How Social Entrepreneurship Can Become a Movement: Six Shifts Shaping What Comes Next

Every once in a while, a conference does more than fill your notebook with new ideas. Sometimes, in rare moments of true inspiration, you can feel the energy as people and ideas bounce off one another. That is why I often quip, “Innovation happens through collision.”

Impact Catalyst Midwest, hosted by the Flywheel Social Enterprise Hub, was one of those experiences. It was also a full-circle moment for me. Fifteen years ago, I had the privilege of helping found Flywheel and serving as its founding executive director. We began with a simple belief: social entrepreneurs needed a place to learn from one another, challenge assumptions and build solutions capable of changing systems — not just individual organizations.

Returning 15 years later, I encountered an organization that had continued to evolve and a room filled with nearly 200 entrepreneurs, nonprofit professionals, business leaders, investors, systems thinkers, academics and community builders who were serious about accelerating positive social change.

After nearly two decades of attending social innovation conferences globally, I do not say this lightly: it felt like lightning in a bottle.

My fireside chat with Flywheel Executive Director Donna Zaring gave us an opportunity to reflect on how far the field has come while asking an even more important question:

Where do we go from here?

I left thinking about how much social entrepreneurship has changed over the past 15 years — and how much it has not. I do not see that evolution as a series of neat stages, with one idea replacing another. Instead, I see a series of six overlapping shifts that reveal how the field has expanded, where new blind spots have emerged and what may need to happen next if social entrepreneurship is truly going to become a movement.

 

First, a Quick, but Necessary Note on Definitions

As social entrepreneurship has grown, its language has become increasingly blurred. More people have joined the field and made the work their own, which is good. But social innovation, social enterprise and social entrepreneurship are now often used interchangeably even though they describe different things.

I explain the distinctions this way:

• Social Innovation is about the IDEA.
• Social Enterprise is about the BUSINESS MODEL.
• Social Entrepreneurship is about the MINDSET.

 

Social innovation asks whether a solution is more effective, efficient, sustainable or adaptable than what already exists. Like our colleagues in business, we should build on what others have learned — what I like to call “leapfrog innovation” — to make an idea better and move the field forward.

We must also resist innovation’s evil twin: reinvention. That happens when we keep creating versions of the same solution, ignoring what others have already learned and calling the result innovative. This is part of the promise of AI. It can make market research faster and more accessible. But speed is not the same as understanding. AI should strengthen our knowledge base but it is not a replacement for direct engagement with the people closest to the problem.

Social enterprise asks how earned revenue and market discipline can support both social impact and financial sustainability. It is not defined by whether an organization is a nonprofit or for-profit, but by how the business model aligns mission, market and margin.

Social entrepreneurship describes how people approach the work. Social entrepreneurs fall in love with the problem, not their own solution. They test assumptions, listen to the community, work across sectors and treat impact as the bottom line. They are also sector-agnostic, willing to break through silos and work alongside anyone who can help build a better solution. Social change is too important to leave to any one sector.

These distinctions matter. Without precision, we can misalign strategy, talent, capital and expectations.

 

6 Shifts in Social Entrepreneurship

 

Shift 1: From Heroic Founders to Changemakers Everywhere

In the early days of the modern social entrepreneurship movement, the dominant story was often the story of the extraordinary founder. Organizations such as Ashoka, Skoll and Schwab helped identify and support remarkable changemakers. Greg Dees, whom I had the privilege of studying under at Duke, helped establish social entrepreneurship as a serious discipline.

That people-centered approach mattered. It helped legitimize a field that many people did not yet understand and showed that determined individuals could challenge entrenched problems.

But it also reinforced the idea that social change belonged to a rare group of heroic founders — people who started something from scratch, carried the work largely on their own and equated commitment with sacrifice rather than sustainability.

Today, the tent is much bigger. Changemakers work inside nonprofits, businesses, government agencies, universities, foundations and communities. Some launch new ventures. Others are intrapreneurs who challenge old assumptions from inside existing institutions.

The strongest social entrepreneurs are not defined by where they work. They are defined by how they work. That is real progress. But hero culture has not disappeared. We still tend to reward charismatic founders, polished pitches and highly marketed ventures more than the people quietly building coalitions, changing institutional practices and creating the conditions for others to succeed.

If social entrepreneurship is going to become a movement, we must expand not only who gets to call themselves a changemaker, but who receives the capital, recognition, authority and support to create lasting change.

 

Shift 2: From Companies Giving Back to Creating Value Differently

The business sector has been on its own parallel journey. Fifteen years ago, many conversations about business and social impact centered on philanthropy, employee volunteerism and corporate social responsibility, or CSR. The central question was often:

How can a successful company give back?

Those efforts still matter. But increasingly, businesses are being asked a deeper question:

How is value created in the first place?

How do companies treat employees? What products and services do they offer? How do they use their purchasing power? What happens throughout their supply chains? How do their decisions affect customers, communities and the environment?

Social enterprise helped challenge the assumption that mission and market must exist in separate worlds. Shared value, impact investing, stakeholder thinking and other approaches have continued to blur those boundaries.

At Impact Catalyst Midwest, investors and entrepreneurs were not debating whether purpose and profitability could coexist. They were discussing how capital could be deployed more intentionally to generate both return on investment and return on impact.

That is significant progress.

But purpose can become a marketing statement rather than a strategic leadership discipline. Conscious leadership asks leaders to examine not only what their organizations say, but how they behave — especially when purpose and profit create difficult trade-offs.

Every business shapes outcomes for employees, customers, communities and the environment. The question is no longer whether business belongs in social change. It is how business will use its considerable influence to help shape a better world.

 

Shift 3: From Falling in Love With Solutions to Understanding Systems

One principle has remained constant throughout my career:

Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.

Social entrepreneurs begin with curiosity. Why does this problem exists? Who experiences it? What has already been tried? What assets are available? What keeps the current system stuck?

Take mental health. A seemingly obvious response may be to offer more counseling. That may help individuals, but access to mental care is also shaped by cost, insurance coverage, workforce shortages, transportation, stigma, housing instability, school and workplace policies, crisis response and the availability of culturally responsive care. Helping one person access counseling can change a life. Building a functioning mental health ecosystem can change a community.

Over the past 15 years, the field has become much more sophisticated about systems thinking, human-centered design, community voice, root causes and population-level outcomes. We have thankfully moved upstream.

But we have also gained a vocabulary that can make narrow efforts sound more transformative than they are. Calling a program “systems change” does not make it systemic.

Likewise, innovation is not synonymous with novelty. Social media and pitch culture can reward new ideas and visible personalities even when proven organizations are quietly producing stronger outcomes. Design challenges and pitch competitions can encourage people to leap toward solutions without first understanding what already exists, what has been tried or why earlier efforts failed.

We have more powerful tools than ever. But these only help when we understand what we are building, why it is needed and whether the community actually wants it built.

 

Shift 4: From Strong Organizations to Strong Ecosystems

When Flywheel began, much of the field’s energy was focused on helping individual social enterprises succeed. That work remains essential. Fragile organizations cannot reliably build resilient communities. Ventures need sound business models, talented leaders, strong operations, evidence of impact and access to capital.

If social entrepreneurship is a mindset, ecosystems determine whether that mindset can flourish. Sustainable organizations do not emerge by accident. They grow within intentionally designed ecosystems that include mentors, investors, nonprofit partners, businesses, universities, government, philanthropy, researchers, peer networks and community relationships.

Looking back, Flywheel was part of a global ecosystem-building movement before many of us regularly used that terminology. Today, communities are asking how they can intentionally develop and align talent, capital, leadership pipelines, innovation infrastructure and cross-sector networks.

That is an encouraging shift. But an ecosystem is not simply a list of organizations that occasionally attend the same meeting. Real ecosystems require alignment. That means stewardship, trust, shared priorities, governance, information, resources and accountability. They also need people and institutions willing to maintain the connective tissue – work that is essential but rarely glamorous.

Most communities do not lack assets. They lack alignment.

That was part of what made Impact Catalyst Midwest feel different. Entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, investors, attorneys, business professionals, academics and community builders who might once have occupied separate spaces were beginning to see themselves as participants in the same system.

Connection is the beginning. Alignment is the harder work ahead.

 

Shift 5: From Funding Programs to Aligning Capital

The capital conversation has also matured. Philanthropy remains essential, particularly when testing ideas, addressing inequities, supporting services that markets will not sustain and absorbing risks others cannot. But it is no longer the only tool being discussed.

Today, the capital stack may include philanthropy, earned revenue, impact investment, patient capital, government funding, procurement, donor-advised funds and traditional investment.

The better question is not simply, “Where can we find more money?” It is:

What type of capital does this work need, at what stage, on what terms and toward what outcome?

But access to capital remains highly relational – and deeply uneven. Promising leaders may lack the networks, collateral, track record or personal financial cushion required simply to enter the room, much less secure investment. At the same time, we continue asking organizations to collaborate while funding them to compete.

If we are serious about building ecosystems, we must be willing to finance the infrastructure that holds them together: coordination, trust building, shared measurement, leadership development and meaningful community participation.

 

Shift 6: From Heroic Leadership to Conscious Systems Leadership

For years, social impact leadership often celebrated leaders willing to sacrifice everything for the mission. Persistence matters, but hero leadership can also create fragile organizations, unhealthy expectations and systems that depend too heavily on one person.

The next era requires something different: conscious systems leadership across every sector and industry.

Conscious leaders understand their values, strengths, blind spots and effects on others. They bring emotional intelligence to their work through self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness and social influence. They know how to build trust, navigate tension and bring people along. This growth begins with curiosity – the willingness to examine assumptions, patterns and blind spots, and courage – the willingness to act on what we learn.

It also requires investment. Compared with the business sector, we have historically underinvested in management and leadership development across the social sector. Passion and commitment are not substitutes for the skills required to manage people, navigate complexity, build healthy cultures and sustain organizations over time.

Systems leaders add another set of capabilities. They know how to build coalitions, navigate competing interests, share authority, work across sectors and align people who do not report to them. They know when to lead from the front, when to follow the wisdom of others, when to create space for new voices and when to step aside. And they recognize an important tension: shared responsibility cannot become no responsibility.

Building a big tent still requires clear commitments, accountability and action. The next era needs people who do not wait for permission or a title to become changemakers. It needs leaders who are conscious of how they show up and capable of changing the systems in which they operate.

 

What Has Not Shifted

For all the new terminology, tools and capital models, the fundamentals of social entrepreneurship remain remarkably consistent:

• Ask better questions
• Listen to the people closest to the problem
• Build relationships before you need them
• Use evidence and keep double-checking your work
• Find partners whose strengths differ from yours
• Stay open to changing your mind
• Celebrate progress that never makes the headlines
• Do not build alone
• Persistence matters – not because every idea deserves to survive, but because the problems are too important to abandon when the first solution does not work

 

Are We a Movement Yet?

Social entrepreneurship is unquestionably a field. It has academic programs, conferences, funders, investors, institutions, practitioners and a growing body of knowledge.

But is it a movement?

Not yet.

Don’t get me wrong – a big tent is valuable. Social entrepreneurship has benefited from welcoming people who use different tools, work in different sectors and describe their efforts in different ways.

But a tent is not yet a movement. A movement must know not only who is invited, but what it is moving toward.

Movements require a common purpose, committed participants, continual recruitment, synergy across diverse groups and a clear understanding of the status quo they are working to change. Most importantly, they build widespread public ownership from the bottom up.

That is where social entrepreneurship may still fall short. We have built a strong professional field, but have we created a shared identity that extends beyond the people who attend our conferences, teach our courses, fund our ventures and use our terminology?

We have recruited more entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and investors, but have we invited enough residents, workers, students and people directly affected by social problems into meaningful ownership of the work?

If social entrepreneurship is to become a stronger movement, we need greater clarity about what we are attempting to change. We must treat impact as the bottom line. We must build with communities, not merely for them. Examine who holds power, capital and decision-making authority. Use evidence without becoming paralyzed by measurement. Strengthen organizations while changing the systems surrounding them. And equip more people to see themselves as changemakers – not simply as supporters or beneficiaries of someone else’s solution.

Impact Catalyst Midwest brought together an extraordinary collection of connectors, experts and storytellers. That is an important foundation.

But the test of a movement is not simply who gathers in the room. It is whether the work spreads, whether people take ownership and whether the collective effort becomes strong enough to change what the broader society believes, expects and accepts.

We have built the tent. The next shift is turning it into a movement.

 

Turning Lightning Into Lasting Power

Impact Catalyst Midwest reminded me why I continue to believe so deeply in this work. It was inspiring. Honestly, I needed that this summer after what has sometimes felt like a tough slog over the past two years.

Perhaps it felt different because it offered a glimpse of where the field is heading – away from isolated ventures and separate sectors and toward a more connected understanding of how social change happens.

Fifteen years ago, Flywheel helped create a place where social entrepreneurs could learn, test and build. I am incredibly proud of what it has become – not because it preserved what we created, but because new leaders have expanded it, strengthened it and made it their own.

Today, the opportunity is even larger: to create communities where changemaking is not the work of a select few, but a shared regional capacity. Communities where businesses, nonprofits, government, investors, universities and residents understand that no one owns the solution, but everyone has a role to play.

Lightning in a bottle is exhilarating. But lightning alone is only a moment of possibility. Lasting power requires a grid — the relationships, leadership, capital, trust and infrastructure that allow energy to travel farther than any one founder, organization or conference ever could.

Fifteen years ago, we helped create the spark. Today, I could not be prouder to see Flywheel bringing people together to build the grid. That is the shift ahead. And it may be the most important one yet. We’d love to hear your thoughts on how the social sector has shifted and what still needs to happen to make it a movement.

 

Sign up to receive the Social TrendSpotter e-newsletter