Collaborative Entrepreneurship
How Social Entrepreneurs Have Learned
to Tip the World by Working in Global Teamsby Bill Drayton

Reprinted from the Winter 2006 edition of

Reprinted from the Spring 2011 edition of

innovations

Technology | Governance | Globalization

Published by MIT Press with Harvard University and George Mason University.

Cover Images
Top left: Ashoka India Fellow Ashok Bharti is founding community‑based
cooperatives as an alternative distribution mechanism for electricity to reach India’sslum dwellers. Using a participatory approach to services management systems, hismodel is profitable for both the private sector and consumers. Ashok’s mutually
beneficial model is a template for bringing expanded infrastructure and civic services
to poor people -- and prompting the government to become more responsive,
accountable, and participatory in its provision of social services. Photograph courtesyof Tribhuvan Tiwari/Outlook.
Top right: Ashoka U.S. Youth Venturer Charlotte was 12 years old when her family
started volunteering at a local assisted-living facility. While there, Charlotte learned
that many of the elderly residents felt disconnected from their families. Charlotterealized that the internet provided an ideal medium for the elderly to communicate
with their loved ones, greatly improving their quality of life. Charlotte decided tostart a program to facilitate electronic communication between seniors and theirfamilies. Through Charlotte’s program, SeniorConnect, teenage volunteers visit
assisted-living facilities with laptop computers and help residents set up email
accounts. The volunteers help residents compose, send, and receive emails -- while abond forms between the young and old.
Bottom left: Several Ashoka Brazil Youth Venturers launched Malabares Arte
Circense (Juggling Circus Art) to engage the low-income youth population (ages
11 to 14) of São Paulo. Circus is a fun, positive medium that promotes cooperation,
relaxation, and intense physical training -- all of which are critical in adolescentdevelopment. The students of the Malabares juggling and circus workshops not only
develop physical skills and coordination, but also gain self-confidence and an outlet
for creativity and concentration. In its first three months of operation, Malabares
offered over 40 workshops. The response has been overwhelmingly successful.
Monique, Tamires, and Ana hope that soon they will be able to reach out to youth
all across Brazil.
Bottom right: In India there is a need for 24.7 million homes for the urban poor.
Developers cannot serve people without pay stubs -- even if they have reliable income
from, for example, selling vegetables every day. The citizen sector understands suchpeople but is hopeless in real estate development. The two sectors have never talked.
An Ashoka collaborative entrepreneurship team devoted to tearing down the walls
between sectors has shown that, by getting the developers to build in partnershipwith citizen groups who handle selling and administration, everyone profits and theneeded homes are built. This picture shows a staff colleague of Ashoka India Fellow
Rajendra Joshi selling new units to some of these hardworking families. In 18 months,
10,000 units ($120 million privately financed) have closed, opening a $240 billion
opportunity in India alone.

Bill Drayton

Collaborative
Entrepreneurship

How Social Entrepreneurs Have Learned to
Tip the World by Working in Global Teams
The world, for 10,000 years, has been run by just a few people.
This pattern is so archetypal that it is very hard for people to imagine
anything different.
However, this pattern is dying. It does not work. As the rate ofchange accelerates, and as change comes from ever more sources, themodel of a few people sitting on top of everyone else doing repetitive
tasks simply cannot cope. Nonetheless, it is still pervasive, still
dominant -- in how we are organized and in how we think.
The new model is already here. It is a world where everyone is achangemaker, not just a tiny elite.1 You can see its principles at workin the world’s most successful organizations and regions -- be it theJesuits or Silicon Valley.
This new world will be a global team of teams, teams thatcome together in varying combinations, scales, and intensities
as the need requires. The faster things change, the more the world
will need this giant, fast-moving kaleidoscope of teams. A team is ateam only when all its members are players; and in a world definedby escalating change, they can only be players if they can contributeto change.
Social entrepreneurs are essential in this “everyone a changemaker™”
world. They conceive and engineer the basic new patterns. They
are highly contagious role models encouraging many, many others
to care and to organize. They are also mass recruiters of local
changemakers -- that is overwhelmingly how they spread theirideas. In their turn, these local changemakers are role models andWilliam Drayton is the founder and current CEO of Ashoka: Innovators
for the Public, a citizen movement dedicated to finding and fosteringsocial entrepreneurs worldwide. Drayton is also board chair of Get
America Working!, a nonpartisan, fuller employment policy citizen
group. Named by US News & World Report as one of America’s 25 Best
Leaders in 2005, he pioneered the concept of and coined the phrase“social entrepreneurship.”1

innovations / spring 2011

Bill Drayton
recruiters for yet more local changemakers, and a few of them will
become the next generation of great entrepreneurs.
Most important, social entrep­
reneurs are essential if this rapidly
What is needed is a team emerging world where all the basicof the world’s best social
systems are ever in flux is not toentrepreneurs in an issue spin off in one ill direction orarea that has become ripe another. Right now, for example,
entrepreneuring together. privacy is under sustained attack
because preventative surveillanceis more and more needed, the cost of connecting the dots has all
but vanished, and many communications business entrepreneurs
profit by accessing client information and selling it to others fora profit. Who has the interest and focused power to spot andget the overall system back on track?
It is the social entrepreneurs. The entrepreneur’s job is to change
the big systems. And what defines the social entrepreneur is that, tothe core of their being, they are committed to serving the good of all.
This is, however, not a role solo entrepreneurs are well placed toserve. What is needed is a team of the world’s best social entrepreneurs
entrepreneuring together in an issue area that has become ripe.
That is the most powerful engine available to keep the world’s
systems moving in the right direction.
And such collaborative entrepreneurship is precisely what
Ashoka has been working for over a decade to design and develop.
A dozen such collaborations are now advancing rapidly.
How does it work?
First, the launch only comes when across the globe several
hundred leading social entrepreneurs have committed their lives tocausing big change in an issue area. When these top entrepreneurs(and over half the Ashoka Fellows have changed national policy
within five years of their launch) move, we have the most persuasive
possible open source indication that an issue area is ripe.
We then look closely at all these entrepreneurs’ proven ideas,
assembling the pieces together into a mosaic that allows us to see theoverall picture and the most important, i.e., the most future-defining,
new cross-cutting patterns.
The hardest step comes next -- identifying the new paradigm
that will define the field in the future. Understanding the questions
the patterns seek to answer usually provides very useful clues.
Once we know where the field must go, we must identify theone or two things that must happen if the world is to make this leap.
innovations / spring 20112

Bill Drayton

And then we must make them in fact happen.
Which is when the full entrepreneurial force of the hundredsof top entrepreneurs collaborating together comes into full play.
If we can together make those few critical things happen inseven to ten key places on the planet, we can tip the world. (Theyare: (1) the core five -- China, Indonesia, India, Brazil, and the
U.S., plus (2) German-speaking Europe, Japan, the Arab world,
the Spanish speakers, and the French speakers.) This is a new,unprecedented force in the world.
Ashoka now has a dozenof these collaborative entrep­
Success used to be mastering
reneurship thrusts in varying
knowledge and the rules
stages, including three in the(rememberyour report card?).
final tipping stages.
For example, the 700 (of This worked reasonably well in
3,000) Ashoka Fellows focused a static society. However, it noon children and young people
longer is enough.
have enabled us through thiscollaborative entrepreneurship process to recognize that a world
defined by change requires people to have different skills than
before -- and that this means the paradigm that defines what
success in growing up is must change.
Success used to be mastering knowledge and the rules(remember your report card?). This worked reasonably well ina static society. However, it no longer is enough. For example, thefaster things change, less and less of a person’s life can be guided
by the rules: They have not been developed or are in conflict and/or are changing. Whoever has not mastered the complex, learned
skill of empathy will hurt others and disrupt groups -- and will
be marginalized -- i.e., thrown out -- regardless of the computerscience or other knowledge they have.
The new paradigm focuses on the social skills a person must haveto be able to contribute in an “everyone a changemaker™ ” world:(1) every child must master empathy and (2) every teen must be achangemaker (practice is the only way to mastery here) using all
four of the core skills -- empathy/teamwork/leadership/changemaking.
If a fifteen-year-old is not practicing changemaking now (e.g., bycreating a tutoring service or a virtual radio station with friends),
she will be at major risk when she is thirty since these skills
will be all but required.
Ashoka has collaborative entrepreneurship efforts underway
for both children and young people. The “Every Child Must
3

innovations / spring 2011

Bill Drayton
Master Empathy” team, for example, is setting out to tip the ten
key areas of the world using the jujitsu of two easily accessible
levers. First, the team seeks to
get a rep­resentative five percent
If we can together make those of the influential schools to
few critical things happen in
adopt the new paradigm.
seven to ten key places on the (That’s 50 to 60 of the 90,000
schools in the U.S., forplanet, we can tip the world.
example). Second, it seeks tohelp thirty “maven” intellectual intermediaries, especially writers
and publishers, to grasp the new strategic “everyone a changemaker™”
environment and what it requires, and then the consequent newparadigm of what success in growing up now must be. These
two elements, of course, feed one another strongly. Educators
who love leading and have experienced what happens when all
their children master empathy at a high level, and who own theirapproach to doing so, will want to spread their new model andwill quickly be off to see the most influential writers they know.
Since such stories and enthusiasm are, of course, exactly what thewriters need, there soon will be a rapidly expanding contagionof educator advocate/writer and writer/writer and schools’
competing interactions.
Ashoka will not commit to a collaborative entrepreneurshipeffort unless it sees such jujitsu leverage. No entrepreneur, noteven a global team of entrepreneurs, can tip the world through hisor her own force.
Even more important is the heart of collaborative entrep­
reneurship -- active, entrepreneuring leadership by a global team ofteams (one for each priority area, for example the U.S.) of many of
the top social entrepreneurs in the field. They know which schools
are the most influential and who to talk to and who not to approach.
They know and are respected by the key intellectual intermediaries
and influencers. They have created and are ever refining the toolsthat work. They attract the necessary resources, they do muchof the work, and they create the new solutions at each step ofwhat has to be a journey of iterative adaptation and creativity.
The leaders of each of the component teams bring comple­
mentary innovations and skills. The North American “Every Child
Must Master Empathy” team has among its leaders, for example:• Mary Gordon (Toronto, Ontario) enables all children to grasp
empathy by bringing an infant (“the professor”) and a parent
to class.
innovations / spring 2011

4

Bill Drayton• Jill Vialet (San Francisco) is bringing back recess, largely
through group play which, of course, is one of the best ways
for children to practice empathy.
• Eric Dawson (Boston) is making the classroom also a place
where children practice empathy all the time.
• Molly Barker (Charlotte) helps girls in fifth through eighth
grades, when many lose confidence, regain it (and avoid the“mean girl” syndrome).
Another and quite different area of collaborative entrep­
reneurship collapses the heretofore not only separate but notcommunicating business and social production and distribution
systems that historically have served almost every need, be it
irrigation or housing, into one. Doing so ends many major market
failures and dramatically profits business, the citizen sector, andthe ultimate clients.
For example, in a year and a half, another global collaborative
entrepreneurship team has been able to generate $120 million
in private financing and has 10,000 new homes either built or
under construction for urban informal sector workers in India.
The business builders and finance firms could not build for avegetable seller’s family because they have neither paperwork (e.g.,
pay records) nor cross-class comfort. The citizen sector knowsthese informal sector workers, has low cost, and has trust -- but ishopeless as a real estate developer or builder. If the citizen sector
does the marketing, selecting, and servicing functions and leaves
construction to business, the new hybrid system solves the previous
failure of either party to deliver. India still has 24.7 million missing
units; but this new model, now that it has been demonstrated andis clearly so very profitable for everyone, is spreading explosively.2
Collaborative entrepreneurship is, we believe, well on the way to
becoming the core way our field truly changes the world. Ashoka isdeveloping the model and the initial framework. Once the patternis established, more and more teams will spring up and probably
connect through networks such as Changemakers.com.
1. See Bill Drayton (2006), “Everyone a Changemaker: Social
Entrepreneurship’s Ultimate Goal,” Innovations 1:1 (Winter): pp. 80-96.
2. For a full description see “A New Alliance for Global Change” in the
September 2010 Harvard Business Review.

5

innovations / spring 2011

Meet the Founding U.S. Empathy Team
It is critical for the U.S. that every child in this generation master the complex,
learned skill of empathy. The rate of change still continues to escalate
exponentially. That means that the level of empathetic skill required isincreasing every year -- and by a larger amount than the year before.
Every child must grasp how to observe themselves understanding everyone
around them, layers out, increasingly far into the future, in and as groups -and then guide what they do and say, so that they do as much good and as little
harm as possible. This is not easy and requires a lot of practice.
In many ways this is like language and literacy. All healthy children deeply,
genetically want to be an effective, contributory part of society. They workfor decades on language, and they will do the same for the critical social skills
now needed every bit as urgently -- as long as society provides the necessary
conditions and support.
For most children, we are not doing so. How many elementary school
principals do you know who know they are failing if they have one second
grader who has not grasped empathy -- or if all their students are not steadily
practicing empathy? Why would they? They are graded on the degree to which
their students absorb information and are ruly.
The result, even now, is appalling. Anyone without this skill will hurt people
and disrupt groups -- and be thrown out. Without it, moreover, it is impossible
to go on to master teamwork, leadership, and changemaking, the other threeessential skills everyone must have to succeed in a world defined by change.
For the U.S to succeed in ten to fifteen years it must have an “everyone achangemaker™” population. If Poland and India have a higher percentage
of changemakers, the U.S. will have lost the critical basis of next stage
competition. The same is true for all countries and communities.
“Every Child Must Master Empathy” is critical for the U.S. And that the
U.S. succeed is a giant step towards tipping the world.
Ashoka can play a major role. Critical to its doing so is a leadership teamfrom within Ashoka’s community of leading social entrepreneur Fellows. Thatteam in turn is critical in catalyzing and helping the 50 to 60 teams in diverse
schools that like to lead. We will challenge these teams to use all the tools
developed by Ashoka Fellows (700 of the 3,000 focus on children and young
people) and others to craft an approach that ensures that all their children
become empathy masters. Once they succeed, they will want to lead the field(and attract students and resources). The Fellows’ leadership is also critical
for the other key class of actors, the “maven” publishers, writers, and otherkey thought leaders. As these schools and mavens connect, they will change
everyone’s framework of what is important.
Here are sketches of the founding U.S. Empathy Team members:
Mary Gordon and her organization, Roots of
Empathy, are transforming classrooms and schools
across the world. An infant less than one year old(“the professor”) comes to class. As the students
grasp what “the professor” is saying -- and thenfeeling -- they are mastering empathy. Throughout
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and theUnited States, more than 325,000 students havetaken part. They increasingly recognize and respond to others’ emotions. The
results are powerful. Roots of Empathy reduces childhood aggression. Bullying
rates drop sharply and stay down.
Jill Vialet and her organization, Playworks, arecultivating empathy through group play while
improving the health and well-being of children byincreasing opportunities for physical activity andmeaningful play in schools. Research shows thatplay is not only important for giving students a
release that enhances the rest of the school day, but
is also essential for tipping school climates, one
student at a time. By fostering cooperation, conflict resolution, teamwork, andleadership, Playworks coaches lay the foundation for mastering empathy. The
result is an increase in learning in the classroom and continued improvementof student well-being.
Eric Dawson and his organization, Peace First, areteaching empathy through a lens at the heart of
why this new paradigm of growing up is so
important: peace and violence. Rather than policing
endemic violence in schools, Peace First uses
cooperative games and community service toempower elementary school students to become
peacemakers. Peace First has taught over 40,000
students and fostered 2,500 peacemaker projects. It has led to a 60 percent
reduction in school violence and 70-80 percent increase in instances ofchildren breaking up fights. Peace First works to tip entire school cultures
toward climates of empathy.
Molly Barker and her organization, Girls on theRun, support girls ages 8 to 13 in practicing andapplying empathy in pursuit of a life of self-respectand healthy living. By increasing personal andsocial awareness in young women, Girls on the
Run cultivates key “active ingredients” of empathy:
self-awareness and self-efficacy. Participants realize
their own capacity to cause feelings, both
positive and negative, in others. They come to see through an empathic
lens that forgives, understands, and searches for solutions faster than it rushes
to snap judgment. This experiential-learning program has cultivated empathy
in hundreds of thousands of young women.
Darell Hammond and his organization, KaBOOM!,
are working to save play for children by bringing
communities together to create playspaces withinwalking distance of every child in the U.S. Children in
the neighborhood lead in the design of the playground,and everyone helps build it. This model fosters empathy
on many levels. When generations and neighborhoods
join together to create playspaces, they must also
exercise their empathetic muscle in order to work together effectively as a team.
When KaBOOM!’s work is done -- and a playspace has been built -- children
have a new outlet for unstructured play, which has been shown to cultivate
not only healthy bodies and creative minds, but also empathy -- the mostcritical playground, and life, skill.

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public is the global association of the world’s
leading social entrepreneurs -- men and women with system-changing solutions
that address the world’s most urgent social challenges. Since its founding in 1980,
Ashoka has launched and provided key long-term support to 3,000 leading social
entrepreneurs in over 70 countries. It provides these “Ashoka Fellows” start-up
stipends, professional services, and a powerful global network of top social andbusiness entrepreneurs. It also helps them spread their innovations globally.
Ashoka’s modest investments consistently yield extraordinary returns in every
area of human need -- from human rights to the environment, from economic
development to youth empowerment. Within five years of election, 76% of Ashoka
Fellows have changed the pattern in their field nationally and over half havechanged national policy.
By weaving these leading social entrepreneurs together into a community ofmutual help and easy collaboration, Ashoka multiplies their impact. It also designs
new ways for the citizen sector to become more entrepreneurial, productive, andglobally organized.
Once there are hundreds of Fellows across the globe in a field, major change
is coming. By joining together in collaborative entrepreneurship, a giant stepbeyond solo practitioner entrepreneurship, the Ashoka community and its allies,
organized as a global team of teams, can spot where society must go and ensurethat it gets there quickly and intelligently. “Every Child Must Master Empathy”
and Ashoka’s Youth Venture (for those 12-20 years old) are two examples
discussed in this report.
2011 marks Ashoka’s 30th year of pioneering the field of social entrepreneurshipworldwide. Celebrate with us! Visit www.ashoka.org.
Innovations is published 4 times per year by the MIT Press. The journal is co-hosted by
the School of Public Policy, George Mason University; the Belfer Center for Science andInternational Affairs, Harvard University; and the Legatum Center for Development andEntrepreneurship, MIT.
For subscription information, to purchase single copies, or for address changes,
contact MIT Press Journals, 238 Main Street, Suite 500, Cambridge, MA 02142-1046;
phone: (617) 253-2889; U.S./Canada: (800) 207-8354; fax: (617) 577-1545;
website: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/innovations/Over the years, [Ashoka] became the venture
capital behind many great social entrepreneurs
all over the world. Today, to be chosen as an
Ashoka Fellow is a badge of honour for outstanding individuals who love theentrepreneurial spirit and social change that has a deep impact. It isalso a great example of global co-operation for solving societal problems.
June 8, 2011
Ashoka is a great global organization, built on a brilliant idea.
It picks up social innovators when they themselves don’t knowwhat great changes they can bring. That’s the stage whenbudding innovators need the support most. Ashoka helps pool
local innovations into global solutions.
— Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh
Founder of the2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner
Ashoka is helping the world see that it is not enough to givechildren information; they must also master the human skills
without which they won’t be able to contribute in our fastchanging world.
— Wendy Kopp, Ashoka USA Senior Fellow
CEO & Founder of
Ashoka Fellows have built a long and storied history as
pioneering change agents -- men and women who aretransforming their communities, their regions, and one day
the world. They will always deserve our gratitude.
— David Gergen
Director of Harvard Center on Public Leadership
Editor-at-large for1700 North Moore Street | Suite 2000 | Arlington,VA 22209 USA | tel: 703.527.8300 | fax 703.527.8383
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