Leadership in Social Entrepreneurship Award and Dialogue, sponsored by Square 1 Bank

2007 WINNER -- Bill Drayton

CASE and Square 1 Bank honors Bill Drayton , Founder and CEO of Ashoka, a citizen sector organization dedicated to finding and fostering social entrepreneurs worldwide, with this year's CASE Leadership in Social Entrepreneurship Award. Drayton coined the phrase social entrepreneur and in 2005, was named by US News & World Report as one of America's 25 Best Leaders.

Watch the streaming video of Greg Dees interviewing Bill Drayton at Fuqua. (Quicktime 7 required).

Ashoka’s “Changemaker” Bill Drayton Awarded Annual 2007 Leadership in Social Entrepreneurship Award

DURHAM, N.C.— April 24, Pioneering entrepreneur Bill Drayton received the 2007 Leadership in Social Entrepreneurship Award of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) in recognition for his significant role in developing the field of social entrepreneurship.

The founder and CEO of Ashoka, an organization that cultivates a global network of social entrepreneurs who work as a community to solve urgent social issues in 66 countries, met with Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business students and faculty to engage in a dialogue on the opportunities and hallmarks in the developing field of social entrepreneurship.

CASE Managing Director Beth Anderson said in her introduction that Drayton is “an individual whose vision, passion and relentless pursuit of system changing ideas and individuals with the power to change the world is an inspiration and a call to action for us all.”

Drayton was a pioneer of the concept of the hybrid value change in the social sector; incorporating business strategies with social values. His “everyone a changemaker” philosophy is based on the premise that all citizens have the muscle to be powerful change agents to make a positive difference in their organizations, communities, and countries.

When questioned about his reasons for delving into the little discovered realm of social entrepreneurship over 26 years ago, Drayton said, “Everyone here can make of a list of things that need to be fixed…So you ask what’s the most powerful resource you can bring to bear and it’s always a big pattern change idea, but only if it’s in the hands of a really good entrepreneur.”

Comparing the “squalor of the social sector” to business, Drayton went on, “It’s hard to remember how really bad this (social entrepreneurship) was around 1980…The gap in the productivity in every society between business and the social half was so great that it was really intolerable.”

“Think back 25 years ago, there was no phrase social entrepreneur—we made it up. When we said it, some people looked blank eyed or some smart people would say that’s an oxymoron,” Drayton said with a grin.

Social entrepreneurship, a concept Drayton popularized, has challenged business practices and that dusty word “ethics” to the point that companies are waking up to realize that they can no longer afford to ignore this poor cousin who has developed decided sophistication.

“You could just see how this historical hinge was about to turn and it has,” Drayton told the Duke audience. “This is a historical change that is so profound and moving so quickly that to have the opportunity to serve that change, what could possibly be more interesting or more valuable?”

Given the blazing rate of productivity and growth in the private sector, Drayton warns entrepreneurs of the dangers of ignoring the social sector.

“The [businesses] that don’t change are going to die faster because the competition is going to be much more rigorous.”

For companies to survive their coveted Fortune 500 position, Drayton said that businesses need to develop an “Everyone a changemaker” organization, with everyone taking initiative.

“Escape the quantitative measures and stop shying away from ethical fiber but actually make it a central part of day to day activity.” Drayton went on to explain the need to invest in youth, specifically teenagers, to empower them with three vital abilities of a good entrepreneur: empathy, teamwork and leadership.

CASE Faculty Director Professor Greg Dees, who hosted the discussion noted, “It is a tremendous honor and incredible opportunity to have a chance to talk to Bill.”

As Bill Clinton’s nominative to receive a Nobel Prize, Drayton has been awarded recognition by prestigious institutions such as Yale University, the American Society of Public Administration, and the National Academy of Public Administration. Since its inception, Ashoka has created a global community that supports over 1,800 Ashoka fellows, innovative entrepreneurs with solutions to key social issues that are collectively sustainable and replicable across the world.

Bill Drayton's Full Length Bio (from www.ashoka.org):

Bill Drayton has been a social entrepreneur since he was a New York City elementary school student. He was born to a mother who emigrated from Australia as a young cellist and an American father who, also unafraid to step into the unknown, became an explorer at an equally young age. Public service and strong values run through the stories of both parents' families -- including several of the earliest anti-slavery abolitionist and women's leaders in the U.S. These family influences, the rich diversity and openness of life in Manhattan-as well as America's deep cultural concern with equity, which flourished during the Civil Rights years-all interacted with one another and with Bill's temperament to plant Ashoka's earliest roots.

In elementary school, Bill loved geography and history and was equally unmotivated in Latin and math. His real passion in those years went to sailing, and starting and running a series of newspapers in his school and beyond. In high school he created and built the Asia Society into the largest student organization. By high school he was also a NAACP member and actively engaged in and deeply moved by civil rights work. At Harvard he founded the Ashoka Table; and, at Yale Law School, he launched Yale Legislative Services which, by the time he graduated, engaged one third of the student body in helping key legislators throughout the northeast design and draft legislation.

Bill's deepening commitments to Asia, especially South Asia, and to civil rights were closely linked. Martin Luther King, Jr. followed Mahatma Gandhi's way, and anyone concerned with inequity within the U.S. could only be more disturbed by the greater inequalities between the world's North and South.
Once focused on such a chasm, any entrepreneur would have to ask: "What can I do?" At Harvard and Oxford, Bill did ask. Fully appreciating how central to significant change ("development") entrepreneurs are, his answer was the Ashoka idea.

Bill is also a manager and management consultant - choices that also grow from his fascination with how human institutions work. Although he loves and thinks first in historical terms, he is trained in economics, law, and management, the three key-interventionist disciplines. He was a McKinsey and Company consultant for almost ten years, gaining wide experience serving both public and private clients.

For four years, he was Assistant Administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where he had lead responsibility for policy, budget, management, audit, and representing the environment in Administration-wide policy development, notably including budget, energy, and economic policy. He successfully "intrapreneured" a series of major innovations and reforms in the field, ranging from the introduction of emissions trading to the use of economics-defined incentives to remove the advantage of delaying compliance. Later he founded and led Save EPA, an association of professional environmental managers that helped Congress, press, administration, citizen groups, and public understand and the block much of the radically destructive policies proposed by the Administrator Ann Gorsuch and others. Bill also founded and led Environmental Safety which helps develop and spread better ways of implementing environmental laws.

He also served briefly in the White House, and taught both law and management at Stanford Law School and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
He is currently significantly involved as board chair of Get America Working! and Youth Venture, both major strategic innovations for the public good.

Bill has received many awards for his achievements. He was elected one of the early MacArthur Fellows for his work, including the founding of Ashoka. Yale School of Management gave him its annual Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence. The American Society of Public Administration and the National Academy of Public Administration jointly awarded him their National Public Service Award, and the Common Cause gave him its Public Service Achievement Award. He has also been named a Preiskel-Silverman Fellow for Yale Law School and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Most recently in 2005, he was selected one of America's Best Leaders by US News & World Report and Harvard's Center for Public Leadership. In the same month he was the recipient of the Yale Law School's highest alumni honor, The Yale Law School Award of Merit- for having made a substantial contribution to Public Service.