Social Entrepeneur Of The Year: Calling all social visionaries

Have you launched a business that does more than simply make as much money as possible? If so, The Independent wants to hear from you. Today, we launch an important new contest to find the UK's most successful social entrepreneurs.

Why do we think this is important? Well, the traditional view of successful entrepreneurship is that the more money a business makes, the better. Yet there are a growing number of entrepreneurs, both in this country and around the world, whose desire for money is to use it to transform society.

That's why The Independent, in collaboration with The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), is launching a search to identify these businesses - and give them the recognition they deserve.

Click here for details of how to enter

But what exactly is social entrepreneurship? The term has become something of a buzzphrase. In some ways, it's easier to start by talking about exactly what social entrepreneurship is not.

For example, this is not just another way of describing a charitable organisation or foundation. Not is it about campaigning - social entrepreneurship always offers practical alternatives to inequitable states of affairs. Similarly, social entrepreneurship is more than corporate social responsibility and it doesn't require you to run a not-for-profit or non-governmental organisation.

All four of these concepts exercise a valuable and important social role in the UK - but by our definition, they are not "social entrepreneurs" . Instead, take the examples opposite. What do all these individuals and their organisations have in common? First, they identify opportunities for market creation and in the process change systems and practices that have excluded millions from benefiting from advances in information education technology, health technology, full employment, and the like.

Second, their role is that of a transformational catalyst, spinning off models that can be replicated for wide adoption in many settings. Third, while the five examples here are "success stories", the obstacles encountered to effect the systems change achieved are enormous.

These pragmatic visionaries have a tough road ahead to convince the rest of society, including family, friends and colleagues, that their "crazy idea" can work. As Rodrigo Baggio has quipped: "There is a very fine line between being a madman and a visionary. One day I was a madman, and overnight I was transformed into a visionary."

Indeed, the recent Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and pioneer of micro credit, was deemed borderline sane as he struggled to launch his "bank for the poor" in Chittagong, Bangladesh. No one would have predicted that in the 20 years since Grameen's founding, the biggest banks in the world would be pursuing commercial opportunity among the poorest of the poor.

Similarly, those who argue that we can create a sustainable world for between 9 and 10 billion people are often seen as impractical dreamers, at best. Some may be, but those we know and have profiled here are pragmatic visionaries - and are set to have an astonishing cumulative impact on markets, business and tomorrow's world.

Adam Smith would almost certainly have approved. This genius, who did so much to shape modern thinking about the market economy, grew up in a world where social problems were rampant. Rather than relying on the " invisible hand" of the market, which appears in just one line of his 1776 masterpiece, The Wealth of Nations, he called for action. "No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable," he said.

To address intractable social problems, most social entrepreneurs set up hybrid organisations. In the UK, fostering social entrepreneurship has been on the political agenda of the Labour Party for several years, yet a recent comparative study of six countries carried out by the law firm Linklaters and the Schwab Foundation which included the UK found that in no country is there a coherent legal model developed for the establishment of social enterprises.

The UK has tried to address this by creating new forms of corporate bodies, such as Community Investment Companies, but critics say it does not provide a clear enough structure for the future growth of social enterprise.

The goal of this collaborative effort between The Independent, the Schwab Foundation and BCG is to showcase the UK's best practices in social entrepreneurship, highlighting how ordinary people can achieve the extraordinary. We aim to be a catalyst that promotes policies and practices to ensure that more social innovators with a business case are encouraged and nurtured.

Above all, this competition recognises that profits and principles do not have to be mutually exclusive, whether you're running a small or large business. The Independent's contest recognises the huge contribution that social entrepreneurs are set to make - both to free market capitalism and to the world as a whole.

What is it?

To define social entrepreneur, think Sir Richard Branson crossed with Mother Teresa. That is, think about blending good business skills with charitable instincts.

Rather than seeking to maximise profits, as businesses must do, the social entrepreneur seeks to maximise the good of society. And while a mainstream business entrepreneur creates products and services that will generate profits, the social entrepreneur responds to market failures, coming up with goods and services, or approaches to accessing them, that business cannot because the financial rewards are not high enough and the risk is too great.

A social entrepreneur's chief contribution does not come from an ability to set up hospitals, schools or centres for the physically or mentally disabled. Rather, it comes from the capacity to envisage what does not exist and make it happen.

The recent Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Muhammad Yunus, is the perfect example. He was deemed borderline sane as he struggled to launch his " bank for the poor" in Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Five guiding lights

Andrea, Barry Coleman

Andrea and Barry Coleman met through their common passion, motorcycle racing. On a trip to Somalia, they were shocked to see so many vehicles, many of them new, rotting in car parks. They concluded that a major reason for slow progress in Africa was the lack of mobility that was holding back vital efforts in, for example, disease prevention and eradication.

So the couple started Riders for Health, a UK-based organisation, to introduce an integrated system incorporating training and maintenance procedures. RfH has demonstrated that a properly managed vehicle under its system will save more than 50 per cent of costs over a six-year period. RfH has also shown that with each motorcycle it runs, 20,000 people receive primary health care each year.

Rodrigo Baggio

Rodrigo Baggio had a dream where he saw the poorest children living in the "favelas" of his hometown, Rio de Janeiro, using computers. Today, Baggio's Committee for the Democratisation of Information (CDI) has moved beyond Rio to 869 cities throughout Brazil and 10 other countries. Working in close partnership with community centres in Brazil's poorest and most violent communities, as well as prisons, CDI teaches computer literacy to the digitally excluded. CDI has certified more than 80,000 students, 87 per cent of whom report it has transformed their opportunities for gainful and dignified employment. But there is much more room for spreading the CDI model to other parts of the world - rather than reinventing the wheel.

Robert Roth

In Switzerland, Robert Roth created the Job Factory, a for-profit social enterprise, to provide a whole range of "Jobs for Juniors" or internship opportunities for unemployed youth. Teenagers have the chance to "learn on the job" and get used to a performance-oriented environment.

As a private stock company with 15 different business divisions, Job Factory offers a market-driven entry into the professional world while providing intensive coaching and counselling through the Job Training Foundation. 80 per cent of the interns find job or apprenticeship positions.

Devi Prasad Shetty

An Indian cardiologist, Dr Devi Prasad Shetty is meeting unmet needs through an innovative business model in health. Shetty's organisation, Narayana Hrudayalaya, is a social business that strives to make sophisticated healthcare available to all in India. His network of hospitals is able to provide 60 per cent of treatments below cost or for free, thanks to drastically reduced costs resulting from high volumes, innovative cost saving methods and donations. A network of 39 telemedicine centres reaches out to patients in remote rural areas.

Sara Horowitz

Social entrepreneurs do not just focus their efforts to change systems in poor countries. Sara Horowitz founded Working Today in the US and pioneered a form of portable unionism to promote the interests of the growing number of independent workers in America.

Unlike traditional trade unions which are limited by law to employees of workplace-based organisations, Working Today provides flexible and portable benefits applicable to an increasingly mobile and decentralised workforce adjusting to the changing contours of the US and global economy.

It has built a membership of 16,000, including 10,000 independent workers who receive health insurance.

How to enter

You can find out more about the competition to find the Social Entrepreneur of the Year at www.schwabfound.org/unitedkingdom

If you consider yourself a social entrepreneur, follow the rules explaining the selection process. The site contains full details of the criteria we'll use to judge the contest. If you think you qualify, there's a simple online application form to complete by 2 July.

We look forward to hearing from you.

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