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According to Ashoka founder and social entrepreneur Bill Drayton, we are at the "takeoff point" of the biggest cultural transition since the agricultural revolution. In an era in which "change" is moving at an algorithmic rate, he says, social entrepreneurs have a particularly vital part in helping this transformation take place in as constructive and democratic a manner as possible.
In this talk, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Drayton sketches the history of this transition, flags obstacles some face in being part of it in productive ways, and suggests roles that social entrepreneurs can play in the change process. Drayton delivers his remarks on the occasion of his receiving the Purpose Prize Entrepreneurial Leadership Award.
William Drayton is 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. 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, the press, citizen groups, and the public wade through problematic public policy decisions. He also founded and led Environmental Safety, which helps develop and spread better ways of implementing environmental laws.
Drayton served briefly in the White House, and has taught both law and management at Stanford Law School and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He was also a McKinsey & Company consultant for almost 10 years. He is now an active board chair of Get America Working! and Youth Venture, both major strategic innovations for the public good. He was elected one of the early MacArthur Fellows and has received a number of other awards for entrepreneurship and public service.
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