Book Summary: 03/08/2015

03/08/2015 10:15 PM

Hi all,
I have finished my other book, Good To Great by Jim Collins, and I have started reading another book. 

I have started to read Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know by David Bornstein.  The beginning of the book focuses on explaining what social entrepreneurship is.  Bornstein starts to explain it as people "build[ing] or transform[ing] institutions to advance solutions to social problems."  These social problems could range from anything from poverty to education, and the people that try and engineer these solutions are called the social entrepreneurs. 

This definition is important to our class because I think that it is important that we understand what our mission as entrepreneurs are.  By reading Bornstein's work, I think that our class as a whole would be able to see the greater meaning of being an entrepreneur that is set out to help the society to become a better place.

Bornstein says that the social entrepreneur has the ability to overcome apathy, habit, incomprehension, and disbelief while facing heat resistance, etc. Despite him saying this, I don't believe that these qualities will necessarily make you a social entrepreneur.  I believe that to become a social entrepreneur one must use these qualities as guiding principles.  In essence, these principles are not a shortcut, but a guide.

This is important to the greater meaning of our class because I think that is important that people don't try and make themselves something that they are not.  If there is a project that you want to do, do it and put your mind to it, but don't expect it to just happen if its not who you are.  The projects have to flow with your characteristics.

More to come next week!

C4E Associate

Noah Mark