The Leading Edge of a Generation's Aspiration

Recently, social venture capitalist Josh Cohen and Taproot Foundation founder Aaron Hurst (two guys who I deeply respect) advanced the argument that the framework of social entrepreneurship is inadequate to help the Millennial generation achieve their aspirations of careers of meaning and purpose. While there is a lot they're right about, I believe they fail to recognize the full potential of social entrepreneurship as the leading edge of this generation's aspiration.

The thrust of their argument is that the vast majority of graduates today report wanting to integrate social good into their careers, but that there is not nearly enough supply of social entrepreneurial opportunities to go around. They argue that this lack of opportunity is mismatched with the P.R., which suggests that social entrepreneurship is the thing for world changing Millennials to do. With the chasm between supply and demand, they fear that a generation is headed toward failure in its aspiration to find careers dedicated to meaningful change. Their response is to ask for a new framework, more expansive than social entrepreneurship.

So, where are they right? They are absolutely right to recognize that the Millennial generation has a desire to build a new sort of career in which meaning, purpose and good are integrated to the very core. Based on my five years working with undergraduate changemakers, I feel confident saying this trend is only accelerating.

They are also right to identify that social entrepreneurship -- or at least, the act of being the entrepreneur who starts something, which I believe is a huge and important distinction -- is not the right path for everyone. The opportunities to create a career of meaning are so myriad that they defy any single framework, and as we always taught at the Center for Global Engagement, what mattered was not whether someone became a social entrepreneur, or a development professional, or a corporate philanthropist. What mattered was that they figured out what they cared most about, what they were best at, and how they could build a life and career around that.

So, where are they wrong?

1. Social Entrepreneurship is not the dominant paradigm for thinking about social change among Millennials. It may be the sexiest, but its definitely not the most prominent. If you look at high schools and college campuses, most people have their gateway experiences with social change through volunteerism and civic engagement. Civic engagement programs have been on the rise around universities around the country and in their emphasis on community organizing and democratic processes over markets, often provide an intellectual and practical counterweight to the rah-rah-ism of the SEfolks. For many, these civic engagement experiences extend in college to study abroad experiences, which tend to introduce the world of humanitarian relief and development more than social entrepreneurship.

If one really wanted to make an argument about what the dominant framework that ushers Millennials into social change is, it would be pretty fair to argue that it is teaching. Teach for America is -- by an order of magnitude -- the best recruiter of social change minded students in the USA. At many campuses, it is the best recruiter of students period. While TfA may sometimes be called a "social entrepreneurship" organization, the teachers certainly are not social entrepreneurs - they are teachers.

2. Even at business schools, social entrepreneurship isn't the only game in town for the world-changers. It is undeniable that social entrepreneurship and social enterprise programs are on the rise at business schools across the country. However, most of these programs are rooted in and taught by folks who come from either a nonprofit management background or a corporate social responsibility background. When you actually look at courses and faculty, the lines are pretty blurry. The fact is there just aren't that many faculty specifically devoted to social entrepreneurship, and there aren't even clear academic or pedagogical lines to be drawn around the field.

3. Social entrepreneurship isn't just for the entrepreneurs. One of the examples the article uses to identify the lack of supply for social entrepreneurial opportunities is the small number of Ashoka fellowships awarded each year. What this fails to recognize is that the decision to throw yourself into the world of startups does not mean, a priori, that you are going to start something. All successful startups build teams of true believers who are essential for the growth of innovative new enterprises, and who themselves have to take on some significant risk for potentially even less reward then the founder. We need to be cultivating more of these risk-takers, not less.

4. Social entrepreneurship hasn't nearly achieved a critical mass where we should talk about scaling back the excitement. Even though it sometimes seems like this subfield of social change gets a lot of press, the reality is we are still so damn early in its life that we have barely scratched the surface of what it could achieve. That means that we still have tons of experimenting to do with creative new business models and approaches to social change, and the biggest barriers there are constraints on resources for support. The field needs more money, more metrics, wider participation from an even more diverse array of people, more storytelling, and more than anything: more talent, which tends to be the centrifugal force that organizes all the rest.

5. The implications of "social entrepreneurship" go way beyond our cute little field. As much as I love the work of the organizations in our field today, I think even their aggregate impact pales in comparison to the potential consequences of the shift in sentiment among young people today about what they can do to reshape the world for the better, and how they can build a life and career of meaning while doing it.

For most of the history of the world, "career" was a specific trade that followed some period of formal or informal education. It was largely unchanging and you were defined by what you did. In the 20th century, we grew mega corporations to a scale never before seen, which meant a shift in the types of work, but not the fundamental fact that you were trained in something and pretty much did that until you retired.

The last 20 years have fundamentally destroyed that reality. The rate of change accelerates so fast that the only constant today is change. The internet has created a pathway where people who previously had no business being opinion leaders can shape the public conversation, and crazy young entrepreneurs who could have barely gotten a meeting at an investment bank two decades ago can create multi-billion dollar, industry-disrupting businesses.

While this is rightly scaring the shit out of the industries that are being disrupted, it has created a massive shift in the sense of what's possible among people my age. More than at any time in human history, when a young person has an opinion today, they have a means to share it with people who will value it. More than at any time in human history, when a young person today has an idea for a company, they can take a stab at it.

That is profound. It is not complete -- for there are still far to many people in the world who don't have the resources or agency to fully participate in these new opportunities -- but it is profound.

Social entrepreneurship matters because it is the framework which connects this new creativity, this new way of being, this new sense of the possible, to the sense that something must be done to save the world from the disasters wrought by human consumption, exploitation, and war. It reorients our massively increased sense of our own agency toward the goal of changing the world.

So yes, I completely agree that we need to be singing the songs of corporate responsibility, getting people engaged in community development, and helping people figure out the change work that works best for them.

But people's actions are defined by their sense of the possible, and to me that means there is something profoundly important about putting the story of the agency, creativity, and opportunity of social entrepreneurship at the front and center of our conversation as a new generation grows into itself.

Photo credit: m00by