Does the U.S. Lag in Social Entrepreneurship?

In a recent, thought provoking piece for the Harvard Business Review, contributor Timothy Ogden makes the argument that the United States is a laggard, not a leader in social entrepreneurship. The piece shares the humbling story of William Kamkwamba, a teenage boy from Malawi who homespun a ramshackle windmill out of scrapyard materials to provide power and running water for his family.

I have to admit, Ogden's argument is compelling. He proceeds to discuss how major social innovations like microfinance, mobile to mobile money transfer services and text message crisis response all have originated in developing nations; what he refers to as the "two-thirds world". It only makes sense that those whose lives are embedded into situations of poverty and disadvantage be the most likely to appreciate the innovation necessary to solve their most immediate concerns. Our strategic philanthropy through the likes of Kiva, just isn't as compelling as a story like Kamkwamba's.

Ogden proceeds to argue that the U.S. needs to concern itself less with incubating social innovation domestically and create more capacity to support innovation internationally. The most obvious asset we can provide to such a situation is financial capital. Additionally, unique programs like MBAs without Borders provide management resources help to entrepreneurs in the two-thirds world.

However we develop our social innovation chops, one thing seems certain; we live in a world of peak oil, peak food, peak water, peak credit and climate change. This set limiting factors is growing logarithmically in its capacity to shape civilization in the 21st century. At some indiscernible point in the future, these social innovation strategies will need to be directed inward to solve systemic problems for communities domestically; communities which were architected upon the fatal assumption that natural capital was infinite.

In many respects, western civilization's depth of complexity creates inflexibility throughout the whole system, and much of its complexity is founded upon the same fatal error. Systems thinking teaches us that where resilience is absent from a system, the results can be catastrophic. I could envision a situation where the social innovation we lag at here in the U.S. becomes the most important currency in the reconstruction of civilization in this post-globalization era. The same social innovation that occurs at such a frenetic and inspiring pace among the world's poor.

In a world where social innovation is the currency, at least according to Ogden's theory, we westerner's would be the disadvantaged. Our capacity to glean wealth from the "developing world's" successful social entrepreneurs in the future, will be a direct reflection of how well we reciprocate the financial and managerial currency that is valued in today's world. This is not philanthropy as much as it is enduring, sustainable business.