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

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

At a recent event in NYC, journalist and author David Bornstein interviewed Ashoka Founder Bill Drayton about the future of social entrepreneurship. In case you missed it, here’s a recap from Eli Malinsky of the Centre for Social Innovation.

This blog post comes with a warning. I’ll advise you—as David Bornstein advised the audience—that Bill Drayton has a pretty good track record for predicting future trends in social entrepreneurship. Ignore these suggestions at your peril!

1.) Find Comfort in Change
The pace of change is accelerating. To be sure, the world has always been in flux. But the increase is now truly exponential. As Drayton explains, “change begets change as much as repetition reinforces repetition.”

A successful social entrepreneur accepts the dynamism of the world around them and understands that models based on repetition no longer hold water. The key to success is to embrace a model of “open, fluid, teams of teams.” Configure. Perform. Disband. Reconfigure. Perform again.

In short: Keep changing with the world around you, or you’ll be left in the dust.