Social Enterprise and the Recency Illusion

Jeff Trexler at Uncivil Society:

Instead of an unprecedented revolution, what we might be seeing in social enterprise is just the latest in a series of selective attention cascades, in which a new generation of do-gooders--a web of students, researchers, retirees and emerging entrepreneurs--clusters around an organizational metaphor that seems new to them. What is new, though, is not so much the underlying structure as our awareness of the metaphor itself.

Comments

[JJ Commoner]

He makes a good point. Watch for more awareness and as awareness spreads, more use, more discovery, more learning, more awareness. more use (for good and for bad), more awareness, complaining, learning, resistance, breakthroughs, more awareness, injustices, attempts to control and manage, more awareness ... and so it will go, I think.

[Phil]

Social ventures go way back. The Catholic Church used to sell Papal Indulgences, a kind of get out of Hell free card for wealthy social investors. That function was taken over after the Renaissance by the Baptists with the doctrine of Born Again, and Once Save Always Saved, Send us the Money Now sermons. The whole concept of Papal Indulgences has now been democratized. A good thing, I guess. Whereas only the Few could afford to purchase salvation, now we can all get it on the cheap.