Iran's Green Revolution and Social Enterprise

Like many of you, I've been caught up in reading online reports about the Iranian election protests. Twitter, Facebook and blogs have gone from being a digital escape to real-world engagement, from the greening of avatars to the mobilization of a global proxy network.

Iran's mass mobilization in favor of democratic change brings to mind any number of people's revolutions of the past century, from the Hungarian and Czech uprisings against Soviet domination to Tiananmen Square, Solidarity, the Orange Revolution and Russian resistance to the August Coup. Whatever their relative success, such movements illustrate how in the age of mass communication, the society of the spectacle is more than just critical theory--creating an impression can be a powerful strategic tool for refashioning social design, especially for those lacking physical or institutional power.

The scene in Iran holds other useful lessons for Western social enterprise. There's a natural temptation simply to baptize the Iranian protesters as social entrepreneurs, much as we tend to do with people that we like. However self-affirming that can be, it also has an unfortunate tendency to blind us to aspects of social movements that challenge how we see ourselves.

In recent years, social enterprise experts have clustered around the theory that social entrepreneurs are special, creating the disruptive social innovations that break down suboptimal social equilibria. It's an inspiring definition to be sure, one that no doubt is a boost to the self-esteem of anyone in the movement. Yet if we look carefully at real-world movements for change, most of it has reflects the work of people who do not self-identify as social entrepreneurs.

For example, consider how the protest movement is mobilizing. The core communications media--Twitter, Facebook, blogs, SMS, mobile phones, computers, even the rooftops on which protesters stood to shout--may be tools that social entrepreneurs use, but we did not create them. The social benefit resulting from social media is at best a positive externality, a second-order consequence derived from someone else's disruptive innovations.

It is also useful to reflect upon the protesters' organizational tactics. They are not starting social businesses, extending microloans, holding pitch contests or making social investments. Instead, they are taking to the streets and telling anyone who will listen or watch what they want. It is a classic display of political force. Each compelling image from Iran--every impassioned Tweet--is an implicit critique of our naive bubble world where the price of progress is merely a monetary value.

If social enterprise is to mature as a movement, we can't afford to believe our own hype. The more we insist that social entrepreneurship is a unique agent of historic social change, the less effective--and less credible--we become.