Technology and Social Entrepreneurship: ASE Conference Preview

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2009-05-03 11:19:00 UTC
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Tomorrow I'll be speaking at the Accelerating Social Entrepreneurship conference in Washington D.C. The conference is focused on how technology is advancing and shaping the field.

I'll be speaking on a panel, so will hopefully be doing more responding to questions that pontification, but there are a few themes I imagine will come up:

Anyone a resource mobilizer: In some ways, the key to entrepreneurship is mobilizing resources to meet a new opportunity. The internet and particular social applications like Facebook and Twitter have helped level the playing field when it comes to identifying and aggregating skills and other resources. While access to traditional institutions of power may continue to be limited, self-organizing is easier than ever.

BOPportunity: Developing nations are full of aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators in every sector. The power of the increasing accessibility of internet and mobile technology, however, is beginning to unleash a renaissance among young passionate web developers around the world. There are immense opportunities from both a philanthropic and financial perspective to unleash this talent.

Scale vs. Diffusion: The internet is the greatest medium the world has ever known for diffusing ideas across a network. There are many social innovators who are interested in getting their ideas and products spread as widely as possible who would prefer not to build a big institutional model around it to help it "scale." We're only on the cusp of this new reality, with groups like Ushahidi and FrontlineSMS leading the way. This will only accelerate, and there are real questions about whether the institutions through which we support social innovation are up for the challenge.

Digital rights and the infrastructure of innovation: If we recognize the immense power of the internet to distribute information and opportunity where it didn't exist before, we must be concerned with digital rights and safe guarding access to what is an increasingly essential resource. We need to re-think copyright, intellectual property, and other structures and ask whether they foster innovation and creativity or prop up dead business models?

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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