The Role of Social Entrepreneurship in National Development

Abstract:

A work done in collective efforts is easier, more energizing, highly empowering and sure to be successful. To give an example from an old parable “A group of birds flew over a net well laid out with juicy grains over a barn by an intelligent farmer. The immature inexperienced birds swooped down against much resistance and words of advise by the mature and experienced birds, which fell into wrong ears driven by the greed of instant returns. Lo they soon realized their mistake and found themselves totally trapped irrespective of their struggle. Then one wise bird suggested to them that they all fly together at one shot, and lo the net was carried away by them working in unison. They could soon find their way to a rat, who did cut up the ropes piece by piece, liberating them and giving them a life long lesson”. What could our entrepreneurs learn from this? Simple -that “United We stand. Divided We Fall”. Taking a cause beyond oneself would result in sure success, while doing it for one’s own interest would result in short sighted (myopic) gains that may be detrimental in the long run. Unity would result in reduced duplication of energy, optimization of resources, easier effortless path to success. How can this be brought about? Is it possible or is it a myth? It is real, easily possible by determined collective thinking and team working of people. This is called “Social Entrepreneurship”. This is the collective promotion of entrepreneurship with a social consciousness with a clearly defined commitment of being a contributory to Society through a consciousness beyond oneself. To assess the issues related to Social Entrepreneurship and outline a model for stakeholders in future a brief conceptual paper was prepared. This was born of discussions with appropriate authorities and professors involved with entrepreneurial development and research, based on which key issues were identified and brought out in this paper. In depth analysis would be made with literature reviews after references and queries (or experiences narrated) by readers and persons involved with similar experiments  as well as further in depth literature studies in similar areas though this is relatively new, the earlier studies being analytical and exploratory and not as reflective as this paper is conceived to be.