NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, May 20, 2011

If you want to find out what’s happening in the world of social entrepreneurs, you can’t do better than ask Bill Drayton: especially since he’s the person who first coined the term “social entrepreneur” and is an acknowledged pioneer in the field.

Mr. Drayton is well-known as the founder and CEO of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, which now has about 3,000 social entrepreneurs in the field all over the world. This year marks 30 years since the first Ashoka fellows began their work. He has won a MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellowship. In 2006, Harvard University named him one of its 100 “Most Influential Alumni.” In 2010, he received an Honorary Doctorate from New York University and the Essl Social Prize, for his work creating and building the field of social entrepreneurship.

According to David Bornstein’s book, How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, one of Drayton’s college professors once described him as having “the determination of Job and the brains of a Nobel laureate.” “The life purpose of the true social entrepreneur is to change the world,” Drayton has said. “[H]e or she simply cannot come to rest in life until his or her vision has become the new pattern societywide.”