How to Change the World:
Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas
by David Bornstein
Oxford University Press, January 2004
Book Review by Chris Cusano
David Bornstein likes to know how things work, in detail. How many volts does an electric fence need, in Brazil, to deter a curious cow? Or sheep, for that matter? When an author invites readers to tag along on such inquiries, two things might happen. We may wake up to find ourselves in strange territory — say, a shantytown in South Africa or a Hungarian assisted-living facility — disoriented and envious of the limits placed on wandering livestock. Or, as happens with Bornstein's new book, we learn in these places how the world goes wrong and discover how a few gifted citizens are putting it right again.
Despite its international scope and case-study format, How to Change the World is neither travelogue nor textbook. Bornstein is a journalist. His purpose is to document the rise of "social entrepreneurs," people who create extraordinary solutions to intractable problems: bad schools, desperate poverty, stagnant hospitals, prejudice. He argues that these "actors who propel social change . . . have a profound effect on society, yet their corrective function remains poorly understood and underappreciated." There have always been good people doing good works. Bornstein says social entrepreneurs are different. They don't fix one school or a few ramshackle clinics; they change society's entire approach to such problems.
Bornstein is on familiar ground. His first book, The Price of a Dream, studied Mohammed Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Yunus made micro-credit — the practice of lending small sums to the very poor — a dignifying force that has helped millions work their way out of extreme poverty. Thanks to Yunus, credit has become a staple of social development worldwide. Bornstein concluded that the best bet in overcoming poverty would be to search for more pioneers like Yunus and invest in their unorthodox ideas.
At the time he did not realize that the search was already underway. Gradually, methodically, without fanfare, social entrepreneurs were turning up on five continents, owing chiefly to the initiative of one man, an eccentric American polymath named Bill Drayton. In How to Change the World, Bornstein alternates between crisp profiles of the entrepreneurs and the story of Drayton's remarkable efforts to locate them. In Brazil we meet Fabio Rosa, whose cost-effective ways to provide electricity to farmers are reviving rural economies. Also in Brazil we find Vera Cordeiro, who is ending a revolving-door syndrome in public hospitals that treat poor children. Jeroo Billamoria brings children, government officials, and telephone companies together in emergency toll-free hotlines for children in Asia. Veronica Khosa is a township nurse who has built a home-care industry that serves AIDs patients untouched by South African hospitals. Javed Abidi is reforming India's treatment of its disabled citizens, passing laws, changing the census, creating jobs. J.B. Schramm's improvements to the admissions process in American colleges allow thousands of students to become the first in their families to enroll. Erzsebet Szekeres taught Hungary to treat mentally-disabled people as human beings, exchanging steel cages and apathy for sunlight, dignity, work, and independence.
Bornstein also revisits the careers of Florence Nightingale, who virtually invented the modern profession of nursing, and the late James P. Grant, who mobilized the United Nations to dramatically reduce childhood disease. Each possesses a vision for changing a basic social function — public services, child welfare, health care, education. Each is dedicated to working out, in painstaking detail, exactly how those changes will take place.
And each has a connection to Bill Drayton. Bornstein describes Drayton as a polite, quirky genius whose mild manner belies the enormity of his vision — to help social entrepreneurs create a vibrant worldwide "citizen sector" endowed with the same skill, resources, and status as business and government. Drayton founded Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, a non-profit organization, which elected its first "Ashoka Fellow," in India in 1981. The living entrepreneurs Bornstein profiles are all Ashoka Fellows. Several credit Ashoka with giving them moral and material support when no one else cared. As social entrepreneurship gained currency, others followed Drayton's lead. Bornstein concentrates on Ashoka because "it is the only organization that has been actively monitoring this phenomenon at the global level for more than twenty years. Its 'search and selection' process remains the most rigorous and system for identifying pattern-setting innovators at relatively early stages of their careers."
Profiling Drayton and the Ashoka Fellows, Bornstein balances admiration with a no-nonsense exposition of their ideas, strategies, and setbacks — that's where the cows and fences come in. Chapters on individual entrepreneurs are free of the hyperbole often trotted out to celebrate social leaders. Just as Drayton describes Gandhi, one of his role models, as a strategist rather than a saint, Bornstein approaches social entrepreneurs as smart, capable people with pragmatic ideas for matching needs and resources.
Yet he conveys their passion, empathy, and ethics as well. Each has an uncanny feel for human potential. Billamoria has children answering the phones on a children's hotline. Schramm coaches school officials to spot talent as patiently as he coaches high school students to write convincing essays. Khosa saw unemployed youngsters on the street and thousands dying behind closed doors; teaching one to care for the other came naturally. Szekeres defines a good caregiver in simple human terms: the ability to apologize. Of course, says Javed Abidi, 100 million housebound Indians should appear in the census — why on earth not? And Drayton himself founded Ashoka on a disarmingly humble proposition: social innovators exist, so why not go out and find them?
Drayton finds them, and Bornstein delivers them to a broad audience. This book inspires those already working in the social sector to re-imagine their role. More important, it shows any citizen that life is not split irrevocably into selfless do-gooders and hard-headed realists. Realism does good, and doing good is realistic. High school and college students must have this book; it gives courage and sharpness to the idealism of youth. How to Change the World is the first book to investigate social entrepreneurship as a global phenomenon. In capturing this dimension of human ingenuity, David Bornstein sets a standard for writers who are bound to follow suit. Isn't that the hallmark of a new idea?
February '04 Journal