Reviews

How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurship and the Power of New Ideas

Review by Yolonda C. Richardson

By David Bornstein. Oxford University Press (www.oup.co.uk). 2003. 256 pages. $30.

According to David Bornstein, social entrepreneurs are "people who solve social problems on a large scale." Bornstein's How to Change the World chronicles the contributions of ten social entrepreneurs whose visions and the actualization of those visions resulted in institutional change that fundamentally shifted entire systems.

Interspersed among the stories of these remarkable social contributors are chapters that attempt to explain who becomes a social entrepreneur and how. The implication is that if one can find these innovators, then nurture and support them in the early stages of developing their ideas, the potential for solving social problems increases exponentially.

This approach has been the driving force of the work of Ashoka, an organization that provided early support to some of the individuals described in the book. Ashoka provides three-year fellowships to social innovators to allow them to pursue their ideas full time. It works through a network of nominators who help identify prospective fellows. Fellows are then selected by a jury panel that selects those who not only have a good idea and the wherewithal to pursue it, but also are at a critical point in developing the idea. Bornstein describes Ashoka's approach and methodology with care and respect, yet he is unafraid to point out mistakes that the organization made in implementing its vision. In Chapter 14, for example, he describes the challenges of applying Ashoka's approach globally, particularly in Africa.

The book is hardly a page-turner; it is disjointed and the central message is sometimes muddied—rather than illuminated—by the selected case studies. In the end, one is left unconvinced that Bornstein has proven his underlying premise. The ten individual case studies are indeed extraordinary, as are the documented contributions, but this reader failed to see sufficient similarities among them except the substantial results of their work. Perhaps this is an organizational problem that plagues most case studies, but is not skillfully handled here.

Still, this work is a laudable effort because the study of social entrepreneurs has been neglected, and one cannot help but be inspired by these examples of extraordinary people from around the world. There is Jeroo Billimoria of India, who founded Childline, a 24-hour response system for children in distress; Veronika Khosa, a South African who helped nurture the idea of home-based care for HIV/AIDS patients; and Bill Drayton, whose founding of Ashoka was a logical extension of his own previous success—as an assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency and management consultant for McKinsey & Company—in instituting social change on a large scale. Each story reveals the power of a single individual unwaveringly committed to making a difference. The book's power lies in those ideas and their execution.

Bornstein's concluding chapter issues a challenge to the philanthropic sector. He argues persuasively that foundations' lack of capital investment in order to bring organizations to scale remains an unfulfilled role for the sector. Many foundations view themselves as incubators of new ideas. Once an organization has tested or proven a model, the common wisdom is that successful, scaleable strategies will be financed by governments—often a huge and unfounded leap in logic and experience. He compares foundations' role to the private sector's ability to help small, innovative companies go to scale through initial public offerings. He further warns against over-reliance on quantitative performance measures, particularly those that are not created and used by the organization itself in measuring its success. Instead, he argues that foundation staff should accept that social change often has unquantifiable dimensions.

How to Change the World provides us with a detailed look at the power of individuals and the potential of organizations to solve social problems. Finding those individuals and organizations, staying with them and supporting their efforts should be the work of philanthropy. Long-term funding can help bring great ideas to their fullest fruition.

Yolonda C. Richardson is president and CEO of CEDPA, an international organization seeking to improve the lives of women and girls globally. An international development specialist, Richardson has served as special counsel to the African Development Foundation and a program officer at Carnegie Corporation of New York.