DB: The first thing is to develop a brain trust — people you trust, who have a well-rounded expertise and intelligence. There should be some people who have expertise in the field in which you are working, people who can play devil's advocate, people who are door openers and connectors to circles of power, influence or money.

Then think of your idea as if it's a product and ask yourself, "Is there market for this product?" Although this is basic advice — MBA 101 kind of advice — the social entrepreneurs who are very successful spend a lot of time analyzing the market, and connecting with it. Don't just assume that there is a need. Find out what and who the market is and talk to these people.

Look at who else is doing it. Are they doing it well? You should be able to explain why you are better or different from the other people who are already out there doing it. Not only will that help you to develop your idea, it will help you differentiate yourself when you walk in a funder's door and hear, "Well, why should we fund you when we are already funding somebody else and they have been doing this for five years?" You must have a ready answer.

The third thing is: figure out what resources you will need financially and people-wise. Sketch out the possible actors, partners and the kind of resources you might need as early as possible. Think through the basic operational plan. But beware: trying to over-think at an early stage may be as problematic as not thinking enough, so be open. Take immediate, decisive action toward some small goals to pull a few people in.

CM: Why do you think social entrepreneurs — as individuals and as a profession or social movement — are getting so much attention now?

DB: There are a number of factors. September 11th seems to have had a kind of galvanizing effect. I suspect that after that event, anyone who wanted to do something, or who dreamt about doing something along the lines of social entrepreneurship, either felt a greater sense of urgency or that life is not quite as predictable as we often think it is. And that you should try and do the things that you dream of doing before your time runs out.

People are focused on the global now. At the same time, there is a strong sense now that the government needs a lot of help in dealing with problems. That, in terms of solving problems, the leadership is not coming out of the traditional bureaucratic structures, so social entrepreneurs really see that this is a great personal opportunity for them to do work that is a) exciting, uses their talents effectively and is meaningful, and b) may be a more effective way of addressing a problem than focusing strictly on political processes.

CM: Why is the amount of funding for social entrepreneurs improving?

DB: Organizations that fund this sort of thing are thinking that they need to be a bit more competitive. They can't just go on watering one-thousand flowers and letting them all wither. It's a better strategy to cultivate a garden and selectively chose a smaller number of seeds — then make sure they are well tended and get the resources they need to grow. Social entrepreneurship is really about finding those seeds with the greatest potential.

CM: As we noted earlier, you have taken the "road less traveled" in your life. How have you made a career out of writing about social innovations?

DB: When I look at my life in retrospect, there is a coherence to it, but I never really thought of it as a career. I've been drawn toward writing about these things since I was in high school. When I was in eleventh grade, my English teacher told me that I had an ability to convey ideas clearly and simply, and to help other people understand them. This has always stuck in my mind.

I studied business in college. Even though I didn't want to make a career in the business sector, I always had a sense that understanding how business works would be important. After I graduated, I worked in the private sector to understand how businesses work.

Then I applied to journalism school because I wanted to learn how the media works. I had to write an essay about what I wanted to do in my application letter to New York University. Basically, I wrote that I would like to travel around the world looking for really good stories about things that are going on in the world and bring them home.

A couple of years later, in the early 1990s, I went to Bangladesh to write about the Grameen Bank. That led me to understand what a social entrepreneur is. It was the conclusion of my first book — that we need to support social entrepreneurs like Muhammad Yunus — that led me almost directly into this new book on social entrepreneurship.

CM: Do you see possibilities for your next book at this point?

DB: We just had a little baby, so he's the main focus. But soon I would like to delve in to social entrepreneurship at an even more nuts and bolts level than this book gets into.

CM: Have you considered becoming a social entrepreneur yourself?

DB: Writing this book gave me the privilege of getting to know many different social entrepreneurs, and this has given me an enlarged sense of what I might be able to accomplish in life. Especially about what one can do as an effective communicator.

CM: Can you envision yourself starting a social entrepreneurial organization to pursue this, and if so, what would it look like?

DB: Yes, the mission of this organization would be to help society recognize, finance and celebrate the ideas that are currently on the ground for improving society, but which remain under-financed, under-resourced and under-appreciated. We are at no loss for great ideas, models and solutions. But what is missing are many of the mechanisms — financing, support, and systematic journalistic coverage — that exist in the private sector and allow great business models to go national within a decade or within 15 years.

Part of the challenge is to develop communication mechanisms that highlight and shine a spotlight on these ideas, and an analytical framework that will allow people to recognize their true value. Essentially, this boils down to better marketing.

CM: You have done so much traveling and talking to people since you started to work on this book in 1998. Are there stories that never made it into the book?

DB: I interviewed more than 100 people for this book, and there are just so many great stories that I didn't have a chance to include. One person who sticks in my mind is Agnes Gereb, whom I interviewed in Hungary. She is promoting the idea of natural child birthing in Hungary — making that a viable option for women in that society.

It's not the sort of thing we may think of when we think of the great global challenges that we face: poverty, environmental problems, disease. But I thought that her work is very important. My wife had a natural childbirth, and I think that a society where that option is not available or known, or is even illegal, is not a fully open society just yet. I would have loved to have been able to include her work.

At the other end of the life spectrum, Maria De Lourdes Bráz is dealing with another problem that receives little

Maria De Lourdes Bráz

attention in Brazil. She is working to help poor families in the favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro so they don't have to send their aging parents to state institutions for the elderly.

The problem is pretty simple: the adults in these communities must work and the kids go to school, so there is nobody at home to care for an elderly parent. If the elderly person gets to the point where they need care, the family has no choice but to put the elderly person in an institution where they are usually extremely lonely and unhappy. They may get to see their family only once a month. They tend to get sick and die much more quickly than they would otherwise.

Maria De Lourdes Braz founded her organization in the Cidade de Deus ("City of God") favela in Rio, where they made the movie of the same name. She went to the community and created an adult day care facility in the middle of the favela. She got a house, got people in the community to cook meals, give music lessons, and other things. If you have an elderly parent and nobody is at home to care for this person, you can bring him or her to Casa Santa Anna. They are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., located right in the heart of the favela, close to home.

Maria set up wonderful activities. The food is great. She finds wonderful local chefs who can take a chicken and turn it into 30 meals. Very resourceful people. It's all done at extremely low cost. Most of the services are donated.

Now Maria is trying to do this in other communities. When you think about it, this is such a simple idea and yet it makes such a difference in the lives of these people. They no longer have to live out the end of their lives in isolation in an institution. The humanity of it goes so deep. In my view, when you can provide this, it indicates that you have a truly just and humane society.

So, this is a story about one person who deals with the beginning of life and another one who deals with the end of it. In between, there are many, many other people who similarly are doing very moving work, but unfortunately I couldn't include them in the book. I hope that I'll be able to use these stories in other types of writing — in books or articles.

CM: These are inspiring stories about remarkable successes, but surely aspiring social entrepreneurs must experience some disappointments and hard times.

DB: Most of the stories in the book are about people who are succeeding. They are upbeat stories. But people go through real down periods and struggles when everything looks like it is going dark.

There was a social entrepreneur in Brazil who was going through a really tough time when I met him. He had been defrauded of $40,000, his organization was almost falling apart and he was very depressed. He had lost 30 pounds and was very, very angry with himself because he felt that he had made the mistake that allowed his organization to lose this money.

Since then, this social entrepreneur has resurrected his project and is now doing well with it. But when I met him, he was going through a very bleak period. I wrote about it, but it was cut out of the final version. I want to find another place where I can write about it in depth.

CM: You experienced so much as you prepared this book — were there moments that had an especially strong impact on you?

DB: The single most moving moment I had while writing the book happened while I was working on the story about Erzsébet Szekeres in Hungary, who is described in a chapter in the book. She has created organizations for multiply disabled people across Hungary.

Photo © Janet Jarman

Erzsébet Szekeres and her son, Tibor

To get a perspective on her work I went to visit a state-run institution outside Budapest. It's the kind of place where people look like the living dead. It's such a horrible place, people are always in their pajamas and they are untended. They walk around like zombies. These are people that have been living in an institution in some cases for decades.

I met a man who was literally kept in a cage. Another was wrapped like a mummy because he kept scratching himself. Another looked like a grasshopper — he was skin and bones. He lay on his bed, knees pulled up to his chest. He just kept vibrating. He was like a skeleton. He was never taken outside. Nobody gave him physical therapy. It conjured up images to me of horrible places where people have done tests on human beings.

Photo © Janet Jarman

Inside a state-run institution

Maybe 45 minutes later, I arrived at Erzsébet's center, which is just north of Budapest. I walked in and it was astonishing. It was a sunny day and she has a big atrium. The sun streamed in. I could see a golden wheat field outside.

Photo © Janet Jarman

Erzsébet Szekeres' center north of Budapest

Three disabled people walked straight by me wearing jeans and t-shirts. They were having an animated conversation. You could hear music from radio stations.

I walked around and looked into the workshops and saw people busy at work. There were people eating lunch in the restaurant which looks like a pub. As I was taking notes some guy bumped into me, rolling speakers into the disco.

Photo © Janet Jarman

Workshop scene

It was so moving because I got a full sense of what a social entrepreneur can do. Create a new world. These people were no less disabled than the people in the state-run institution, but they were treated like human beings. You could understand that if this woman, Erzsébet Szekeres, had never been born, all those people would probably be languishing in institutions. It gave me a sense of the beauty that people can bring into the world.