Social Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship applies the principles of business to accomplishing a social good.  Familiar examples of social entrepreneurs are the leaders at Michigan’s Interlochen Center for the Arts,  Heifer International, Habitat for Humanity, Teach for America, and Doctors without Borders (Médicins sans Frontières).

At Creative 360, we aspire to accomplish social good through inspiring people of all ages to experience, express, and expand their creativity.  The solutions to the problems of the day are found within human beings; and as our challenges mount, the potential for new answers expands exponentially as well.

What helps people find their creative potential?  Recent guests on my interviews about Creativity and the Brain, produced by Jennifer Vande Zande at Delta College Public Radio, FM 90.1, have shared their experiences. 

·         ·        Mark Bernius, a nuclear physicist who has led a team in studying studied renewable energy options at a large chemical company, said that his team always believes that they will find the next right answer, because they have always been able to find an answer to problems in the past.  This track record of success has a galvanizing effect on teams and individuals.  For this reason, at Creative 360 we focus on the creative process.  Everyone who engages in the process succeeds, leading to an incremental strengthening of self-confidence and optimism.

·         ·        Dick Dolinski, a chemist, educator and researcher, demonstrated that linking two previously unconnected ideas can produce a compelling new idea .  The entrepreneur who first looked at a roll of gift wrapping paper alongside a brown paper bag and envisioned a gift bag has earned profits by enabling consumers to streamline the process of preparing a gift for giving.  At Creative 360, we encourage people to try something new.  We have offered classes on painting on uncommon surfaces, adorning a life mask to represent the inner countenance rather than the outer appearance, and “laugh yoga,” in which people laugh, at first self-consciously, persisting until they shift their state of consciousness.M

        ·        Maureen Donker, an elected official and nonprofit executive who has been inspired by Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind, said that she cultivates her own creativity by looking at problems from a new angle.  At Creative 360, we offer Xponential, a 6-session class based on Pink’s book which provides brain workouts in the six dimensions of right-brain capacity identified by Pink:  story, design, symphony, play, meaning, and empathy.

Are we social entrepreneurs at Creative 360?  We believe we are.  The social good that we seek to achieve is not feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, or healing the sick; but it is the cultivation of human potential that will lead to new solutions for accomplishing all those goals. 

Recently, I listened to a conversation among pundits representing the range from optimism to pessimism concerning America’s ability to solve the social and economic problems that confront us.  One of the speakers reminded us that a generation ago there was no such thing as the Internet.  Among most people, there was not the glimmer of an idea that something like the Internet would change our lives so completely.  What is the next big thing?  I don’t know, but I do know that those who today are cultivating their creative potential are the ones who are going to find it. 

We don’t have to solve the problems of the future with the ideas of the past.  If our creative potential is infinite, we can move into the future with optimism rather than fear.  We just need to get a jump on the claims of the future by cultivating our creativity today.