Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship
This is an extract from Perspectives - a periodical published by the
Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. This second issue captured
the 'spirit of Davos' as described by Schwab Social Entrepreneurs and other
participants coming into contact with them in this Alpine ski town between
January 21st and 25th 2004.
The impossible takes a little longer
by John Elkington
When Bill Clinton called for systemic change at the 2004 World Economic Forum summit, I was struck by one of his prescriptions for change. Instead of making flying visits to people like the Grameen Bank's Muhammad Yunus, he suggested, world leaders should work to bring such social entrepreneurs in from the cold.
The uncomfortable truth is that most are still unknown to the public. Some may be known to Clinton and be covered in the international media, but for most of us most of what they do disappears into the background noise.
Nor are they guaranteed to succeed. Many will fail, some more than once. Such is the life of entrepreneurs. But these people have the potential to transform the way in which hundreds of millions of people live, learn and work. In short, the phrase 'The impossible takes a little longer' could have been coined for them.
It has been my great good fortune to be in the passenger seat as they began their WEF breakthrough. In 2002, I sat in on the first WEF social entrepreneur session in New York. In 2003, I facilitated the first Davos social entrepreneurs session. And this year, with Pamela Hartigan, I had the privilege of interviewing 15 or so social entrepreneurs for a book she and I are planning.
I emerged supercharged. An hour with any of these entrepreneurs is like the shot of monkey gland extract that rich people (including, no doubt, some Davos participants) used to come to Switzerland for.
No wonder Clinton name-checks social entrepreneurs. But the
real question is how we can initiate the necessary top-down changes to the
market system to help them bring their bottom-up activities to scale. And
that's a question the entrepreneurs in Davos this year helped make central
to the future WEF agenda.