The Summer issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review includes Social Entrepreneurship Revisited, an article by Paul Light.

Paul Light has written extensively on social entrepreneurship, and in this article he reflects upon four assumptions he's come to accept about the field. While not all nonprofit organizations engage in social entrepreneurship, these assumptions are useful guides for many nonprofits, especially those that are young or going through major changes.

What are the assumptions and what do they tell us about nonprofit leadership?

First, "Social entrepreneurs are not like other high achievers." Paul Light notes that unlike is original assumption, social entrepreneurs act deliberately to solve problems. This orientation may show up in how a person conceptualizes a problem or how she or he deals with setbacks. These leaders show persistence and optimism; maybe even bordering on overconfidence or a Pollyanna-ish outlook. (See my friend Hildy Gottlieb's book, The Pollyanna Principles)

Second, "Social entrepreneurial ideas are big." Perhaps the greatest observation for nonprofit leaders to learn from this idea is that while a truly revolutionary idea can begin small, it has to have the potential to be big. Some ideas start out small, and due to their nature they will always be small in scale. There's nothing wrong with that. Local food pantries, for example, are very important. But they are not game changing in the same way the idea of a micro-lending project might be.

Third, "Opportunities for grand change come in waves." While Paul Light uses different language to describe this, we agree that not every time is equally good as every other time for a radical, game-changing idea. I'm influenced by Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The main point is this: a field of service may have an overriding paradigm that controls how people view the way things are done in that field of service. What we find over time is that actual practice diverges from the theory. Eventually you find that the conflict between theory and practice is so great that theory is redefined to fit the reality we experience.

The best time for social entrepreneurial activity, and for great leaps in nonprofit leadership, is when theory and practice are far apart. Social entrepreneurism is the way we redefine theory to fit reality. Once that paradigm shift has happened, the environment for social entrepreneurism, at least in that field or community, won't be ripe again for some time.

Finally, "Social entrepreneurial organizations are built for change." The two most important lessons from this assumption are these: 1) organizations built for change are flat organizations, they don't have a lot of layers of leadership. Caseworkers who help clients or staff who direct volunteers are only one or two levels away from the CEO. 2) These organizations focus on program results.

Such organizations are often not very good at some of the back office administrative support tasks that organizations need. That's one area where a partnership between a more established nonprofit and an entrepreneurial nonprofit may help both to thrive. The established organization can spread the cost of its administrative support over more program areas and the social entrepreneur can focus on delivering program services, and also be able to make a change in how it operates if need be.

Leadership comes in many forms. The challenge for us in the nonprofit sector is to figure out how to help people do more of what they are good at and to burden them less with the administrative and other support tasks.