Key skills for 2022: The language of social change

As we move in to a post-COVID world, social entrepreneurs are seeing huge opportunities for social impact.

But what is social entrepreneurship?

Professor Stephan Chambers, Director of The Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship, describes social entrepreneurship as “applying the mechanisms and methods of market interventions explicitly to address social problems.”

He adds “this is no longer something you might choose to do, it’s something we have to do because the scale of the problems the world faces and the scale of the interconnectedness of those problems trickles down to companies and charities and every other kind of organisation that humans produce. Social entrepreneurs bring the ability to disrupt and to innovate, they apply that disruption and innovation to things that are unjust to create a new, more just equilibrium. They’re positive people who wish to make positive change.”

So, what skills will be key for social entrepreneurs, or aspiring social entrepreneurs to have for the coming year?

“Social entrepreneurs are really good at stitching together disparate resources, organisations and ideas and people; they piece together things that they don’t control and in a world in which most of the problems exceed the ability of a single entity, whether it’s a government or corporation or charity, that stitching together of resources becomes an incredibly vital skill. If you’re putting together a coalition, you need to speak the language of markets, competition, policy, finance, and strategy. I think the most useful skills for social entrepreneurs is the confidence and the access to those multiple ‘languages’. You need to understand the problems that people have in a way that is respectful of those problems.

“They should spend as much time trying to internalise the questions they’re seeking to solve and equip themselves with the frameworks, information, knowledge and networks to get stuff done, and finally, they should act.”

Professor Stephan Chambers explores this topic further on our executive education programme?Purpose and Profit: The Essentials of Social Business.