After learning about all these social entrepreneurs and social enterprises in class, I realized that the earliest social entrepreneur we have talked about is Mohammad Yunus. I inquired as to whether this is a coincidence or not: is social entrepreneurship something of the present?
I dug into some research and came to find that there were some social entrepreneurs long ago in history dating back to the 18th century. It just so happens that the term “social entrepreneur” was not widely used until it spread in the 1960’s and 1970’s by promotion of Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public.
Among the social entrepreneurs of the past I found are Florence Nightingale, Henry Durant, Robert Owen, William Booth, Fredrick Law Olmsted, John Muir, Dr. Maria Montessori and even the past U.S. president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. They revolutionized industries from innovation of the innovation of a new type of nursing school to the creation of “The Salvation Army”.
http://www.countryjoe.com/nightingale/school.jpg
The names that stand out to me, are Florence Nightingale and Franklin D. Roosevelt, but I never thought of them as social entrepreneurs. After learning about the specific characteristics that embody social entrepreneurs, I realized these people match the descriptions of what social entrepreneurs essentially are. Our classes on social entrepreneurship really opened my eyes to the world of social entrepreneurship and now that I think of it, there must be more social entrepreneurs in the past we haven’t identified. But my question is – why did it take until the 1960’s for social entrepreneurship to be widely recognized?
Sources:
Nayab, N. “Early Social Entrepreneurship History.” Bright Hub. Bright Hub Inc., 9 June 2011. Web. 17 Nov. 2012. <http://www.brighthub.com/office/entrepreneurs/articles/73851.aspx>.
PBS. “Who Were the First Social Entrepreneurs?” The New Heroes. Oregon Public Broadcasting, 2005. Web. 17 Nov. 2012. <http://www.pbs.org/opb/thenewheroes/whatis/whatis_ss_1.html>.