Social Entrepreneurship - Essay Example

It is antithetical to innovation, too political, wasteful, inefficient, and bureaucratic. Dees thinks that counting on independent social entrepreneurs provides society with more opportunities at a lower risk. Social entrepreneurs tend to be more inventive when compared to government in finding solutions to problems since they respond to failures by the government by creation of parallel tracks while inventing new models, which improve public, institutional performance. By that, he means that social entrepreneurs play a crucial role in supplementing or complementing government functions.

Dees also feels that the use of charity as a means of dealing with poverty cannot be relied on since it avoids dealing with the real problem. Consequently, he believes that social entrepreneurs build sustainable refinement rather than offer temporary relief by use of charity. In Taking Social Entrepreneurship Seriously, J. Gregory Dees (2007, p. 25) writes, “While this focus on government as a social problem solver has led to some notable successes, such as increased access to education and health care for many, the experience also revealed the limits of government as the vehicle for social problem solving”. . Social entrepreneurs do not place a limit on their activities because of the available resources.

Rather, they first focus on the opportunity, then think about its implementation later. This is in contrast to the government administrative mindset, which is dependent on budget constraints that derail the planning processes and offer priority to projects, which are ready to go. Entrepreneurs mainly focus on developing their entrepreneurial idea, then start thinking of how to acquire the money to finance the venture. An entrepreneur willing to drill a borehole in Africa devotes time to identifying the area most in need, gets the residents involved, sets the wheels in motion, then finally looks for resources.

On the other hand, government will have to fit in the project in its already stretched budget, which may see it given decreased priority. Social entrepreneurship came about, in part, because of the disappointment faced by entrepreneurs with projects run by the government. Recently, an Indian bank, Ecobank started offering savings for very low-income citizens after its partnership with government to offer credit, slowed down because of the government’s bureaucratic and rigid laws and regulations.

Ecobank felt that private for-profit ventures have the ability to stimulate increased innovation and economic growth. Another issue that interests me and I would like to discuss from this article is that Dees (2007, p. 27) writes, “They aim to create sustainable improvements and are willing to draw on self-interest, as well as compassion to do it”. That is to say, social entrepreneurs, through motivation by self-interest, give their charity in order to establish