Recap: Top Trends Shaping Social Entrepreneurship in 2009

For the last week, I've been counting down the top trends I expect to shape the field of social entrepreneurship in 2009. Overall, I expect that the language of "social entrepreneurship" will become an increasingly large part of the social change lexicon. The combination of a new administration, an economic crisis highlighting systemic failures in our approaches to business, and a growing frustration with promises to change the world and come up short, the idea of new, pragmatic approaches to tackling our toughest problems will continue to captivate.

The Top Trends were:

Top Trend 2009 #7: Globally-Engaged Education
More universities and management programs than ever before are incorporating social entrepreneurship and social enterprise into their curriculum. At the same time, institutions like Ashoka are stepping up to support youth-led innovation beginning as early as high school.

Top Trend 2009 #6: Measuring Social Impact
Pressure from above and below is forcing nonprofits to think more seriously about how they define their goals and evaluate their progress too them. The days where organizations can get away with anecdotal evidence of impact are quickly fading.

Top Trend 2009 #5: Mobile Technology
Aid and development groups are increasingly viewing mobile phones - which penetrate even some of the remote parts of the world - as little mobile information centers. New technology promises to allow for more effective, accurate, coordinated programs.

Top Trend 2009 #4: Online Action Platforms
The internet is dramatically expanding the ways in which we can aggregate and harness individual people's desire to contribute to change. Online action platforms will continue to grow as social entrepreneurs tap into their networks more creatively.

Top Trend 2009 #3: Blended Value Investing
Any new market needs investors, and the world of social enterprise is getting a major push from a new breed of blended value investors who care about financial, social, and environmental returns.

Top Trend 2009 #2: Green Innovation
With the looming pressure of climate change, venture capitalists predict that clean technology will be the one recession-proof industry in 2009. This blog thinks that a generation of green innovators, particularly those focused on the bottom of the pyramid, will make a big splash in the coming year.

Top Trend 2009 #1: A Partner in the White House
The Obama Administration could be an incredibly important partner to social entrepreneurs across industries. Whether its by supporting their work with a social innovation fund, or adopting their best practices as part of policy platforms, the government should be a partner in scaling social change.