From The Focus online Feb 2008
http://www.ezifocus.com/content/thefocus/issue/welcome.php
Editor's Note: Thanks to The Focus Online for this amazing interview with Bill Drayton about the fundamentals of social change in our time. Drayton chairs the 25 year old Ashoka organization www.ashoka.org and is one of the leading social entrepreneurs of our times. [more]
"Social entrepreneurs don't want to help.
They want to change the world."
Bill Drayton on the fundamentals of social change in our time
Bill Drayton is a changemaker and an ambitious one at that. Through his "citizen sector" organization Ashoka - Drayton does not use the term non-profit - he is playing the instruments of capitalism to orchestrate social change. Basically he provides social entrepreneurs with the necessary start-up capital. Then monitors the social returns.
AT FIRST SIGHT, the founder of Ashoka looks quiet and reserved - and yet you immediately sense the strength of his convictions. Here is a man who fights day and night for what he believes in. His most powerful weapon in this battle is rhetoric. He has no time for superficiality and never tires of explaining what he is out to achieve. All of which makes an interview with Bill Drayton a surprising and remarkable experience - in a positive sense. He talked to THE FOCUS about the fundamentals of change in our time.
The Focus: Let's kick off with a big question: How have you seen the citizen sector evolve in recent years? How do you think it's going to evolve, and how would you like to see it evolve over the coming decade?
Bill Drayton: The citizen sector, like the rest of the world, is faced with making the transition in this coming decade from a base-building period to a very rapid and self-multiplying take-off period. That is going to challenge every institution - every individual - very dramatically and the citizen sector in particular. Around 1980, the citizen sector followed business to become entrepreneurial and competitive in structural terms. That we lagged three centuries behind business here explains why we had fallen so far behind. Since then we've had thirty years of catch-up - very rapid catch-up of productivity, scale and now globalization. So at one level, business and society now can work together, which was not practical earlier. That represents a huge strategic opportunity for the ultimate clients, for business, and for the citizen sector. It's going to pretty much demolish the existing boundary lines - including legal boundary lines and financing systems. But at a much deeper level, now that the citizen sector has caught up, it's about transitioning to a world in which everyone is a changemaker.
"This is the transition to the Everyone a Changemaker world."
The Focus: You once said "social entrepreneurs don't want to help, they want to change the world." Where does social entrepreneurship enter this equation?"
Drayton: Social entrepreneurship gives birth and lends shape to change. But let's back up a bit: Around 1700, business broke the mold. Up to that point, ever since the agricultural revolution we'd had "a world of a few players". The model that we still live with in almost every institution in society is this world of a few players. Agriculture produced a small surplus, so it could only support a few players. So when we think about a company or citizen sector organization, we think about a few people having the ideas and "managing" everyone else - and that has been the structure of society for a very long time. The problem is that this structure just won't work in the context of logarithmically escalating change that also comes from more and more angles.
The Focus: What does the accelerating pace of change mean for present day organizations?
Drayton: An organization that works along conventional hierarchic lines will not be able to function in this fast-changing world. It's an obsolete model. It doesn't matter whether you're in the business or social sector; the same pace of change is going to be there. It doesn't even matter much how big the organization is - whether you have 10 people or 20,000. Now this is a wonderful, magical transition, once we get through it. It's getting through the transition, this next decade, that's going to be the challenge.
For the complete article, go to
http://www.ezifocus.com/content/thefocus/issue/article.php/article/54300800