Growing Opportunity: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Insoluble Problems

A growing array of apparently insoluble socio-economic, environmental, and governance challenges presses in on decision-makers — including climate change, the risk of global pandemics, the growing threat to natural resources like water and fisheries, and the ever-present issues of poverty and hunger. Growing Opportunity — the first in an annual series of surveys conducted by SustainAbility in partnership with The Skoll Foundation — explores the potential for more entrepreneurial solutions to such challenges.

The key messages: at a time when such challenges seem to narrow our horizons, they are creating a wealth of new opportunities, but to enjoy them longer term we must ensure real opportunity for a very much greater proportion of the global population. The report attempts to assess the current state of social entrepreneurship — the possibilities presented by new mindsets, the challenges entrepreneurs face in scaling their organizations and the opportunities for greater collaboration with corporations and others.

This first survey has been financially supported by Allianz and DuPont. We are proud to work alongside these partners and, over time, we believe that a growing number of mainstream business and financial institutions will follow their lead in recognizing the extraordinary potential value of what social and environmental entrepreneurs are doing.

Our main conclusions are that:

• Social entrepreneurship is on a roll.
  
• The potential for breakthrough solutions is considerable and growing.
  
• The field is growing, but still relatively small.
  
• Money remains the main headache.
  
• Financial self-sufficiency is seen as a real prospect within five years.
  
• There is a real appetite to partner with business.
  
• Beware of blind spots.
  
• For real system change, we must focus on government and public policy.
  

For more information on Growing Opportunity or our social entrepreneurship program, please contact Maggie Brenneke or visit our Entrepreneurship & Innovation homepage.