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This book is dedicated to the social entrepreneur inside each one of us.
Preface: A Letter to the Reader
All entrepreneurship is social. As a mentor of mine once said, “Unless you’re trading illegal or harmful substances, you’re producing positive social outcomes by creating jobs, building the economy, and advancing human capacity.”
The reason we use the terminology of social entrepreneurship, and the reason it has developed into a field of its own over the past decades, is that despite all the commercial entrepreneurship out there, despite all the industry and business and enterprise, there are still huge chunks of the human population without basic human needs. Water, sanitation, education, and basic health services and knowledge, which most of the world’s population take for granted, are still today, in the midst of the third millennium, inaccessible for over a billion people.
Most readers would agree that governments carry the primary charge for meeting these basic needs and in most cases have already pledged in writing to do so. The purpose of this book is not to divert resources and attention away from the government sector. The purpose of this book is to acknowledge that individuals can make, and have made, a huge difference to underserved populations. Social entrepreneurs around the world have created and implemented effective, scalable, and sustainable solutions to the most basic of human challenges. While their work is unique each in its own context, we have gleaned lessons from their successes and failures.
Understanding the social challenges we are facing; co-creating solutions with the community; creating products and services in contexts not currently served by the markets; building resilient business plans around those products and services while adhering to the social mission; mobilizing financial, human, and other resources; and building initiatives and organizations that work to maximize social impact—these are the basic frameworks we have seen to maximize the chances of success of a social venture.
In this book, you will see many different models, examples, and ways of thinking about social entrepreneurship. These have been compiled into a framework that will help you start taking the first steps toward figuring out your own model. The only thing I need you to understand unequivocally is this: There is no one model that can solve all the world’s problems. I don’t know much, but I do know this for sure. We as a human race just have not figured it out yet.
So the purpose of this book is not to teach you how it’s done or to present a winning formula. It’s to share with you the collective human knowledge that has been created from numerous attempts, failures, and accomplishments to date. From here on out, it’s up to you. The purpose is not for you to take these approaches, learn them, and copy and paste them. The goal is for you to completely disrupt them, question them, and find new ways of doing things.
What you are tasked with is taking this knowledge that we have collectively created up until now and completely hacking it! Knock it out of the ball park. Make it irrelevant. I want you to
take this framework, apply it, and then discover new things that prove me entirely wrong and come up with new answers of your own. Leave no assumption unquestioned.
You might come up with something along the way that completely obliterates everything I have written in the book. I hope so. Because this is how human knowledge progresses. This is how we figure things out as a race.
Acknowledgments
This book was co-created by all the social entrepreneurs profiled here, and so many more. The only credit that would be accurate for me to accept is that I’m just the big nerd who sat down and typed it all out. The content is based on the work of countless people over countless years who have developed and implemented effective, scalable, and sustainable solutions to social challenges. Most importantly, this book was co-created with my students. Based on my course at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, each week was turned into a chapter, and chapters were read and commented on by students. The course content itself was also developed with feedback from students, which is further reflected in the book’s content. Emily Holleran, who at the time of writing, was a graduate student at Harvard University Division of Continuing Education, has been a stellar collaborator and no words can thank her enough. Emily, I don’t know what to say. At the time of writing, in this moment, you are literally my favorite person in the whole world. (Sorry, Mom!)
Because this book is based on a course, thanks are due to all who made that course possible: Jack Spengler, who kept me around for all these years (I’m still trying to figure out why!) and opened countless doors, the least and most humble of which was the funding of the course; SV Subramanian, who served as a long-standing mentor, supporter, and faculty sponsor without whom none of this would have happened; Nancy Turnbull, who helped me start the process by deciding that “yes, we need a course like that here!”; Michelle Bell, who guided me on curriculum; Rick Siegrist, who shared his expertise, guidance, intellectual, and moral support; Nancy Kane, who has been so generous with her time in helping me develop my writing and teaching skills. I’d also like to go a little more upstream than that to thank Jon Levy, Amy Cohen, and Donald Halstead, without whom I never would have gotten my doctoral degree in the first place to do all this.
Last but not least, the course on which this book is based was developed out of my experience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as an honorary fellow (translated: tag-along) in the Legatum Center, thanks to Geoffrey Groesbeck, who was the fellowship director at the time. I wanted to replicate the experience for others at my alma mater who had not had the opportunity, and to create the same kind of knowledge at our home base where people convene from all over the world to solve the most pressing challenges affecting the well-being of our planet and its population. Thank you also to MIT’s Elizabeth (Libby) MacDonald for your support in launching and participating in this course year after year as a guest speaker, for being so generous with your materials and content, and for providing a role model for my students and myself.
The secret I’ll reveal here is that this textbook would not exist were it not for Professor Omar Bagasra, my mentor and friend, who turned to me as an afterthought as we were about to part ways following a meeting and said, “Hey, by the way, why don’t you write a book?” He subsequently did much more than that by helping me structure the proposal, contact the publisher, and
compartmentalize my time to get it all done. Most importantly, he taught me how to nurture my mind and my soul.
Without my family at Alfanar venture philanthropy, none of this would have any meaning. Thank you for providing me with the platform to practice what I preach and working to improve the lives of the most marginalized populations. This thanks goes both to the team, who not only tolerate but also appreciate and share my quirks and insanities, and to our investees, who are my day-to-day coworkers in Lebanon. You are what all this is about. Last but not least, I’d like to thank Bader Young Entrepreneurs Program and team and MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arabia for hosting Alfanar Lebanon and me in their beautiful Coworking+961 space. I truly believe that place matters and that surroundings inspire. The opportunity to incubate my thoughts, and this book, in a serene oasis had a direct impact on what I produced, and I am infinitely grateful for that experience. Thank you for bearing with me and nurturing my need for deep concentration. Tracing this all back to the root cause, ultimately, the largest thanks go to my parents. Realizing that not every student reading this book will have this ingredient to success, people who literally believe that you can do anything, I have tried to infuse this message into the book and serve as that person for my students. The source of all this is the two people who have infused me with this belief since my inception, constantly and repeatedly, without blinking. Thank you also to my dear sisters, who by far surpass me in their own writings, dreams, and achievements. I’m so lucky to have you, and you mean more to me than anything. Without you, I would not have done half of this, and I hope you know it. My friends and soul mates who have kept me sane, who not only humored me but also fueled me with their ideas, laughter, thought questions, and encouragement: I sometimes feel as if I’ve cheated, and one day someone will come up to me and recall you, because it’s not possible to have scored the company of such celestial beings to share life’s journey with. This is the meaning of life, taking care of those around you, and trying your best to collectively leave behind a world with more beauty and justice than when you started.
Author
Teresa Chahine is the Social Entrepreneurship Program Leader at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Center for Health and the Global Environment. She teaches social entrepreneurship at Harvard Chan School and Harvard Extension School, and trains social entrepreneurs worldwide. Dr. Chahine is also the director of Alfanar Lebanon, which she launched in 2012. Alfanar is a venture philanthropy organization that has been supporting social entrepreneurs in Lebanon and Egypt since 2005. To learn more about her work and how you can get involved, visit www.chgeharvard.org and www.alfanar.org. Connect with her on Twitter @teresachahine.
Photo by omas Morgan, Reframe d Pictures
Chapter 1 Introduction
Do you ever wonder what the world would be like if each person dedicated a large chunk of their brains, efforts, and resources to solving a set of social challenges? Have you ever wished that you could make a difference about the social disparities and injustices you care about? Many of us, whether living in one of the world’s least developed or one of the world’s most developed societies, find it hard to ignore suboptimal conditions that affect us and those around us. These could be local conditions or global conditions. They could include environmental degradation, pollution, corruption, lack of access to education or healthcare, and many others. In some cases, such conditions affect everyone; in most cases, they disproportionately affect the most vulnerable and underserved populations in our society.
How can we do something to change the face of these challenges? Each one of us has the potential to make a positive impact on a person, community, and social challenge. Certainly, the root causes of society’s most pressing problems are complex, historical, and multifaceted, and it would be a gross simplification to say that one person can solve all the root causes. However, it is the lack of acceptance of the status quo that has driven many of the positive social changes and advancements over time. A systematic questioning and examination of why things are the way they are today, coupled with the tools and skills to investigate, formulate, and apply potential solutions, may allow us to take the first step in making changes.
If you envision a world that functions differently from what you see today, there is a social entrepreneur in you. Each one of us has the potential to apply our skills and resources to create better systems, services, and products that are lacking today or that are not accessed by a portion of peoples and populations. This book will help you get started in assessing the potential paths you can take to make the change you desire to see. Where you end up may be some place completely different from what you envisioned or ever thought you could imagine. The only way to find out is to get started… So, let’s begin!
How This Book Works
This book is designed to help you create social ventures to address a social challenge of your choice. The word social here is used to refer to both social and environmental challenges. No matter your background, age, qualifications, or field of study, there is a core set of skills that can aid you in
