How to Change the World

"One of the revolutions of the last ten or 20 years has been the rise of social entrepreneurship. This is beginning to bring the same kind of vision and efficiency into the social sector and to do-gooders as has traditionally existed in the world of business. I think David Bornstein has chronicled that rise of social entrepreneurship better than anyone. He also has a follow-up book, with Susan Davis, from Oxford University Press, called Social Entrepreneurship . It’s a much shorter book that’s also good. But How to Change the World really is the Bible for do-gooders and it’s just a terrific book. A social entrepreneur is somebody who, like a business entrepreneur, has a new idea to solve a problem out there. But instead of trying to maximise profit, this person is trying to maximise improvement in the social condition. So, for example, one social entrepreneur that I know of was trying to address the number of women dying in childbirth in Africa. This person is an ob-gyn, so you would think she would immediately look at medical intervention. But she noticed that one of the big problems is that hospitals don’t have reliable electricity and you can’t do a C-section in the dark. So she ended up providing solar-powered surgery lights to a bunch of hospitals in Africa. It was very cheap and because it’s solar powered it also tends to be reasonably sustainable. The result has been that it saves lives, very cost effectively, in those hospitals."