BY IRA A. JACKSON
To introduce three profiles of local social entrepreneurs, we invited the dean of the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, Ira A.
Jackson, to write an essay offering his perspective on the opportunities of entrepreneurship. Jackson has served in leadership roles in city and state governments for a dozen years, was executive vice president of Bank of Boston and has helped launch a score of new social enterprises.
THE LATE PETER DRUCKER, while teaching and writing in Claremont, was the first to identify innovation and creativity as the drivers of the knowledge economy.
Well before others saw the light, Drucker said that more than marketing, financial engineering, cost control, strategy or global supply chain management, the key to organizational success in the 21st century would be innovation.
Drucker was so focused on this, he concluded that innovation is not only the key to the success of virtually every business, but that it is essential to government and nonprofits as well — and the driver of the competitive advantage of nations themselves.
In a classic study, he observed, much to the consternation of his business mogul disciples, that some of the best-run and well-managed organizations in America are found not in business but in the so-called social sector — organizations like the Girl Scouts. And the key to their success was (surprise!) a dogged commitment to innovation.
We’re now experiencing a new and welcome wave of social innovation that is reinvigorating our nation once again with a healthy and robust infusion of creativity.
And this palpable trend is growing around the world.
Twenty years ago when I was a banker in Boston, a couple of young Harvard Law School students approached me with an untested but innovative idea: What if we invested in young people as a source of the solution to urban problems, instead of viewing them as the problem? What if we started a privately funded urban Peace Corps that was composed of a broad cross-section of young people and harnessed their energy into practical idealism where they could help others in need and in the process become a visible “gang” for peace? Well, from improbable beginnings, CityYear emerged as a fantastically successful social innovation, spreading to 12 cities across the country, engaging 6,000 CityYear corps members who devoted a year of their lives and 12 million hours to service.
CityYear later inspired President Clinton to model a national service initiative called Americorps upon the CityYear model.
Perhaps innovation in the social sector hit one of its high notes last year when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to an economist who brought innovation to the financial sector in rural Bangladesh.
He created a nonprofit micro- finance agency called Grameen Bank, which has extended credit to literally millions of poor women who have gained financial self-sufficiency and the dignity of independence — while maintaining a 98.5 percent repayment rate.
Urban gangs transformed into agents for renewal and reconciliation and peace.
Poor and isolated women transformed into small-scale entrepreneurs and wealth-creators with impeccable credit histories.
Not by government and not by business. But by social entrepreneurs — innovators with a conscience, risk- takers with bold ideas and the discipline of the most rigorous and well-managed private enterprises.
These are just two of literally hundreds of examples of social entrepreneurs tackling tough problems with ingenuity and innovation and business acumen and achieving results that are simply astounding.
Today’s social innovators aren’t just starting new programs; they are applying new technologies and business-like applications, so that increasingly these so-called social innovations are looking more like nonprofit — but highly innovative — businesses.
There’s even a new term for some hybrid social innovations that combine both nonprofit and for profit components — the “fourth sector” (beyond business, government and the nonprofit sectors).
Whatever we label it, it’s a wonderful and welcome and hopeful development. It harnesses innovation and links it to problems that we know government rarely solves and where we need to make urgent progress. This new wave of social innovation taps our strengths and reflects our traditions.
It’s time to celebrate these social innovators, to acknowledge, as Drucker did, that they are essential to our success as a nation, and that they reflect our best as a good people.
Here in the Inland Empire, where so much entrepreneurial talent and risk-taking in the business community resides, we have a surplus of innovative people and a deficit in terms of social needs.
What better place to link those phenomenal assets to social liabilities than right here in our own region? At the Drucker School and the Drucker Institute in Claremont, we are committed to producing these kinds of innovators for not only business but also for the social sector — and even for government.
As Drucker said, innovation is the indispensable ingredient not only for a growing economy but also for a vigorous and healthy society.
