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President's Dream Colloquium on Entrepreneurship
What Makes Social Entrepreneurship Social?
Watch on Recorded Web Stream
Recorded on March 7, 2014
Talk Highlights
Click for timestamps ↓- 13:09: What is the social in social entrepreneurship? The social part is the listening part. Every social entrepreneur needs to be able to listen to their community, and, more importantly, to listen to themselves. Social entrepreneurship means a lifetime return on investment.
- 17:45: Social entrepreneurship best practices starts with empowerment and changing the status quo. The core of social entrepreneurship – most of the tools that we us from other professions – those are the tools that we’re using for social entrepreneurship, but we’re choosing which side we’re using them for.
- 22:55: Every poor person knows that money is power, and for that reason, social entrepreneurs need to be in the economic justice business.
- 26:20: Social entrepreneurs need to talk a little bit more often and a lot more loudly about the learned attributes of good personhood: courage, conviction, compassion character.
- 28:21: Your ability to be a good listener matters a whole lot more than a great elevator pitch, brilliant business plan or your clever great idea. Listenership is the predicate for networking, starting a political movement, attracting financial backers; it’s the essential social entrepreneurship skills.
- 33:37: In a functioning market, willing buyers and willing sellers determine prices, but where the poor live scarcity and monopoly means shoddy products and predatory pricing. In a functioning market, consumer protection and financial transparency are protected and enforced by a court of law, but where the poor live property rights depend on social norms and brute force. Where the poor live capital is rare and expensive etc.
- 36:30: Social justice work is an existential statement about your values, our values, our shared global citizenship.
Lecture Topics
About the Speaker
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Jonathan Lewis Founder and President, Opportunity Collaboration Founder and Board Chair, MicroCredit Enterprises |
Jonathan C. Lewis is the Founder and Host of Cafe Impact. He is also the Founder and President of the Opportunity Collaboration, a strategic business retreat and networking summit for 300 senior level anti-poverty leaders which occurs annually on World Poverty Day in Ixtapa, Mexico.
Jonathan is also the Founder and Board Chair of MicroCredit Enterprises. This innovative social venture leverages $80 million of private capital to make tiny business loans to deeply impoverished people, mostly women, in developing countries.