the same irrational juice and if we don't stop drinking this lethal kool-aid our existence will go up in flames?

Actually I'm an optimist. I believe in the innate goodness of every individual's human nature. Yet groups of people, large and small, will decide to do things together and support things together that they would never do or support individually. This phenomenon is acutely demonstrated by Jerry B. Harvey in his program known as The Abilene Paradox. (There's a good summary on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox.)

As for what we do about all this...to Laurinda's question, What do social entrepreneurs do to facilitate change when we have to operate in these types of environments?... I believe we use our burgeoning industry to continue these conversations. In these conversations we should extend the scope of social entrepreneurship-—broadening who see as practicing it and how the performances of those people are judged. We should evaluate leaders at the highest levels of government and business on the basis of their performance as social entrepreneurs.

How well they are performing should be measured by what value they are returning to society. Their initiatives should be evaluated as social enterprises. If their initiatives succeed, the leaders should be rewarded. If the initiatives fail, the leaders should be replaced.

As a growing worldwide industry, social entrepreneurship is developing a voice. The world is starting to pay attention to us. We need to use our voice to push leadership to higher standards of performance. All leadership. The guiding principles of social entrepreneurship must be acknowledged and adopted by ALL leaders--in governments, business and education as well as non-government, nonprofit and social service. It should be ingrained in the mission of our worldwide S.E. industry to infuse in all forms of leadership a commitment to serve the greater good of civilization. And further, to reject all initiatives that run counter to the greater good of civilization. This is a universal principle that applies to every worthy form of leadership. We need to become the voice of this principle and the leading advocates for its implementation.