Hi Seth and Social Edge Community,

Great topic and provocative questions. I work for Commongood Careers, a retained search firm that supports social entrepreneurs with their recruiting and hiring needs. Through our work with orgs like Ashoka and Echoing Green amongst a wide variety of social entpreneurs, we've have found that fit on cultural characteristics, such as the ones Seth mentions, are the most important to hiring organizations across the board. To evaluate on criteria like commitment to mission, ethical fiber, and entrepreneurial quality can be challenging but possible even during the early screening process. We tend to take a "core competency" approach when looking at soft skills as these, and look to examples of past behaviors that will illustrate these qualities. This may also require hiring organizations to look at candidates' ability to be entrepreneurial, connected to mission, etc. even if they have not worked in socially entrepreneurial settings, per se.

Given Dana's comment above about how companies increasingly see an entrepreneurial mindset and passion as criteria in the hiring process, a big question becomes how schools can prepare the next generation of leaders with these skills. Most of the programs I've seen in academic settings to prepare social entrepreneurs are very focused on book learning and not nearly thoughtful enough about experiential learning. From the social entrepreneurs I've met it seems like people get ideas from watching others and being involved in service themselves... not just by reading about the concepts behind action. That's why I'm such a strong believer in Thinking Beyond Borders, Global Citizen Year and other programs that are aimed at empowering young people by allowing them to take a gap year after high school to be involved in global community service. What better way to build a generation of passionate, entrepreneurial leaders than to give young people an opportunity to make a world of difference and to see a world that is different (and yet remarkably similar) to their own.

Really provocative questions! I am a non-profit lifer turned corporate leadership consultant, and I work a lot with corporate leaders to develop an awareness of the competency of what we would call social entrepreneurs. A lot of times, the traits are innate: having authenticity and integrity, being comfortable with risk and challenging the dominant paradigm, and leading with an entrepreneurial quality. These characteristics, whether innate or learned with help, I believe are necessary for the leaders of the future in these companies, especially as the companies themselves struggle to become more transparent about their business practices. It also pushes companies to become more responsible corporate citizens. They are getting on board, slowly in some cases, but the movement is afoot.

What's compelling much of the activity I describe is of course Generation Y incoming talent, and its demands on the corporate world for the same characteristics ... integrity, responsibility, an inspirational place to work, and an openness to the contributions of talent at all levels, regardless of age, tenure, or experience. I write more about this on my blog (jenniferbrownconsulting.blogspot.com). My hope is that the massive numbers of young people with different values than the dominant corporate paradigm will keep demanding a different relationship with their employer, and their leaders, and that this will result in a redefinition of how leadership has been defined (top-down, father knows best, homogenous/non-multi-cultural, etc.)

Intresting and responsible topic indeed.

As we cannot give shape to certain things in life such as love > we can understand how one has come to certain conclusions by dialogue only, whether its interviews method or by standard metrics (quality & quantity).

This topic is a very personal one and can be talked better only by Time.

Time when we refer to > a time which is mother of Mind > Thought > Action.

For youth I see we need to talk about this fact of Life and I think deffinetly we can build better representatives for the complex and confused world which we are building.

Great discussion. And what Jennifer says is very appropriate to those of us (see AllanShore.com, which is just in development) who believe the essence of many of these skills are the same ones that nonprofit agencies have sought .. though now always so systematically ... in their effort to find and maintain committed talent. That is why I'm working to approach this issue from where the two fields of professional caring/advocacy come face-to-face with the promises of socially responsible investing. I'm working on materials about just this issue as part of my consultant package and would love to hear what others have to say. Unfortunately, at this point, there remain ways too much seperation between these two sides of the shared coin of sustainable progress! Thanks for the continuing topics of discussion. I hope to be a greater part of these and other issues in the future so, as I sometimes fear, what the nonprofit sector has learned need not be left out of the process of growth.

This is a great question for two reasons.

First, if you're a social entrepreneur with a truly fresh and unique idea, people are constantly giving you the "glazed eye" look as you try to explaine what is is you do. They don't have a frame of reference because you're seeing something far beyond what they have even thought of. Thus, finding ways to encourage social investors to spend more time understanding what we're talking about, and finding more innovative ways to express our own visions and ideas, would be what I'd call "tipping points", or actions that would have an impact on all social innovators, not just a few.

Second, creating new leaders who have these skills, or who can implement the ideas of one innovator in all of the places where the same problem requies solutions,is a huge challenge. I created a Tipping Points presentation which you can view at the link below: http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/Partner/CC/Presentations/TMC_Role/TippingPoints.pdf

In this, you'll see that growing leaders is a critical need.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and feel that universities need to be involved, as an intermediary in a process of identifying 7th to 12th grade youth with the intangibles to succeed in this type of work, and then nurturing their growth through high school and college with a combination of classroom, and field learning. They also could be doing research to identify the intangibles that make current social leaders successful, and doing personality profiles to recruit students to this field of study based on having those traits.

The result would be that we would create two groups of young people leaving college.

A) this group would come into tutor/mentor programs with 4 to 8 years of learning and experience and would be contributing to the success of an enterprise from the first day on the job

B) this group would not go into direct service, but in to other sectors of industry, education, media, etc. with an understanding of why the social benefit service is important, where it is needed, and how they can be proactive in supporting group A with time, talent and dollars as they move through their own lives.

If just one college in the world would adopt this concept, focused on volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs, we could make a quantum difference in the availablity and impact of such programs all over the world.

Seth, great questions. One of the things which most excites me about the emerging group of social entrepreneurs and organizations which support them is the consensus that's slowly building around what the driving values are, what makes organizations effective, and how individual leaders and participants contribute to this.

This consensus exists at various levels of tacit and explicit knowledge, and the trick with formulating metrics would be to appropriately capture this consensus in explicit formulae, without overstating the levels of our knowledge. Done wrong, we'll have more confusion and bad practices than when we started, but done right, these formulae can help those with an intuitive understanding better articulate and engage with this understanding, and can quickly and easily explain this understanding to those not yet in the loop.

Done with patience and humility about the limits of the metrics, I think this would be a very productive process. There are several groups I've come across in the past couple of years that are trying to do this in one area or another (New Progressive Coalition is one), and business scholars have gotten increasingly adept at doing similar things in studying leadership in for-profit organizations, so this should be doable for social-good organizations as well.

Seth, thanks for the conversation. I'd like to give an overview (as I see it) of ways that organizations are working to develop the characteristics you mentioned in young people (to answer your 3rd question).

There are programs like Youth Venture, that support junior high and high school students as they run their own ventures. There are also programs geared towards college students, like Americans for Informed Democracy and StartingBloc, that are primarily educational (i.e., more putting on conferences and events about issues, rather than incubating specific ventures). Then there are orgs for older social entrepreneurs, like Ashoka or Echoing Green.

Conscious Lifestyle seems to be the only national organization that is supporting college-aged social innovators while they run ventures. There is an unique emphasis of learning through experience - of having the social entrepreneurship experience in a low risk environment. The result is that the students Conscious Lifestyle supports are making a difference today, while also training to be the top changemakers of tomorrow.

What I would like to see is more collaboration among these organizations. First, in terms of organizations working with the same demographics, so we are not reinventing the wheel in regards to programming. And second, to create a seamless chain of support for social entrepreneurs - all the way from junior high to the point in which these people are running global organizations.

Would anyone in this conversation like to help?

I will offer the case, that whatever template is used, there will be those still outside the dominant paradigms, and even outside the newer paradigms. I offer the case of a man I found homeless, fasting for economic rights in the US.

Meeting him changed my business to a social enterprise because I thought he really had something visionary when we first became acquainted nearly a decade ago. I've since seen his ideas reflected in what is now called Creative Capitalism and that which we know of Obamanomics. Only yesterday, reading of CK Prahalad speaking at a Creative Capitalism roundtable about the asymmetric deployment of information which keeps poor people poor, I realised that this too had been spelt out 12 years earlier. He'd even warned of the risk of the disenfranchised rising up to strike out at those they saw as oppressors, 5 years before the tragedy of 9/11.

He'd leveraged funding for a development initiative and microfinance bank in Russia and more recently persuaded the government of Ukraine of the need to deploy more than 400 rehab centres for disabled children and double the adoption allowance.

That of course, doesn't diminish the case for identifying potential social entrepreneurs, empowering them to empower others. By the yardstick of many, he may be considered a maverick but as he has told me, mere passion isn't enough to implement something that's world changing. It demands being afflicted.

In developing the case for the development initiative in Russia he'd left behind a trace with an economics department now teaching the basis of an economic model which takes into account the needs of all stakeholders. It is reflected in the description of a people-centered model which come from a visionary named Ramla Akhtar, from Pakistan.

http://www.triplebottomline.com.pk/response.asp?id=1&sub_id=7

In the latest strategy paper which so far has leveraged the changes described above in Ukraine, he makes a call for replicating the educational component with a faculty for social enterprise in a national university. The paper having been submitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, two years ago in October.

http://www.p-ced.com/projects/ukraine/national/

I'm all for collaborating as Mike suggests above. Does anyone want to join us?

1. Sept.2008 Dear Seth Greeting from Manila, Philippines

Your post dated 2008-09-09 made me reflect and as myself:what was it in my formal education as well as in my character formation by family, church and community that made me take this new tract of social entrepreneurship? You see, I was a businessman first(profit-taking) for 30 years until I was "converted" into becoming a social entrepreneur three years ago. I would like to share with you the fruits of my reflections. I hope they would be of some interest.

1. I was born into a business family. As a small boy, I love to listen to my parents and parents' friends talk about ideas that develop into full blown business ventures. So very early in life, I learn that all of business starts from an idea. And "the" entrepreneur is one who spots this idea and develops it into a full blown business venture. This ability can be developed by anybody through influence of family or through formal schooling in a business school. But it is very important that one makes a conscious effort in developing this entrepeneurial ability.
2. I has 4 years of Philisoply and Humanities during my college years. This developed in me a deep consciousness for human values as well as an awareness to social issues.
3. As part of my Philosophy course, I had to spend 3 summers of social exposure. This meant I had to live in the squatters area for the first summer, and then I had to live in a tenement housing during the second summer. We undertook community development activities. There I realized that there is a great difference in actually living with the poor and just dropping by for a visit. When you live with the poor, they become real persons to you with a name and become your friends. Here I learned to relate with people irrespective of their social standing in life. This was a valuable learning experience for me and proved to be a great help to me later on as a businessman. I can understand labor issues and am able to connect with the ordinary laborer. I never had labor problems.
4. I remember for my last summer exposure, I lived with the sugarcane havesters in one "hacienda" in Negros Island. This experience was quite emotionally taxing for me because I saw first hand massive labor exploitation. I saw how "man is wolf to man". This developed in me a consciousness and deep interest in social issues.
5. Then there was my MBA to learn the technical skills of organizing and running a business. Next is the "apprenticeship" in a large multinational trading company where I had the luxury of making my learning mistakes at somebody else's expense. Then I plunged right into organizing and running my own business.

Looking back now, the main thing that converted me to become a social entrepreneur was my summer exposures where I developed a certain bias for the poor and an awareness for social issues. I must say that I did spend 27 years as a profit-taking businessman before I decided to become a social entrepreneur. But I must say for myself that the personal disciplines that I have developed in myself during those 27 years are helping me now in my social entrepreneurial venture. The life of a social entrepreneur is often frustrating and lonely. And one must muster all the energy,tenacity,and passion in order to go on. I find great inspiration in seeing the lives of people that I improve and then again I realize that I am not anywhere near to addressing the social issue that I want to change. Wish me luck!...Francis Osorio

"How do we design programs to build these traits?"

The following points are drawn from experience of running a concept called OPEN HOUSE where one has access to kitchen,books,friends,elders & good listeners and above all a home environ which is non threatening and higly inclusive.

>We need models which are self sustainable to emulate >We need the models to be local >Not much science but sense >Availibility of core competencies >Which generate resources to sustain >Which accept limitations and accept strengths and enthusiasm

At an average at any given point of time we have 20 to 30 youngsters who are utilizing the place and we are sure they are imbibing value of sharing food,knowledge and responsibility.

All this happening because their is lots of understanding for the word - SPACE.

-Surya.

While preparing individuals one by one to transition from for-profit companies to nonprofits is moving the ball forward, at Civic Ventures we feels there is also strong need to create pathways that make these transitions happen faster. Especially given that the nonprofit sector has a leadership gap that is growing rapidly.

One great model for this civic highway is a new program that IBM recently started in partnership with Bridgespan. Together, they are building an online platform that helps IBM employees and retirees assess their readiness for nonprofit positions, identify potential opportunities and skills required, apply for jobs with nonprofits and receive mentoring. Once it's perfected, the pilot project will be made available to other nonprofits and corporations that wish to start similar endeavors. See this story on Encore.org for details: http://www.encore.org/news/show-me-way-ibm-and-brid

Another is the Encore Fellows program currently being piloted in Silicon Valley, helping senior managers at H-P and Agilent move into second careers with environmental organizations and groups focused on helping children in poverty. A particular focus is groups created and led by social entrepreneurs. This pilot is also the basis for a national encore fellows program being proposed in the new national service legislation, announced last week by Senator Kennedy and Senator Hatch. The legislation has been supported by both Presidential candidates. In fact, both Obama and McCain have come on as co-sponsors.

There is much more to be done at the levels of social innovation and public policy both, but the heartening news is that we've started to put a new generation of building blocks in place. If we can create a much more robust talent pipeline it might not only enhance the effectiveness of social entrepreneurs, but help long-established organizations achieve much greater impact.

The questions which keep coming back while addressing core issues such as meeting hunger are >

> Whether the issue HUNGER is really understood?

>How the served intepret the service?

>Is organizing access to food service?

>If it is service how do you define it?

>If its not a service then how do we generate resources?

>If resources generally get pooled with ease, to meet hunger?

>How does it happen and why it's not same with the next level i.e.SHELTER, etc?

>Why we landed in this situation where we need to explain why we need to feed?

These questions I am typing after 10 years of focussed work on promoting value of sharing food.

Though we developed models such as OPEN HOUSE and people who are hungry meet their hunger.

Questions keep coming back, why we landed in a situation where food is accessible to only few?

And I see their is need to promote and protect certain values, such as sharing food.

And whoever understand these and develop ways and means of addressing the issues in a process, will turn out to be a natural and indegenous social enterpreneur.

Great questions and great conversation. I’m so disappointed I missed the social innovator awards last night, but here are my responses to the questions.

1. Should the evaluation of social entrepreneurs be personalized or should we rely more on standard metrics?

I agree with Jesse about the need to create metrics “without overstating the levels of our knowledge”. The bad news is that evaluation of sincerity and passion does not fit in easily to standardized rubrics. The good news is that the human mind is possibly the most powerful pattern recognizing contraption in the universe, and we don’t always need standard metrics to evaluate. That’s why we can recognize captcha (the squiggly/blurry letters that you enter for security online) better than the most sophisticated computers. What’s important is setting forth clear standards of evaluation, and getting smart/experienced people to do the evaluation. Standard metrics are a means that sometimes helps achieve an end of effective evaluation, not an end in and of themselves.

1. Is there something that the private sector can learn from the personalized nature of evaluating social entrepreneurs? Should more Fortune 500 CEOs be judged on their sincerity and passion?

An economic development consultant friend of mine says “Keep your eyes on the player, not the ball.” When he goes to a new area looking to start up a project, he is always looking for local leaders with vision and drive, people who he trusts, not necessarily people in positions of power or with proven track records.

1. Given that personal characteristics such as sincerity and passion are key attributes of social entrepreneurs, what can we do to develop these characteristics in young people? There are courses sprouting up everywhere to teach social entrepreneurship but honesty and enthusiasm are not necessarily as "teachable" as economics. How do we design programs to build these traits?

One of my favorite examples of a program that develops sincerity and passion in young people is Roots of Empathy. Roots of Empathy teachers bring babies (with their mothers) into primary and middle school classrooms once a month, so kids can observe the first year of life. They use the babies to teach an emotional literacy curriculum, to inculcate empathy. I don’t have time to get into the process here, but the results are astounding—several studies have shown that bullying drops, sharing and cooperation rise DRAMATICALLY in these classrooms. Roots of Empathy is huge in Canada, and expanding internationally.

Kids today are being taught things that world leaders didn’t know a couple generations ago, but they aren’t usually being taught how to become more self-actualized self-expressed loving beings. This is reflective of a larger problem in our society (perhaps the source of all modern social problems), that in the past couple centuries technological development has far outpaced our development as ethical and emotional beings—only recently are we starting to catch up.

As an empiricist, I am constantly being characterized by the more spiritual among us as being without passion. I understand their objections... Define "passion,"" for me? See what I mean? Any attempt to do so is highly subjective and not measurable. In a way, in order to provide objective data to support such a measure one needs to look for evidence ... It's like the old joke from physics, Quarks and Farts, you caa't see either, but there's evidence of their existence. At Honda America Manufacturing we measured "morale," How? We asked ourselves the question... if morale was good, what evidence would there be, that we could see and measure? We came up with these and we tracked them and plotted them and used them to improve morale ... and it worked! When astrophysicists and astronomers look for a planet around a sun in a distant star, they can't see the planet, they look for a perturbation in the star's orbit that indicates a planet of a certain mass. In other words they look for evidence without direct observation.

So, here's the suggestion. If I were passionate about a subject. What would be the observable factors? What objective, overt characteristics would I display? Would I have books in my library on the topic? Would I search Google on it? Would I know a lot about the subject? Would I be an advocate for it?

So, give it some thought... if I were passionate about MicroFinance .... what objective and observable characteristics would there be? The answer is yes, we can measure indirectly.

One way to develop sincerity and passion in youth is to cultivate a society with strong arts programming, which encourages young and old alike to be deeply immersed in experiences that they cannot otherwise imagine as their own. This can be done with an Ibsen production, a ballet, a photograph by Richard Avedon or taking in those kids from the movie Rize who created a type of hip-hop dance to express their rage non-violently about growing up in a terrible part of LA. The impulse that sincere and passionate arts programming develops is the tendency to look past one's own paradigm and see what it is like to live life in light of values that might not be one's own, that might be removed from one in space and time but by which one could see being fulfilled by. Isaiah Berlin talks about this in an essay about plurality. The direct application to Social Entrepreneurship that plurality has is as follows: an essential activity social-sector thought-leaders inspire is a shift in perspective, a re-evaluation of priorities away from a purely (and fictitious non-sustainable) fiscal bottom line to a multifaceted one that takes social responsibility, accountability and ethics into account.

Imagine a community that is so passionate about a particular graduate program that it pays for the entire tuition of each student and imagine these donors becoming so involved that they're the "surrogate grandparents" of those who move in to town and enroll in that program. That is the story that each MFA Acting student at Florida State University's/The Asolo Rep Theater can tell. I know that training, as an actor, is not "the path" that is ascribed to the numerous personalized paths that social entrepreneurs walk. However, I am of the belief that the insights our age needs the most rest with those rare people who are calibrated to peer deeply into others and see what makes them sincere and passionate. I imagine that each of us here at socialedge.org have met someone who has this quality and that has inspired their moral imagination to take flight. As an actor in training, I see, with each passing day, myself and my peers learning techniques to become more sincere and passionate in life and on the stage.

I am not sure how to create a systematic change through the application of these techniques. The metrics behind what makes for good art has always been elusive. However, people recognize great performers and art that seems to respond to and define its era. I believe that the next wave of thought-leaders on the arts and social entrepreneurs will benefit one another greatly by dialoguing. The honest exchange that needs to happen between these peculiar brands of knowledge workers, social entrepreneurs and artistic leaders, is precisely what needs to be scaled upwards into a definable program that results in an equilibrium shift to address mass-inequities we witness the world over.