January 2008 Archives
Yesterday on the way up to my office I overheard two students talking about the assigned reading for their class--a philosopher who kept talking about gemeinschaft and gesellschaft, though the students weren't exactly sure about the difference between the two.
Ah, memories . . .
Nonprofits embody the dueling cultures that sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies described as gemeinschaft (“community”) and gesellschaft (“society”). From one angle, nonprofits represent the emotional, spiritual, and even familial values of a communal realm outside state and market: the Metropolitan Opera is art, but Les Miserables is commercial pop; a museum Lichtenstein is superior to a Batman comic; church transcends group therapy; NPR offers “intelligent talk” while Rush Limbaugh is a pitchman. And yet in direct contrast, the nonprofit as gesellschaft embodies the impersonal world of contract and commodity. Vague talk of transcendent values must give way to a crisp, quantifiable metric, and the role of the nonprofit expert is to educate the public in what the term “nonprofit” truly means.
One fascinating aspect of junk media is the way they refract social values. Take, for instance, Carl Barks' Donald Duck comics, which transformed the gag cartoon into an epic exploration of the moral complexity of American culture. Drugs, exploitation, radioactive hair-treatment scams (!)--Barks had the freedom to hold his magic mirror to our world precisely because no one took his artistic medium seriously.
Following up on yesterday's image from A Christmas in Shacktown, here are a few panels from what happens after Uncle Scrooge answers the door. When Uncle Scrooge sees that his visitor is his nephew Donald Duck, he decides not to fire his anti-philanthropy cannon. But much to Scrooge's dismay, Donald is indeed seeking a donation for a charitable cause--the children of impoverished Shacktown. The request: $50--$25 for a turkey dinner, and $25 for a toy train, the first and only Christmas present the children in Shacktown would ever receive.
Moving beyond outright resistance to the very notion of giving, Uncle Scrooge zeroes in what he sees as the gift's fatal flaw:
No utility.
Feeding the poor--that he can agree with;it has an identifiable return on investment. Giving children a toy train, however, is "useless." If the women--and in a previous panel Uncle Scrooge launches into the irrationality of charity as a woman's domain, one that taints the males foolish enough to indulge it--are going to insist on such nonsense, they are going to have to earn that money first before he gives his more practical gift.
Note that what Scrooge promotes--utility, matching funds, and as the rest of the story elaborates, earned income for charity--are precisely what we tend to value today. Yet Barks sees them as antithetical to charity. Even in the purest sense of poverty relief, Barks conveys, the inutile plays an essential role in making life truly human.
One might be tempted to say this sequence is a relic of an obsolete tradition, irrelevant to today. And that would be wrong. Barks was a designer and a storyteller, an artist skilled in the timeless rhetoric of composition. The utter hopelessness of Shacktown--not even enough money to play--stood in stark contrast to the absolute wealth of Uncle Scrooge, whose every business venture yielded ample returns.
As the past decade's market boom subsides, the social enterprise movement is going to face more cultural resistance. Bringing the logic of rational capitalism to areas seemingly overwhelmed by systemic market failure is not going to make sense. It's also going to seem cruel, or at the very least inhumane. How we adapt to this is going to determine whether social enterprise itself will be sustainable.
NEXT in Charity and Comics: The tipping point and toy trains
I try my best to avoid parroting memes, which is why you'll never hear me describe someone as a "change agent." I knew the phrase had an extensive prior history as a term of art long before it became the center square in buzzword bingo, but I didn't know how long until I decided to lull myself to sleep tonight by tracing its evolution through Google Books.
That's how I discovered its stunning secret origin in an 1899 book on Enterprise IT Architecture:
Given that most of the technology in this book wasn't invented until the late twentieth century, there's only one logical conclusion: that Tony Beveridge was a cyborg sent back in time to assassinate President McKinley.
In the everything new is old department, nuns in Arizona are renting out space in their monastery to Superbowl fans at more than double the normal rate. The rate is still considerably lower than area motels, but there is an even steeper price to pay: guests sleep in single beds and there's no alcohol, no smoking, no telephone and no TV.
"Hmmmmm. How can our charity discourage older guys from fetishizing young girls?"
"I know--let's Photoshop the heads of prepubescent teens onto women with big breasts!"
The trend toward using sex to sell charity no doubt seems cutting-edge to the folks who design such campaigns, but more often than not the result is tacky and counter-productive.
Social enterprise took flight in a prolonged period of market expansion. Now venture capital is pulling back. Via Portfolio:
"There has been a real 'de-risking' of the market, which will certainly affect the I.P.O. market," said [Union Square Ventures' Fred] Wilson, whose firm was an early investor in the social bookmarking site del.icio.us, which Yahoo bought, and Twitter, a site that combines social networking with blogging.
"That will impact the late-stage venture market," Wilson added, "because the I.P.O. market drives the late-stage venture market. And that will slowly impact the early-stage venture market."
As investors move out of equities and into fixed income and other usually safe investments, equity prices will drop across the board, he predicted, creating bargains.
"Valuations will come down," Wilson said. "There will be less exuberance about venture capital investments. What will probably take place is a flight to quality. Venture capitalists will want to invest more in the companies that look like they're going to be successful and be a little less willing to take fliers on things that are hard to really handicap.
Commercial social enterprise tends to operate in areas of the market characterized by high risk and low margins. To continue to attract substantial investment--as opposed to de facto grants--social entrepreneurs will need to develop more sophisticated business models that rely far less on good intentions.
Lawyer-types may remember Clean Flicks, the firm that sold censored family-friendly versions of popular movies. Tech Space has an update on what's happened since the company was ruled to be violating copyright:
Turns out that the "family friendly" outfit was a front for porno-movie shoots, and that founder Daniel Thompson has been arrested for soliciting sex from -- oh, lovely -- 14-year-old girls. He even allegedly asked the young ladies to be in one of his movies. (They refused.)
In the Carl Barks classic, A Christmas for Shacktown, the billionaire Uncle Scrooge is ready to face any visitor who dares approach him for a charitable donation.
Instant karma's gonna get him, though--more about that, and its relation to social enterprise, in our next installment!
Via nonprofit IT expert Beth Kanter, a photo from Cambodia "of the donation box at the Watt in Roteang Village where the Sharing Foundation has most of its programs." The inscription reads "donation to the Buddha."
From the photographer: "The lettering on this grimy building in the City Road, just north of Old Street and the City of London, is the only vestige of the Edwardian philanthropy which flourished here in the early twentieth century."
One of my favorite Socratic dialogues is the Euthydemus, in which Plato explores the link between words and things. One of the limitations of language highlighted in the wordplay of this text is the way that one word can mean different things.
For instance, take the classical Greek verb "porneuo." In English we translate this most directly as "to prostitute", with its most common usage in the passive voice signifying "to engage in prostitution." Yet if we look at the most ubiquitous English cognate--porn--we find that it is rarely if ever used in reference to people classed as prostitutes, either by law or convention, despite the fact that any number of people depicted in pornography are doing so for money. Indeed, depending on the jurisdiction or observer the person depicted in the image need not be engaged in a sexual act at all; mere exposure of certain body parts may suffice.
Then there are other languages in which the word porn has no reference to sex at all--and that's the story behind the picture above. Design blog Eyeteeth explains:
One of the reasons my wife Mok goes by her nickname is that in the U.S. she's sometimes met with snickers when she says her given name: Julaporn.
But in Thailand, the word "porn" has a very different meaning. It's the name of the king's daughter (and technically, no one else is supposed to use it) and means "silk." Often a part of women's names, "porn" is a formal and somewhat antiquated word for a blessing from God. So the name literally refers to the ceremonial silk one would present to monks at a Buddhist temple: prayer silk, if you will.
For a complete explanation of Julaporn's neon sign, check out the rest of this enlightening post!
Saks jumps on the sustainability bandwagon.
I'm curious as to how the actual numbers shake out. Green is a must for marketing (longtime readers may remember that Barney's branded itself green a while ago), but once people get into the store how much green are they dropping on green goods?
My suspicion is that green branding is a bit like Snakes on a Plane--it's something people talk about as a way of identifying with a particular group, but it's not something for which most consumers will pay real money.
Too cynical? Well, compare the Barneys eco-bag with what it bets most people will actually want to put in it.
Click through for a fun set of photos in which the designer inserts herself into Soviet propaganda. "Under the leadership of the great STALIN: FORWARD TO COMMUNISM!"
Murketing has gone where Craft feared to tread: printing the censored article, "What would Jesus sell?" The title is actually a riff on a new Morgan Spurlock documentary; the article itself is not about Christianity. Rather, it's an inquiry into the commodification of handicraft, asking whether the market for handcrafted items is actually consistent with the movement's do-it-yourself ethic.:
But I can't help thinking: Isn't shopping, no matter how wonderfully crafty and politically correct still, well, shopping? Can you escape the so-called sin of consumerism by buying handmade? Isn't the whole point of modern crafting Do It Yourself--not Buy from Someone Who is Doing It Themselves? Not to be a total hypocrite; I shop Etsy and artisan crafters as well as buy the crap from China just like everyone else. It's just that I see a new trend, which is moving away from crafting and towards consuming. What's next? "Hip Craft" aisles at Wal-Mart?
The presumption--now denied--that the reference to Jesus would be offensive to Christians highlights an unintended consequence of protests against blasphemy: rather than speaking of Christianity more reverently, people might conclude that mentioning Jesus at all is more trouble than it's worth.
Rob Walker's Times Magazine article on Kiva--too many users makes it necessary to limit loan amounts--raises a number of interesting issues.
Here are two.
First: the description of making loans as "charitable giving." It's an elision we shouldn't ignore, because understanding why folks speak this way re Kiva can help other organizations redirect attention away from relations of exchange. At the same time, it also highlights a cognitive shift that, inter alia, helped fuel the subprime mortgage meltdown: the perception of home loans to the less well-off as a social benefit, a la George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life." At what point the loan-as-charity model breaks down is a limit we have yet to define. In this context we should be aware that the IRS has recently revoked the tax-exemption of a few charities dedicated to helping otherwise unqualified people obtain loans, on the grounds that they too close resembled commercial businesses.
Another important issue: the exemplary value of scale-free success. Thanks to a perfect storm of favorable developments--the economy's apparent robustness, the Yunis Nobel Prize, the Clinton-Oprah publicity--Kiva emerged as a hub for microlending in the U.S., just as groups like the Acumen Fund, Greyston Bakery and Ethos Water have become dominant players in their respective domains. Hooray and amen, but it should not blind others trying to enter the social enterprise market to the harsh conditions facing the other ninety percent in the field. I'm well aware of the long tail hype, but as I've noted before targeting those markets is a doubly difficult strategy for social entrepreneurs--the margins are even lower than those for mainstream commercial business, and the environmental pressure to provide aid on a noncommercial basis is stronger. Hope for the best and plan for the worst may be a hoary bromide of small business advice, but there's a reason it's repeated so often--my sense is that one of the reasons Kiva itself has done so well is that it doesn't let itself get carried away with the hype.
Compare the 2006 example above with the latest from this week.
Looks like we have a recurring theme.
Personally I couldn't stop laughing if my charity had a cup awareness campaign, but then again, one curse of being obsessed with language is that I'm perpetually wary of unintentional double entendres.
If you don't get the joke, well, you're probably better off.
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Victoria Beckham and Marc Jacobs team up to fight skin cancer. Because, you know, walking around nude is the best way to prevent melanoma.
"Hmmm--how can we inspire teen-age misogynists to respect women?"
"I know--we'll compare it to being nagged to eat your vegetables and do your homework!"
Took a break from a rather busy weekend to drop by the New Museum. The first floor is smart--a gift shop that doubles as a display area, a food kiosk doubling as exhibit space--serving as a model of how a charity can shift attention in ways that transform commercial space.
The top floor is cool, too, with a wraparound outside deck that practically makes it a sin not to buy a glass of wine to sip as you soak in the cityscape.
The exhibit in the middle . . .
Well . . .
It's too '80s, and not in a good way. In a boring way.
Now, I like a lot of stuff from the eighties, including things you might not guess. But the reason I like it has a lot to do with the fact that in its time, it was interesting. Copying the style twenty years later--not so much.
The premise of "Unmonumental" is that we live in an era of fragmentation. Thus the exhibit "exploits the formal and ideological power of juxtaposing found images to create everything from social and political commentaries to Surrealist fantasies and personal confessions."
In other words, Bush is bad. Brands are superficial. Suburbia is empty. Everything is broken.
Yawn.
Yes, the absurdist disaggregation of corporate icons had its moment--in fact, anyone who saw my grad student collage displays in the basement of Duke Div got an eyeful of that from yours truly back in 1988.
But what's more interesting now, I believe, is the subsequent shift toward cultures of coherence. It's like the McLuhan quote I dropped in a comment over at GiftHub--today, it's the traditionalist who is the true radical.
In that regard the basement "Donor Hall" exhibit charting arts & culture philanthropy is equally disappointing. Plotting pie graphs on giant images of pies--oh, how radical. Sifting out donors to highlight corporate hegemony and to diss Halliburton--oh, how subversive. We'd have a much better hope of "understanding and change" with more rigorous Tufte-esque data displays and fewer self-indulgent cutesy visual tricks.
The whole experience got me thinking of museum exhibits I'd like to see, but that's a post for another day.
Do you want to fight for those suffering without heat? Do you want to fight hunger? And do you want to live well while doing good?
That's the spirit of this poster by Soviet poet and designer Vladimir Mayakovsky, which urges citizens of the new Soviet Russia to join the ranks of those working hard for social good. With others in the Constructivist movement during Lenin's 1920's experiment with social capitalism, Mayakovsky championed "commercial agitation"--a strategic fusion of activism and advertising that leveraged market forces to promote public good.
Over time, though, Mayakovsky grew disillusioned with the disjunction between ideal and reality. His poems document his disenchantment with how consumerism with a purpose was giving way to careerist greed and cynical manipulation.
He shot himself in 1930.
Do I note this because I think articles such as Nick Kristof's latest celebration of social entrepreneurs at Davos are wrong?
No, not at all.
Rather, it's just another reminder that we're not the first to get excited about this particular model. People just as smart and just as earnest have said the same things before. We think we're revolutionary because we willfully ignore the failures of revolutionaries past.
Or worse, we dismiss them as irrelevant.
If we don't want our own efforts to collapse, it's not enough to revel in our moment of success. We need to remember those who went before us thundering the world with the power of their voice, beautiful and handsome, twenty-two years old.
Or du week. Anyway, here are a few:
- KFC's "chicken dance for charity" unauthorized by NFL
- Does award-winning social entrepreneur Dov Charney trade American Apparel clothes for sex?
- Two-faced Unilever: the same company that's behind Dove's campaign against beauty sells Axe through sexist ads
- Is Dell's pricey Project Red PC a rip-off?
UPDATE:
Project Red has responded to the Dell controversy with this interesting observation:
(RED) is not about buying something for charity - it is about doing good while you are buying something you need. For those consumers who are in the market for a DELL XPS ONE with WINDOWS VISTA ULTIMATE, the (PRODUCT) RED option gives them the opportunity to get all of these features AND trigger an $80 contribution to the Global Fund to help fight AIDS in Africa, at no additional cost. For those consumers who are not in the market for this type of full-featured experience, they have the option to purchase another DELL PC that meets their needs.
(RED) is just one tool for people to do good - it doesn't replace the need or desire for charity donations, volunteering or getting involved in other ways. It is simply a choice when you're out shopping for something you need.
Thanks in part to ministries such as XXX Church, a network of porn accountability groups has been emerging in Christian circles. An accountability group is basically a 12 step meeting for men who believe they are addicted to pornography--the guys confess what they've looked at and how they respond to it (!), and when temptation strikes, they call their accountabilibuddy for support.
It's an interesting social phenomenon for any number of reasons. One is the diffusion of the hierarchical structure of the traditional Catholic confessional into dispersed mutual support. A popular critique of the Catholic penance ritual (back when parishioners under 70 actually used it) was that it concentrated absolute power in the priest, who knew everyone's dark secrets.
Does flattening confession into an array of modular associative networks signify the end of this dynamic? After all, the norm for these groups is to make everyone agree to keep the confessions confidential, which, since the pastor isn't part of every group, would seem to distribute access to negative information throughout the church and even across Christian communities.
Intrigued by the latest article on the subject to appear on ChristianityToday.com, I decided to see if I could track down a confidentiality agreement to see exactly what it is the guys in such a group agree not to say. A sample agreement, with commentary, below the jump.
On September 9, 1945, U.S. Navy officer Grace Hopper found the first computer "bug": a moth stuck between the relays on the Harvard Mark II (successor to the Mark I above) She noted it on her log as the "first actual case of bug being found." Though the term "bug" had meant a computer error beforehand, it became a popular term after this incident.
A tourist mom from England falls ill in Manhattan and New York Child Services takes her kids away from her. Luckily, the kids knew that a wry sense of the absurd can be the most effective weapon to wield against a hyper-rational bureaucracy:
Too weak to wave goodbye, their mother was forced to leave Gemma and Katie in the custody of social workers who asked them “do you have any homicidal tendencies?” and “which street gangs do you belong to?”. Gemma, a student at Bideford College, replied: “I am a member of Appledore library.”
I'm fascinated by the breaking news story about the teen arrested for planning to commit suicide by hijacking and crashing a plane.
Why?
Because his intended crash target was a Hannah Montana concert.
What insight this gives into the kid's mind! He looks beyond the veneer of pop innocence to react against all it masks: burgeoning sexuality, exclusionary status networks, fluctuating personal identity. The kid may not know what he wants to be, but he knows he wants more than that.
There's an intriguing resonance here with the reaction of Sayyid Qutb, architect of radical Islamic terror, to the Greeley, Colorado church sock hop that--strange as it may seem--served as a stepping stone to 9/11:
They danced to the tunes of the gramophone, and the dance floor was replete with tapping feet, enticing legs, arms wrapped around waists, lips pressed to lips, and chests pressed to chests. The atmosphere was full of desire...
One person's bubblegum is another's Abaddon, destroyer of souls.
I'm prepping for the semester's first class on startups, and once again I can't help thinking about the bigger picture. This 1970's cartoon from years ago provides a glimpse into how my brain responds to discrete educational environments:
"The "recantation" of old men, if it occurs, is easily understood. Having been brought up in a particular religion, their earliest and tenderest memories may be connected with it; and when they lie down to die they may mechanically recur to it, just as they may forget whole years of their maturity, and vividly remember the scenes of their childhood."
--G.W. Foote, Infidel Death-Beds
"Bill Gates Issues Call for Kinder Capitalism."
That's the front page headline of today's Wall Street Journal, and I guess if I were a good little trooper I'd join in the celebration of his Damascene conversion to the cause.
But that's not how most people in business will see it, and it's important we recognize why Gates' sermonizing is likely to fall on deaf ears.
First, there's the natural reaction that Gates is merely giving voice to a guilty conscience. Sin in business, repent in retirement is one cliche that has indeed become an archetype. One by-product of this: reinforcement of the image of charity as a luxury good.
In addition, there's the suspicion that Gates is cynically trying to shore up Microsoft's market position. How? Well, now that he's not in active control and competitors are chipping away at Microsoft's market share, he's trying to shame competitors into pulling back--and, more directly, to get consumers to see its competitors as selfish and exploitive. If government responds by requiring businesses to be more socially conscience, that's all the better, because it has the potential to freeze the market in its current state.
It's the kind of virtue-jitsu we see in the Clinton campaign, which is a master at using appeals to decency to shut down political opponents. Except Microsoft is not a politician campaigning on a platform of universal health care and aid to the poor; it's still first and foremost a multi-billion dollar quasi-monopoly with an established reputation for ruthless profit-seeking in pursuit of market share.
For Gates' appeal to have had substantial ripple effects, it really had to have been issued while he was in charge. It would also require visible changes in Microsoft's own business practices. Last but not least, Gates would have to provide a compelling rationale beyond a guilty conscience, an argument easily parried by anyone who has a superficial acquaintance with Adam Smith.
In this regard, the ultimate failure is not Gates', but our own. The self-identified do-gooding community has not given him or any other aspiring philanthropic capitalists the conceptual tools to move beyond prevailing corporate norms.
RESPONSE TIME EXTRA:
The Slashdot thread on the story provides an interesting set of reactions.
"If I’m totally honest, I think that my favourite parts of this design aren’t the rear-mounted flamethrower, or the ninja-throwing stars, but actually the padded seat and non-slip pedal. It suggests that villains are looking for comfort and practicality when it comes to equipping their incompetent hench-men with a more environmentally friendly vehicle of doom."
I've been seeing this Cisco TelePresence ad a lot--the hook is that Cisco connects a family with a son/boyfriend doing humanitarian relief work. The commercial's small print says that the screen image is "simulated." I wonder if that adjective also applies to the rather telegenic relief worker.
Going from Poor Man's Lawyer to Esquire, the Victorian-era settlement movement races into the 21st century with a charity gala preview of the 2007 NY International Auto Show.
This is the other piece of artwork I see every day. It's a page from
Jeff Nicholson's classic Eisner nominated "Day's Work, NIght's Rest" in The Dreaming #15.
I've been asked what it is about this page that makes it so iconic to me. After all, I'm a professor & lawyer--haven't worked an honest day in my life, at least since high school.
One could, I guess, look at it as a means of connecting with my past, hundreds of years of drechslers--"lathe-turners", craftsmen--who, as one law professor from Germany once aptly observed, no doubt shaped my fascination with design.
That's probably right, except it goes a bit deeper. I look at photos of the stars and see the constant churning of creation--connection, destruction, transformation, the new--and I can't draw a line between that and less overtly physical work. It's all of a piece, really; our minds draw their power from the cosmic furnace giving rise to infinite varieties of form.
At least I like to think so, anyway, in part with the daily reminder provided by this page.
CORPORATE COMICS EXTRA:
Click here for the pages leading up to this one.
Nicholson is also the writer/artist of Through the Habitrails, an equally trenchant and surreal look at corporate identity.
At a conference over New Year's, one point I emphasized was that the halcyon days of civil society and social enterprise are about to give way to a re-assertion of centralized government control. Via the New York Times:
Critics of government spending argue that America’s private sector does a better job making socially necessary investments. But it doesn’t. Public spending is allocated democratically among competing demands. Rich benefactors can spend on anything they want, and they tend to spend on projects close to their hearts. . . .
Philanthropic contributions are usually tax-free. They directly reduce the government’s ability to engage in public spending. Perhaps the government should demand a role in charities’ allocation of resources in exchange for the tax deduction. Or maybe the deduction should go altogether. Experts estimate that tax breaks motivate 25 percent to 30 percent of contributions.
Here we go again.
Got tied up a bit so the podcast edit will have to wait one more day, alas. I did in my various travels get to read Jerome Groopman's new New Yorker article on academic culture and nonprofit medical research as social enterprise. I'll post a few thoughts on this later, because the issues raised in the article touch on exactly the sort of law, culture & identity matters that we've been discussing.
But not now, alas, 'cuz I gotta run.
There's been some interesting conversation on the web recently about the culture clash between nonprofits and business, which, if you poke around here, you'll see is a subject of some interest to me. Folks who don't think it's an issue really should pay attention; observations such as this are signs of a growing backlash that the social enterprise movement must face if it is to survive.
I know some of you are wondering, hey, Jeff, what's the deal--you're a professor of social enterprise, but you're not all rah-rah like other social enterprise professors. Schizophrenic much?
To which I answer, no, not at all, and for two reasons:
First, I believe it's important as a professor to stand perpendicular to any movement you're studying, even if you think it has value. Social enterprise, nonprofit studies, civil society--one of the things holding these areas back as academic disciplines is that we tend to replicate the same fusion of advocacy and analysis characteristic of nineteenth century first generation sociology. One of the reasons sociology evolved was that professors came to realize that they actually didn't help social movements by merely serving as a mouthpiece for the latest trends. Our value-added, I'm convinced, lies in providing a broader analytical perspective on what's going on.
Which is a nice segue into social enterprise itself. Anyone who teaches business will tell you that an enterprise won't go very far if it doesn't get real about its own situation. Yes, every startup has a moment in the beginning when the founders know they have a cool idea that's going to make them bazillionaires in a month. But to make it work they eventually have to face facts.
In a business plan, a core part of this is the SWOT analysis, which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The strengths and weaknesses sections assess things internal to your organization; opportunities and threats, things outside your control. A startup's chance of success will increase the more it is honest in addressing these issues; the more it pretends that there are no weaknesses or obstacles, the less its capacity to overcome them.
Social enterprise as a movement, sad to say, belies its own entrepreneurial values in refusing to acknowledge its internal weaknesses and external threats. Instead, its foremost advocates and their followers take the position that there are none--everyone who disagrees with them is simply wrong and obsolete. When things are going well it's a heady brew, but getting drunk on success is a straight path to the ditch if you don't sober up soon enough.
One of things that's going to trip social enterprise up is failing to understand nonprofit culture. In fact, another thing that's going to trip up social enterprise is its failure to understand corporate culture. There are commonalities between the two--in this respect social enterprise has positive value--but the movement has by and large not sufficiently identified what these commonalities are. The result is a movement whose lifespan will be limited to that of the entrepreneurial metaphors flourishing amidst an economic boom.
My own aim, to the extent that I have one, is to explain how everything relates. Social enterprise will succeed by making itself obsolete, by functioning as a transitional form that takes us beyond artifi