Social Entrepreneurship

As I have said before, I’m not creative enough to come up with business ideas. I admire people who can come up with one good idea after another. I also admire people who can come up with business ideas that have a “double bottom line” — ideas that generate a profit and are socially conscious. I had the opportunity to participate in a focus group for The Community Foundation of Utah this week and it was a lot of fun. One of the things I learned at the focus group is that someone I admire, Matt Minkevitch, has been nominated for the Ernst and Young Social Entrepreneur of the Year award. Way to go Matt.

As much as I enjoyed the focus group, I also left a little frustrated. I was frustrated by the attitude of one entrepreneur specifically who characterized social entrepreneurs as “cute”. I found that attitude so arrogant that I couldn’t help but comment. At the same time, I think I know what he was trying to say. I believe he was trying to say that he admires social entrepreneurs — even those who aren’t organized or who don’t know how to get from where they are to where they want to be. I think (hope) he was saying that he admires even the less effective social entrepreneurs because they have good intentions.

The reason I found his characterization of social entrepreneurs so condescending is that as I have become more familiar with social entrepreneurship, I would say that it is anything but cute. I had the opportunity to judge the Romney Institute’s Social Venture Capital Business Plan Competition this year and nothing I saw there was “cute” — it was real business with a social consciousness that was admirable. And if you look at what Matt Minkevitch has done at The Road Home to promote self sufficiency and to find homes for the homeless I suspect the very last word that would come to mind would be “cute”. I suspect words like “humbling” and “inspiring” would be more likely to cross your lips than the word “cute”.

And then I realized that maybe this young entrepreneur had a point. I’m sure that for every Matt Minkevitch out there, there is a “cute” social entrepreneur who has an idea without the ability to execute. Maybe there are ten “cute” social entrepreneurs for every Matt. But being being cute isn’t limited to social entrepreneurs. I would bet that there are probably ten “cute” non-social entrepreneurs for every real one. And there are probably another 10 Yo-yo entrepreneurs for every real one. And there are probably another 25 entrepreneurs that my wife would hate.