The Economist Surveys Wealth, Philanthropy, and The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur

The Economist magazine has a section in the Feb 25th issue that is a survey on wealth and philantropy (Subscription is required to view the webpage). There is an article included within that survey titled, “The rise of the social entrepreneur” that offers a nice lay of the land of social entrepreneurship. Here is the abstract:

UBS, a Swiss private bank that counts many of the world’s richest people among its clients, is conducting an interesting experiment in Brazil, Mexico and Argentina. It has formed an alliance with Ashoka, a global organisation that identifies and invests in leading social entrepreneurs. The alliance is offering a new prize for social entrepreneurship, which UBS’s Martin Liechti admits is an excuse to bring together two groups of people who might otherwise never meet.…

Social entrepreneurship is a young movement so its hard to get a holistic view of everything that’s going on, but the article does its best.

It mentions Ashoka, Omidyar, Skoll, Schwab Foundation. It gives an overview of what is happening within the various US-based business schools. It also has a list of “Leading Entrepreneurs,” which I can’t figure out how they arrived at.

David Bornstein is well quoted in the article– he wrote a book charting the rise of social entrepreneurship called “How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas.”

Jim Collins is also well quoted. Jim recently wrote “Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great

Try and check out the full length article at the Economist. If you are serious about leadership in the social sector, I would also highly recommend reading the Jim Collins monograph, along with his best selling work, Good to Great, to get some background.

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