Welcome to this week's session outlining
the perspectives of what is a social entrepreneur.
We're very pleased to welcome Professor Sudhanshu Rai,
Associate Professor at the Copenhagen Business School who is going to
discuss the concepts of social entrepreneurship as per his understanding.
He will ultimately outline his philosophical perspective
concerning co-creation and the role of social entrepreneurship within that field.
Welcome Dr. Sudhanshu Rai and to the session on
social entrepreneurship and the role of the social entrepreneur within society,
I would love for you to start off our session
outlining your perspective of what is a social entrepreneur
and what is their critical role at this period of
time in terms of being the change agent within our society?
Right.
I think the first thing that we have to get very
clear is that social entrepreneur is an entrepreneur first.
He becomes social later.
He has to survive in his entrepreneurial capacity for him to be socially useful later on.
He may start off having social ideas but he has to show entrepreneurial zeal first.
So the question is, is social entrepreneur the same as entrepreneur?
And the answer to that is,
yes, with a slight difference.
A social entrepreneur has
a very social focus where the object of his endeavor is to contribute to society.
And by so doing, he would like to make some money which
is the bread and butter of his argument for sustainability.
Is that a secondary concept?
Is that financial component secondary to the social or can they be married together?
They can. I mean,
you need to understand that there is no social without the entrepreneur.
But the entrepreneur can exist without the social.
But this concept, the social and the financial,
are they mutually exclusive?
Can they be differentiated?
No. Actually, the idea is not about differentiation.
The idea is about association.
One way to create knowledge is to differentiate;
A from B, apples from oranges, fine.
The other way to look at it,
is to look at the common features even though they are absolutely different,
apples and oranges, there are some common features.
Similarly, in social entrepreneurship,
what is common entrepreneurship?
So, the entrepreneurship is a necessary in a sufficient condition.
He has to be there. Only then his social endeavors can take place.
But an entrepreneur can decide to take the profit motive or take the social motive.
It is his prerogative, right?
Now only when he takes
the social motive is he called a social entrepreneur but he's an entrepreneur first.
For him to either take all of his prerogative,
he has to be financially sustainable.
And therefore, finance and entrepreneurship are not
mutually exclusive ideas. They are one and the same.
Let's take up this idea about financially sustainable.
We're not talking about abnormal profits you can be
a nonprofit institution operating with a social vision and mission.
Yeah. But you know your question is in two parts,
you have a value judgment which is called abnormal.
That means you have already embedded an element of value.
I will not address value.
I will just talk about knowledge, okay?
The point is that when an entrepreneur is
determined in changing the capital base of society, i.e.
he has a focus to change what does not exist,
he wants to contribute.
It is not an abnormal or a normal situation or ability,
in corollary, that doesn't mean his success will give him abnormal profits.
He's not interested in success.
He's interested in sustainability,
his own sustainability first because that comes first.
If he's not sustainable,
his impact is not relevant or useful.
So coming back to the idea of similarities,
we have to create knowledge based on looking
at common denominators and association is one of them, differentiation is one.
And in social entrepreneurship,
I would rather like to go the association route
because entrepreneurship is associated with
social and hence it is not a differentiable concept or argument,
it is an associative concepts and arguments.
We need to look at the elements of both what is social and what is an entrepreneur.
And then try and associate these two
in an understanding of social entrepreneurship that says,
"Well the society, the social cause is
important so is the entrepreneurial zeal which is equally important."
But if we start arguing that which comes first,
apples or oranges, then we will miss the point.
Both are important and both are
necessary conditions for the social entrepreneurs to be social.
Kai Hockerts
