Social Enterprise Is Not Social Change

Social enterprise and social entrepreneurship (SEE) — a business-inspired approach to solving social problems — has exploded across the United States and the world in the last decade. It has entrenched itself within a broad spectrum of fields, from economic development and urban planning to health and education policy. Since the Harvard Business School established the first "Social Enterprise Initiative" twenty-five years ago, SEE has rooted itself in more than a hundred colleges and universities, anchored by endowed chairs and new courses in elite universities such as Stanford, Yale, Penn, Columbia, Duke, and the University of California, Berkeley. These institutions have helped turn SEE into an industry, funded by $1.6 billion in foundation grants since 2003.