Why Business Might Just Save the World
In June of this year, I had the privilege of debating Michael Edwards, author of Small Change: Why Business Won’t Save the World at the 2011 Canadian Business & Community Partnership Forum, organized by Imagine Canada and Volunteer Canada. In Parts 1 and 2 of this blog post, I weave together some of the notes I made prior to debating Michael Edwards with commentary with the more recent #occupy protests.
My task was to argue for the position that private sector approaches, and the private sector itself in partnership with the community sector, can effect large-scale social transformation.
This is a belief I have settled into, reluctantly at first, over a period of close to ten years working almost exclusively with nonprofit and charitable organizations as well as on independent projects with a social purpose. I'm a technologist and history student whose lived experience has convinced him that partnerships with business and business approaches hold enormous promise for long-term positive social transformation.
Prior to bumping into the world of impact investing and social enterprise, I had subscribed somewhat dogmatically to the notion that opposition and protest alone can lead to social transformation. And by the same token, I believed that those with power, and the approaches they deploy, inevitably work against the interests of the rest of us. I’ve come a long way since holding these binary views but don’t feel that I’ve given up any ground in my commitment to social justice and a more balanced ecosystem.
In addition to adding a few new words to my vocabulary -- 'value', 'impact', 'metrics', and 'scale' which I use as infrequently as possible (see note below), I have gained a greater appreciation for the creative disruption inherent in business and the market. As a result, the activist in me can stand with the 99% in opposition to greed and corruption, and the businessperson in me can stand with a growing number of designers, entrepreneurs, and impact investors in favor of a market-based strategy that pulls on all necessary levers to create a more just world. If fact, I don’t see these perspectives in opposition to one another.
There are two areas of the private sector and business approaches that I can speak to with some hands on experience, namely new forms of media and new forms of finance. Both happen to be essential tools at the disposal of social entrepreneurs and social activists.
In Part 2 of this blog post, I turn to social finance. To start, let’s consider new forms of media.
The rise of social media represents a market development that’s affording individuals and communities a powerful tool for self-expression, movement-building, fundraising, and advocacy. In 2011 alone, we have seen bold examples of how social media is open-sourcing and democratizing access to meaningful and personalized engagement in social causes. I won’t list them all here but as you’re reading this blog post, any number of headline-grabbing news stories are most likely coming to mind.
The innovations hailing from the Bay Area, Toronto, and other technology hubs are collectively the product of close to twenty years of commercializing the Internet. The tech and media platforms that are becoming household names and readying themselves for Initial Public Offerings happen to also be ideal for "building community, promoting voice and accountability, and maintaining one's identity" - the very characteristics that we have traditionally associated with non-profit and voluntary organizations. (Quotation borrowed from p. 60 of Michael Edward’s e-book, Just Another Emperor: The Myths and Realities of Philanthrocapitalism in his description of the unique qualities of Civil Society.)
In my view, we need to recognize and celebrate the new alignment between the direction that media and technology is headed, and the communications and organizing platform that Civil Society proponents have often longed for. In this context, there’s little room to argue that private sector and business approaches, by nature of being commercial and profit-seeking, cannot contribute to large-scale positive social change.
Note: Partly for the challenge it presented and partly to make a more convincing argument, I argued my side of the debate with Michael Edwards without invoking the vocabulary common among advocates of social enterprise, namely 'value', 'impact', 'metrics', and 'scale'. I don't believe these words hold much meaning in and of themselves. And I don't think a mature social enterprise sector requires them in order to effect meaningful change. That’s not an opinion widely held among social entrepreneurs and those who finance them. In my view, these words are worthwhile to the extent they help capture the imagination of the private sector, and help translate the complex work of the social sector into a vocabulary that’s more accessible.
Update, Nov 7: See Part 2, which explores the promise of social finance.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joiseyshowaa/2374526016/
