Seth Godin is the author of several best sellers including Linchpin, Tribes and What To Do When It’s Your Turn.  He is a prolific blogger and a broad reaching thought leader and I’ve read his work consistently over the past several years. 

That’s why when I found myself discussing the question of “what a social enterprise really is” over coffee yesterday I decided to send Seth an email. 

An hour later Seth shot me a note back and did better than a one line answer. He agreed to make Social Entrepreneurship the theme of his daily blog post today. His thoughts, as always, provide a different way of looking at things that we think every entrepreneur should consider. We’ve included his post below:

We Are All Social Entrepreneurs 

It’s tempting to reserve the new term ‘social entrepreneurs’ for that rare breed that builds a significant company organized around the idea of changing the culture for the better.

The problem with this term is that it lets everyone else off the hook. The prefix social implies that regular entrepreneurs have nothing to worry about, and that the goal of every un-prefixed organization and project (the ‘regular kind’) is to only make as much money as possible, as fast as possible.

But that’s not how the world works.

Every project causes change to happen, and the change we make is social. The jobs we take on, the things we make, the side effects we cause—they’re not side effects, they’re merely effects. When we make change, we’re responsible for the change we choose to make.

All of us, whichever job or project we choose to take on, do something to change the culture. That social impact, positive or negative is our choice.

It turns out that all of us are social entrepreneurs. It’s just that some people are choosing to make a bigger (and better) impact than others.

It’s a spectrum, not a label.

Read it on Seth’s Blog