Opinion: Social Entrepreneurs Must Pay Heed to Politics

The new generation of business-school graduates flocking to social enterprise too often ignores the role politics plays in the problems they set out to solve, according to an International Herald Tribune opinion piece.

Anand Giridharadas, an online columnist for The Times, writes that the “spreadsheet-wielding tribe” of young entrepreneurs seeking to mix business and altruism largely work around governments rather than challenging them.

Social enterprises that “address real needs” such as bringing solar lamps to villages or helping poor women start small home-based businesses in India “are often less interested in combating the underlying structural problems,” he says.

“The villages need solar lamps because the government fails to bring electricity. The women must weave from home because their husbands forbid them to leave,” Mr. Giridharadas continues. “These problems are not inefficiencies in need of smoothing. They are fights in need of picking.”