Social Entrepreneurs

Social Entrepreneurs must embody three characteristics to create social changes: Motivation, Determination and Focus.

Cristian Obregon

July 27, 2011

Introduction

There are many books and papers which explain the main characteristics of why people become social entrepreneurs and they agree in several points about them. The general finding is that although some traits and motives are related to both an individual's decision to become an entrepreneur there are much more in people background that impel them to make a social change. Some people seek for wealth, higher positions in their jobs or just live without intentions to do something for others, but on the other hand, there are people who have a strong feeling and leadership to help others. Makhlouf quotes Ashoka in his article "Social entrepreneurship: Generating solutions to global challenges" writing: "Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to social problems. They are ambitious and persistent taking major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change. Rather than leaving societal needs to government or business sector, social entrepreneurs find what is not working and solve the problem by changing the solution, and persuading entire societies to take new leaps" (Ashoka. 2010, p.l). In other words, social entrepreneurs know they have a special mission to help others with a sustainable business without to leave this task just to the government or economic entities, they want to be participant in the social change, but this wouldn't be possible if they hadn't special characteristics, so the idea of this paper is giving you an overview of the most important elements this people must embody to create a social change: motivation, determination and focus.

1.1 Motivation

There is not empirical evidence to say where the motivation comes from; it supposes to be part of the human being values, needs or something called personal realization. For some people motivation is something you learn in your life and, you use it for your own benefit, but for other is a gift, it means a unique characteristic that comes in your mind since you are born. Wherever it comes from we should know it is an essential element to become a social entrepreneur. BusinessDictionary.com define motivation as: "Internal and external factors that stimulate desire and energy in people to be continually interested in and committed to a job, role, or subject, and to exert persistent effort in attaining a goal, besides it results from the interactions among conscious and unconscious factors such as (1) intensity of desire or need, (2) incentive or reward value of the goal and (3) expectation of the individual and his or her significant others." Motivation is a quality people need to do something, for entrepreneurs is like food, and without food they can't survive for a long time, that why this characteristic is essential. In addition, this definition includes the interaction of three important points which are relevant in the personality of social entrepreneurs, specially the third point, because what they look for is to be significant to others; in this case make money is not the goal. Consequently, motivation is part of the social entrepreneurs' main characteristics which leads them to keep going in their objective.

1.2 Determination

The second important characteristic for social entrepreneurs is determination, or we can call it in other words courage, because it's a decision and risk that entrepreneurs must take to pursue their goal, this characteristic involves mental and physical cost. In this case the social entrepreneur act like a hero especially when they get the determination to give the first step in the social business and decide to move the masses. The author Polster in her article: "Eve's Daughter" talking about women determination says: "Women unconcerned with personal sacrifice have often given years of devoted service to a cause or a person. They have persisted